I want you to listen in on a reading class at Oklahoma State University. NADWORNY: Well, research shows there are five core components of teaching reading, including phonics, vocabulary and comprehension. MARTÍNEZ: OK, so then how should we be teaching reading? And the study found that many teacher prep programs still were using that method.

This method often downplays phonics and sounding out letters.

So that's where students rely on context and sentence structure to identify words they don't know. NADWORNY: One of the persistent strategies not backed by research is the cueing system. HEATHER PESKE: Only about a quarter of the teachers who leave teacher preparation programs across our nation enter classrooms prepared to teach kids to read aligned to the science and research on reading, while the rest of the teachers who've invested lots of money and lots of time in learning to teach enter classrooms unprepared. She's the president of the organization that did that study. A recent study by the National Council on Teacher Quality that looked at 700 teacher training programs at universities found that too many programs weren't aligned with the research on how to teach kids to read. Many said they were constantly changing and updating their curriculum to match current research on reading. So, Elissa, what did you find? I mean, are teacher prep programs aligning with the science of reading?ĮLISSA NADWORNY, BYLINE: So NPR and our member stations reached out to a dozen institutions with education schools. My colleague A Martínez spoke with her about that. So how are colleges and universities that train teachers responding? That's the question NPR's Elissa Nadworny, with the help of a dozen member station reporters, has been asking. This comes at a time when two-thirds of children in the U.S. As a result, dozens of states have passed laws or implemented new policies related to evidence-based reading instruction. New research has highlighted flaws in decades-old methods. Educators are rethinking how reading should be taught in schools.

The teachers law online