{"id":80,"date":"2026-04-10T21:30:55","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T21:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/?p=80"},"modified":"2026-04-10T21:30:55","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T21:30:55","slug":"the-cost-of-over-teaching-phonics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/2026\/04\/10\/the-cost-of-over-teaching-phonics\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cost of Over-Teaching Phonics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.educationnext.org\/cost-of-over-teaching-phonics-reading\/\">Lliana Loewus<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The tide has turned on reading instruction. Nearly all states have passed \u201cscience of reading\u201d laws, and most researchers and educators now agree students need to learn letters and sounds explicitly and systematically to become proficient readers. The Washington Post\u2019s editorial board recently went so far as to proclaim that the reading wars have ended. \u201cThe victor is clear: Phonics is the best way to teach kids how to read.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And yet a look inside K\u20133 classrooms reveals surprising variation in exactly how these letters and sounds are taught. Along with the many research-based methods in use, there\u2019s another practice taking hold, and at great cost to students: over-teaching.<\/p>\n<p>Mark Seidenberg, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison who studies reading science, helped persuade the public of the need for science-based instruction\u2014and now he\u2019s among those sounding the alarm on over-instruction. Reading teachers need not aim to teach every single pattern students will encounter in text, he says; they simply need to teach enough that students can achieve \u201cescape velocity,\u201d or the ability to start cracking the code on their own.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou do teach them about words, about print. You teach them enough simple phonics patterns so they can start sounding out some words. And then there\u2019s supposed to be a light bulb that goes on,\u201d Seidenberg says.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers call this ability to implicitly pick up patterns and apply them the \u201cself-teaching mechanism,\u201d or \u201cstatistical learning\u201d\u2014and many say it\u2019s underrecognized within the science-of-reading movement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lliana Loewus: The tide has turned on reading instruction. Nearly all states have passed \u201cscience of reading\u201d laws, and most researchers and educators now agree students need to learn letters and sounds explicitly and systematically to become proficient readers. The Washington Post\u2019s editorial board recently went so far as to proclaim that the reading wars [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions\/81"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}