Dr Steven Dykstra is totally committed to challenging the promotion of dangerously flawed reading strategies which amount to 'guessing' the words on the page and which can cause or exacerbate dyslexic tendencies. In 2013, Steve headed up a letter of complaint to the 'Washington Post' signed by 30 extremely knowledgeable academics from around the world. Please do find the time to read the whole post as I have only copied the final comments of Steve Dykstra and the names of the signatories:
...While this approach has been tempered over time, it still dominates the way most teachers are trained to teach reading, and thus the way our school children are instructed. We can trace a clear ideological path leading from Goodman to Reading Recovery to balanced literacy and many present-day iterations of guided reading. Lip service to phonics now allows a child to use the first letter of the word and guess, followed by the first and last letter and more guessing. But this faction adheres to the admonishment of Marie Clay, the influential developer of Reading Recovery, to use phonics only after all other strategies, or “cues,” have been tried.
“All readers, from five year old beginners on their first books to the effective adult reader need to use: the meaning, the sentence structure, order cues, size cues, special features, special knowledge, first and last letter knowledge before they resort to left to right sounding out of chunks or letter clusters, or in the last resort, single letters.” (p. 9) Clay (1998). An observation survey of early literacy achievement. Auckland, Heinemann..
The goal is to keep phonetic decoding of words to a minimum, despite a wealth of research that shows it is a cardinal feature of all skilled reading. Skilled reading and poor phonetic decoding are mutually exclusive. The guessing advocates ignore this richly validated fact because it is inconsistent with their own beliefs. The damage comes when, as the NCTQ found, so many university teacher programs confuse the philosophy with the science. Fresh out of high school, our future teachers are hugely dependent on their college education to prepare them to teach children to read. Teachers can hardly be expected to teach what they haven’t been taught, much less that which they have been trained to reject.
Attacks on the NCTQ review are merely ways for defenders of guessing to deflect attention from years of misguided and, ultimately, damaging instruction. There is nothing enlightened about denying serious research, and there is nothing liberal about denigrating or withholding the tools and knowledge on which teachers’ successful careers and children’s educational horizons depend. Strauss, Goodman, and others need to give up their smokescreen of concern over the politics and particulars of the NCTQ review, and account for the relentless adherence to the guessing strategies that really are perpetuating the Reading Wars. Future teachers and all stakeholders who want our children to have the keys to skilled reading should demand this accounting.
Marilyn Jager Adams, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar, Psychology, Brown University
Isabel Beck, Ph.D., Professor Emerita, University of Pittsburgh
Susan Brady, Ph.D., Professor of School Psychology, University of Rhode Island
James Chapman, Ph.D., Professor of Educational Psychology, Massey University, New Zealand
David Chard, Ph.D., Dean, Simmons School of Education and Human Development, Southern Methodist University
Carol McDonald Connor, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Psychology, Arizona State University
Carolyn Cowen, Board Member, Literate Nation
Molly de Lemos, Ph.D., President-elect, Learning Difficulties Australia
Mary Delahunty, M. Ed., Learning Difficulties Australia
Steven Dykstra, Ph.D., Founding Member, Wisconsin Reading Coalition
Jack M. Fletcher, Ph.D., ABPP (ABCN), Distinguished Professor of Psychology, University of Houston
David Francis, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Psychology, University of Houston
Margie B. Gillis, Ed.D, President, Literacy How; Research Affiliate, Haskins Laboratories
Sally Grimes, Ed.M., Founding Director, Grimes Reading Institute
Cinthia Haan, Haan Foundation for Children
Lorraine Hammond, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer, Edith Cowan University; President, Learning Difficulties Australia
Kerry Hempenstall, Ph.D., RMIT University, Australia
Marcia K. Henry, Ph.D., Professor Emerita, San Jose State University
E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Education and Humanities, University of Virginia
R. Malatesha Joshi, Ph.D., Professor, Teaching, Learning, and Culture, Texas A&M University
Edward J. Kame’enui, Ph.D., Dean-Knight Professor of Education, University of Oregon
Yvonne Meyer, Committee Member, National Inquiry into Teaching of Literacy/Report: Teaching Reading (2005) Australia
Louisa C. Moats, Ed.D., Moats Associates Consulting; former Vice President, International Dyslexia Association
Frederick J. Morrison, Ph.D., Professor, School of Education and Department of Psychology, University of Michigan
Mary Newton, J.D., CALP, Founding Member, Wisconsin Reading Coalition
Charles A. Perfetti, Ph.D., Distinguished University Professor of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh
Margot Prior, Professor of Psychology, AO, FASSA, FAPS, University of Melbourne, Australia
Daniel J. Reschly, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Special Education, Vanderbilt University
Mark S. Seidenberg, Ph.D., Donald O. Hebb and Hilldale Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Donald Shankweiler, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Haskins Laboratories; Professor Emeritus, Psychology, University of Connecticut
Holly Shapiro, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, Ravinia Reading Center, LLC
Bennett A. Shaywitz, M.D., Professor, Co-Director, Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity
Sally E. Shaywitz, M.D., Professor, Co-Director, Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity
Susan M. Smartt, Ph.D., Vice President of Science Core Group, Literate Nation
Louise A. Spear-Swerling, Ph.D., Area Coordinator, Graduate Program in Learning Disabilities, Southern Connecticut State University
Morag Stuart, Ph.D. Professor Emerita in the Psychology of Reading, University of London
Geraldine L. Theadore, M.S., CCC-SLP, Clinical Associate Professor, University of Rhode Island
Joseph K. Torgesen, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Education Emeritus, Florida State University; Director Emeritus, Florida Center for Reading Research
William E. Tunmer, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology, Massey University, New Zealand
Kevin Wheldall, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor and Director of MULTILIT Research Unit, Macquarie University, Australia
Joanna P. Williams, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Education, Columbia University
Please note that five of these signatories have gone on to become the founding members of the International Foundation for Effective Reading Instruction as you can see here: