"A lie told once is questioned. A lie repeated often enough becomes accepted. And once it becomes 'common sense,' people stop investigating it. That is how deception survives." Malcolm X

While reasonable people are having debates over whether or not students using AI constitutes plagiarism (it does), almost no one ever confronts that mainstream journalists tend to write the same articles over and over about reading proficiency in the US.

These articles are not only unoriginal but also deeply misleading, if not outright false.

Much to my chagrin, the plagiarism template for media coverage of reading proficiency includes Emily Hanford’s misleading and false articles from 2018 on the “science of reading” [1] and 2019 on the so-called Mississippi “miracle.”

Nicholas Kristof has jumped on the bandwagon, first spreading the false claim that 2/3 of students in the US are not proficient in reading, and now this:

The problem is that Kristof was contacted by several literacy and education experts concerning his earlier misinformation about NAEP reading scores, thus he knows that he is being at least misleading if not outright negligent.

Yet, he persists.

Let me offer a reader on how the Mississippi “miracle” and the Southern Surge are media and political misinformation campaigns that serve the education reform marketplace, but not students:

Big Lies of Education: Reading Proficiency and NAEP

The Zombie Politics of Misinformation about Students Reading at Grade Level

The “Southern Surge” in Reading: Another Media Manufactured Mirage

Fact Checking “The reading wars are ending. Phonics won.” (Washington Post Editorial Board)

Misunderstanding Mississippi’s Reading Reform: The Need to Resist Copycat Education Reform

On education miracles in general (and those in Mississippi in particular)

On Miracles in Mississippi

Science of Reading or Science of Retention?: Why Miracles Fail Reading Reform

Education Journalism and Education Reform as Industry

Notes

[1] This series in English Journal details the misinformation in Hanford’s “Hard Words”:

• Thomas, P.L. (2024, November). We teach English in times of perpetual crisis: For all ELA teachers, “the time is always now.” English Journal, 114(2), 21-26. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej2024114221

• Thomas, P.L. (2024, September). We teach English in times of perpetual crisis: The media continue to misread teaching reading and literacy. English Journal, 114(1), 14-19. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej2024114114

• Thomas, P.L. (2024, May). Teaching English in the “science of reading” era: We teach English in times of perpetual crisis: Selling a story of reading. English Journal, 113(5), 16-22. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej2024113516

• Thomas, P.L. (2024, March). We teach English in times of perpetual crisis: The long (and tedious) history of reading crisis. English Journal, 113(4), 21-26. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej2024113421