To the Editor:
I’m truly shocked by the Sept. 26, 2025, opinion essay, “Small-Group Reading Instruction Is Not as Effective as You Think” by Mike Schmoker and Timothy Shanahan. The two longtime promoters of the science of reading’s explicit, systematic instruction approach argue for more whole-class instruction. Frankly, this is another blow to teachers and paraeducators everywhere.
I have two questions: 1) How does whole-class instruction address the gap-based learning needs of individual students? (It doesn’t.) 2) How can it possibly assess and provide the daily feedback individual students need to correct flawed performance? (It can’t.)
This opinion essay exposes the problem American educators face: “experts” so devoted to their own ideas about improving education that they contradict common sense. It’s a leading reason teachers leave classrooms. Why? Reading ability affects every area of the curriculum. When students struggle to learn, behavioral problems follow. When instruction doesn’t work and students are out of control, teachers leave the profession.
Of course, small-group work is only as good as the methods used and only as good as the structure of independent learning time for nonparticipating students. It is easy to label the whole approach as “ineffective” when only ineffective models are studied!
Rhonda Stone
Parent Advocate & Reading Tutor/Trainer
Shelton, Wash.
read the opinion essay mentioned in the letter
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