The Power4Kids was conducted in the Allegheny Intermediate Unit of Pennsylvania (US) and was led by Joe Torgesen. Catherine has accurately noted that Failure Free Reading is not phonics-based. Indeed, most of those that emphasize decoding also include fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension work (see Corrective Reading, for example). Keller & Just analyzed their data for differences in the outcomes by reading program and found none.

I have more about these studies on LD Blog in posts from 13 June 2008 and 11 December 2009.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by kriley19: Joanne Jacobs: Reading builds brain connectivity http://bit.ly/849RBl Full http://bit.ly/5YFzC5...

Western civ passed through a period of several hundred years where the lives of ordinary people were dominated by print to several decades where ordinary people increasingly avoided print due to the rise of visual screen media.

Democracy, capitalism, rapid technological advance and the culture of continuous progress are all the children of the print era when literacy became widespread. In truth, literacy was the membership card to that society. As Neil Postman wrote, landholding requirements for voting were often overlooked, but not literacy requirements.

The implication was that one was not fit to take full part in this culture unless one were literate.

In recent years, much has been written about multiple intelligences, and, of course, taken at face value, this has merit: intrapersonal, kinesthetic, and musical brain operations are very real and valuable. Yet, one always had the sense that the subtext was to bring the cultural value placed on literacy-linked intelligences down to the level placed on other brain operations.

One does not want to be an elderly reactionary blasting change just because it is change, but I was never comfortable with the assumption that just because one could linguistically equate visual-spatial judgment and verbal reasoning as “just dfifferent kinds of intelligence”, that they actually have the same broader implications for human thinking.

Now this linked article purports to prove the effect of literacy on the brain, suggesting that there is indeed a reason why literacy rates have always been linked to societal progress of all sorts.

To be fair, though, similar images need to be taken of brains before and after significant learning unrelated to literacy — and it would be especially interesting if these tests were deliberately linked to Gardner’s other intelligences.

I’m disappointed with NPR’s reporting. The only thing they said about the remediation was “The programs had the kids practice reading words and sentences over and over again.” Hardly helpful to anyone wondering what actually works and suspiciously worded to appear supportive of whole language.