Is Skilled Decoding Needed in Learning How to Read?

To the Editor:

According to the recent Reading First final impact study, children participating in the program did better than their peers in comparison schools on a test of decoding in grade 1, but did no better on reading-comprehension tests in grades 1, 2, and 3, despite considerable extra instructional time ( "Federal Path for Reading Questioned," Dec. 3, 2008).

This is not the first study to show that children following an intensive decoding-based curriculum do well on tests of decoding but not on measures of reading comprehension when compared with regular students. Similar results were shown in the report of the National Reading Panel, the foundation for Reading First. As Elaine Garan, a professor of literacy and early education at California State University-Fresno, has pointed out, the panel found that systematic phonics was superior only on tests of decoding, and that its impact was small or insignificant on reading-comprehension...