Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a law last fall that will take effect in 2027. It’s designed to fundamentally change how children are taught to read in Michigan’s public schools.
The law is rooted in something that’s a hot topic right now: the so-called “science of reading.” It also brings dyslexia awareness into classrooms in a way that it’s never been before.
This first part of a two-part series explores what these changes really mean from two perspectives: as an education reporter, and from the viewpoint of a mom with a dyslexic child.
Navigating dyslexia
By the time my daughter (who’s now 10) was in kindergarten, I knew something was off with her reading.
I want to make one thing clear: all of my daughter’s early elementary teachers were wonderful people and fantastic educators. But every time I brought up the possibility of dyslexia I was…not brushed off, exactly. But my concerns were definitely minimized. I was repeatedly told that with enough reading at home, enough sight word drilling, she would eventually catch up.
But by the end of first grade, she still wasn’t reading, or at least nothing beyond some simple one-syllable words and a handful of sight words. So I had her formally evaluated for dyslexia. And sure enough, there it was: a clinical diagnosis. An explanation for all the struggles, all the fighting, and all the tears. It was about how her brain is wired after all.
So of course, I started doing research. A lot of it. What is dyslexia, and what did this mean for my daughter, and for me?
A TED-Ed video called “What is dyslexia?” explains it this way: “Dyslexia is caused by a phonological processing problem, meaning people affected by it have trouble not with seeing language, but with manipulating it.” One common misconception about dyslexia is that people who have it see letters transposed, or all jumbled up on the page. That’s true for some people.
But it turns out that at its core, dyslexia is more about struggling to break words down into their component parts, and then synthesize them. And that’s how all of us read. It’s just that those of us who are fluent readers do it so quickly and subconsciously, we don’t even notice. But if you have dyslexia, that process is harder, and it takes longer.
Last year, some Michigan lawmakers made a big push to pass the so-called “dyslexia bills” through the legislature. But in truth, those bills were about more than just dyslexia. They were about changing the way reading instruction happens in Michigan’s public schools.
Defining – and debating – the “science of reading”
State Senator Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor) was the chief architect of the two bills that became the basis for what state officials now call Michigan’s "historic literacy/dyslexia law.” Irwin led a nearly decade-long push through multiple legislative sessions to make that change.
“These two bills weave the science of reading into our early elementary literacy education,” Irwin said. “And they do it primarily in three ways: through assessments, through training, and through intervention.”
That term he used, the “science of reading?” It can be disputed or misunderstood, especially since it’s entered the popular lexicon. But in the simplest terms, the science of reading is a catch-all term that essentially boils down to phonics, and the decoding skills that a solid body of research suggests is the key to unlocking true reading.
“The research seems to show these methods help all students, not just students with characteristics of dyslexia,” Irwin said.
So what does that science look like? To find out, we need to take a quick trip into the brain and see how reading actually happens.
There’s a widespread belief – even among many educators – that if kids have enough exposure to words and books, most will essentially pick up reading on their own. This is understandable, because some children do just seem to magically learn to read. I heard this more than once when my daughter was struggling to read, and it became increasingly frustrating as we did just that…but she didn’t learn.
To dig a little deeper into this whole idea, I consulted Maryanne Wolf. She’s a reading researcher and professor of education at UCLA, and also the author of a remarkable book about how we read called Proust and the Squid. Wolf told me the idea that most children will pick up reading through some sort of natural osmosis is a “very understandable, romantic view of learning”--but one that, when it comes to reading, is just not true.
“It's wonderfully compelling,” Wolf told me. “It suggests that children will induce the alphabetic principle on their own, and they don't need help in doing that.”
But in reality, “Reading is anything but natural. It's an invention, and therefore requires an entirely new circuit that there is no gene for.”
In other words: there’s no “reading” part of the brain, in the way that there are parts of the brain devoted to hearing or language development. Our brains have to reconfigure ancient neural networks to get to the process we call reading. And it’s a skill that always needs to be taught, one way or another.
So of course, this raises the big question: what’s the best way to teach all children how to read? And how do we go about implementing it in Michigan classrooms?
“What’s the purpose of reading?”
That question has proven to be a surprisingly contentious one. Most people are now aware of the decades-long “Reading Wars” marked by major pendulum shifts in American education between the "romantic" view of early literacy, and a more systematic, phonics-based approach.
But it turns out that when it comes to the actual “science of reading” -- meaning what decades of neuroscience and reading research tell us — there actually isn’t that much debate.
So says Susan Neuman, a professor and reading researcher at New York University. Neuman told me that pretty much all that research very much aligns with one simple fact: we need to return to more phonics-based instruction, and emphasize the decoding skills that underlie the reading process.
But Neuman said that’s only one part of a larger equation. “Children are not going to be proficient readers if they don't know how to decode and understand the code, and translate that code to print,” she said. “But if that's all we do, we will lose.”
What Neuman means is that content matters a whole lot, too. Simply put: if what children are decoding isn’t building vocabulary, imparting new knowledge, or is just terribly boring…it’s almost pointless.
“That’s what motivates children to want to read,” Neuman said. “They want to learn more about their world. And if all we’re doing is reading nonsense day in and day out, what’s the purpose of reading?”
So the curriculum, and the content of that curriculum, matters a lot. And some experts worry that not all curricula that claim to be “aligned” with the science of reading are very good at doing those things.
Michigan’s new laws also give teachers a lot more training on what dyslexia looks like, and how to spot the major red flags. In theory, that should help parents whose kids show signs of dyslexia — parents just like me several years ago.
But there’s another important X factor here, one that an educator I recently spoke with brought up.
This teacher thinks these laws are important, despite some concerns that they “start to take some artistry away from professionals.” But the laws are just the foundation. How teachers go about teaching depends on the curriculum they’re given, and whether they adhere to the principles behind the science of reading.
So what will all this look like for teachers and students in Michigan classrooms? We’ll explore that in the second part of this story.
