Where on earth did these people learn about learning to read and who taught them??????? Certainly not anyone who knows how and can prove it. {I can, and i can prove it) The very first thing a Reading Specialist tries to do is to get non-readers engaged in the reading process so that the all important practice practice practice essential to all learning will take place. Then they can make sense of the phonics and all the other bits because those things build words and make sentences that have meaning that the student wants to know. This is all of a piece with deciding that a teacher's competence can be measured by students' test performance at end of instruction. I have had many students come to me years later to say that they finally "got" something I had all but ground up and poured into "the porches of their ears". Kids learn to drive because they want to because it makes their lives easier, not because someone has taught them the functions of the myriad bits & bobs that go into the making of the car or the many sub-skills required to control a couple tons of steel before letting them behind the wheel. Testing kids on a timetable for developmental reading and determining that they or their teachers have failed Reading is the equivalent of testing them on a timetable for height and saying they their parents, and their docs failed Growth. If you pulled a plate of food from the refrigerator and it was covered with slime and mold, would you pour more money and ingredients into it trying to make it better or would you throw the garbage out and start with fresh? I am so fed up with the sloppy thinking running rampant on the subject of learning. Will no one but me ever recognize that learning and education are not the same thing? Will someone please recognize that one size does not fit all? that we need a diverse set of methods and standards to accommodate the diverse modes of learning in our very diverse population.