Using basal readers: From dutiful fidelity to intelligent decision making

Dewitz, Peter, & Jones, Jennifer. (2012). Using basal readers: From dutiful fidelity to intelligent decision making. The Reading Teacher, 66(5), 391-400.


Teachers need to be reflective decision-makers who put students and their literacy learning first, not “dutiful” implementers of basal reading programs. This is nothing I haven’t heard or read before. In fact, it is a point of view that I have often stated in my own literacy education courses at the university level. Some of us have been doggedly making the case for teachers being empowered to make decisions about literacy instruction for many years now, through all the changes in policy that sometimes threatened teachers’ autonomy to make the best decisions for their students.

I believe that the learning needs of students should always be at the center of literacy instruction, and that teachers need to make decisions about that instruction, not programs, or publishers, or those “experts” whose carefully posed head shots adorn the first few pages of basal teachers’ manuals. I am one of those who have cringed at the recent move toward requiring “fidelity” to programs. It just seemed out of place, too “Big Brother”, too disrespectful to teachers as professionals. In one case I observed close at hand, “experts” would drop in from out of town and pass judgment on what teachers who were implementing “their” program were or were not doing. Fidelity had to be assured in order to keep the dubious privilege of using that program. Without fidelity, the experts’ research results would be compromised, and the program might lose credibility (and sales). The right of teachers to make instructional decisions has been challenged periodically over the years, and recently I believe we have just begun to come out of one of those periods. We could just as easily go back into the repressive mode, so I am not counting on any change that honors teachers’ professional judgment lasting very long, though I am still idealistic enough to hope.

Although I agree with almost everything Dewitz and Jones have to say here, it’s nothing we haven’t heard before, and more than once before. I cannot help wondering, why this article now? Does it mean that there is a new threat to teacher autonomy, perhaps spurred by the adoption of the Common Core State Standards? Does it mean that we are going to be privileging teacher decision-making again, and focusing on teaching to students rather than teaching to a test? Will we begin seeing more articles again on teachers’ reflective decision-making, as we did in the 1980's and 1990’s?

The conflict between the view of teachers as technicians who implement plans made by others versus teachers as professional decision-makers is an old one. This article just presents an update. As an update, it is worth reading and sharing, especially with our preservice and beginning teachers who have not yet heard it all before. It is a fairly clear discussion, and does present a few new wrinkles, so while those of us who have been in the literacy field for a while may take little more than a mild feeling of affirmation from this article, the novice teachers that some of us work with might find this article valuable as a permission to make choices about today’s cleverly marketed, slick basal programs (much more alluring than the basal programs I was subjected to as a child, or even the ones I “dutifully” but half-heartedly implemented in my early career). The article could also reach these novice teachers by challenging them to think deeply about those programs and make them fit their students.

I did learn a couple of new things here, seemingly minor, but important if I intend to be up-to-date in my understandings of the ways published literacy programs are viewed today. The first new thing was that what I have always called “basal programs” are currently often referred to as “core reading programs” instead. As the authors point out, the choice of a name makes a difference in how the program is viewed. A basal program may be seen as a basis, or a foundation, for reading instruction, but it is meant to be implemented flexibly. A teacher may add to, subtract from, or alter the program when needed. In contrast, a “core program” IS the reading program in and of itself. Such programs are marketed as “complete” solutions to all of a district’s reading needs. That’s alluring for some kinds of consumer products. I like a cleaner, or a hair product, or a tool that “does it all.” As any teacher with any experience knows, however, that isn’t a good thing in education, because nothing really does it all. In fact, the other kinds of consumer products rarely really do it all either. They are bound to do some things well and some things not so well. I think the same is true of any instructional tool, strategy, or method, not just basals. There is no “does it all” or “one size fits all”.

Another helpful tidbit was the authors’ debunking of the “research-based” descriptor that has been used to aggressively market instructional programs for the last decade. The article describes how basal programs are currently developed. The promotional literature strongly implies that all of the great minds in literacy sat down and pooled their knowledge to create these programs. Actually, the role of the people who have allowed their names and photographs and reputations to be linked to published programs may not be very large when it comes to the actual writing of the programs. Dewitz and Jones maintain that the actual writing is typically outsourced to freelance writers. Some of those writers may be very good; I don’t really know. However, freelance writers are not the same as nationally and internationally known experts. They have to please their publishers to stay employed, and they have no job security. They are going to do what their publishers want them to. I knew some of this, but it was helpful for this article’s authors to remind us of that. The basal business is market-driven, and advertising will be designed to attract the lucrative school market. That’s not evil; that’s reality. But we have to be mindful of it and not just take marketing claims at face value.

Finally, Dewitz and Jones outline eight “tactics” for “modifying and augmenting your basal reader” (pp. 393-400). Once again, there is really nothing new here. These eight tactics are nothing that many veteran teachers haven’t quietly been doing already when the basals inevitably failed to meet all of students’ needs. These veterans know that the “fidelity police” cannot be in your classroom all the time, and that ultimately when the classroom door shuts, and you are in there with those children, you are going to try to teach in the best way you know how. If that means making changes to the basal program, those teachers are going to do it, and always have done it. For our beginning teachers, though, these tactics may provide a scaffold for thinking about the kinds of decisions they might make, and for that reason, I will keep this article, and share it with others.