New report exposes a literacy crisis in Manitoba schools

Warns that too many children struggle because schools ignore decades of research on how reading really works

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Manitoba’s schools are failing too many children at their most basic task: teaching them how to read. That’s the key finding of the Manitoba Human Rights Commission’s Right to Read report, released last month.

Among other things, the report found that direct and systematic reading instruction, where students learn how to sound out letters and words (also known as phonics), is considerably more effective than “three-cueing” approaches that largely encourage students to guess words based on their context (also known as whole language).

Unfortunately, Manitoba curriculum guides are largely silent when it comes to best practices for reading instruction. While a few school divisions, most notably Evergreen School Division, have recently adopted evidence-based reading programs that emphasize direct and systematic reading instruction, they are doing so despite the lack of clear direction from the education minister.

The Right to Read report shouldn’t have come as a surprise. In fact, the Ontario Human Rights Commission released its own Right to Read report in 2022, making essentially the same recommendations. In other words, the problems with reading instruction are not limited to one province; they are common across the country.

These two reports came to the same conclusion because the science of reading is clear. Without systematic instruction in phonics, students are unlikely to become proficient readers, particularly if they have significant learning disabilities or come from disadvantaged homes.

The evidence for direct and systematic reading instruction has been hiding in plain sight for decades. Dr. Jeanne Chall, the former director of the Harvard Reading Laboratory, proved the superiority of phonics in the 1960s when she compared the effectiveness of distinct types of reading instruction. It wasn’t even close—phonics won easily.

Sadly, the Manitoba Teachers’ Society missed the boat in its response to the Right to Read report. Instead of embracing the report’s call for direct and systematic reading instruction, the union fell back on its standard talking points about the lack of sufficient education funding.

However, this argument overlooks the fact that Manitoba spends an above-average amount of money per student each year. In the 2022-23 school year, the latest year for which data are available, Manitoba spent almost $1,000 more per student than Ontario did and almost $3,500 more per student than Alberta.

Nevertheless, according to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), both Ontario and Alberta students scored considerably higher on reading assessments than Manitoba students. This is the opposite of what we’d expect if more money were the key to improving student achievement.

In addition, the union downplayed Right to Read’s important curriculum recommendations by suggesting that phonics was only one tool “among many” and that there was no single way to teach children how to read. Thus, it doesn’t look like the union is taking the Right to Read report seriously.

Manitoba’s NDP government has a crucial decision to make. It can follow the lead of union leaders and sweep the Right to Read report under the rug, or it can embrace the recommendations and make real changes to how students are taught to read.

For the sake of Manitoba’s students, the government needs to make the right choice. All students deserve to learn how to read as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Michael Zwaagstra is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.