Is OG Still the GOAT? Why Some Parents Are Looking Beyond Orton-Gillingham to Help Their Struggling Readers

For years, when I’ve frequented forums on how to help dyslexic kids, professionals have insisted that parents should hire an Orton-Gillingham tutor – that it was the gold standard.
This isn’t surprising. O-G certainly is the OG! It has a long history of championing dyslexic kids and their frustrated families. When Dr. Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham pioneered systematic phonics instruction in the 1930s, they gave hope to countless dyslexic children and their families.
O-G is the OG, But is it the GOAT?
So I was a bit shocked last summer when I read a blog post from Timothy Shanahan, a member of the National Reading Panel, in which he claimed that newer research has found that “Orton-Gillingham procedures are no more effective than any other explicit systematic phonics instruction – despite the religious fervor of some of its advocates.”
He cites a 2021 Sage Journal study that, he wrote,
“…found OG to be effective but with rather modest benefits – lower effectiveness than for the average phonics study that NRP considered.
“So much for being the gold standard!”
This isn’t to diminish the groundbreaking work of Orton and Gillingham. Miriam Fein, MS, CCC-SLP, says that “[O-G] has influenced the development of many programs and resources, not only for those identified as dyslexic but also for classroom instruction aimed at all beginning readers. Orton’s theories and the instructional methods that grew out of them continue to influence the field of reading instruction and intervention.” But she says this in an article comparing an approach called speech-to-print to O-G and favoring the speech-to-print approach: A Speech-to-Print, Linguistic Phonics Approach: What Is It and How Does It Compare to Orton-Gillingham?
What the heck is print-to-speech or speech-to-print?
To be honest, I wondered that even after I began using a speech-to-print method called Reading Simplified®. Orton-Gillingham is a print-to-speech program.
Print-to-Speech
- In print-to-speech programs, students learn to associate letter sounds with the names of the letters.
- Many Orton-Gillingham other print-to-speech programs follow a sequence that emphasizes mastering a skill – like identifying all short vowel sounds – before introducing more advanced patterns. While some practitioners take a more flexible approach, the emphasis on isolated mastery can increase cognitive load for some students.
- When those programs often teach reading skills before moving on, as described above, in a step-by-step sequence, the relationship between those skills – how they fit together during the activity of reading – can be unclear.
Speech-to-Print
- Speech-to-print programs start with the premise that children already know the words and how they sound. Learning to speak is wired into humans, while letters and reading are not. Here are a few differences:
- The names of the letters are not taught because it’s the sounds the letters spell that are used in decoding, not the names of the letters.
- A dyslexic child is already struggling with the cognitive load of having more difficulty learning to read. Adding the memorization of rules adds to the cognitive load. Nora Chahbazi, founder of another speech-to-print program called EBLI (Evidence-Based Literacy Instruction) writes of speech-to-print programs, “Instead of teaching rigid rules, students learn flexible spelling patterns that can be applied to many words.” 5
- These methods also use activities that work together to help students connect letter sounds with words, words with sentences, and sentences with longer text, such as stories and books. The purpose of the various skills becomes clear, because the student is using them together to start reading as soon as the student can read even a small number of words.
The Bottom Line
If your child is dyslexic, Orton-Gillingham is one good option. Many skilled and compassionate tutors use O-G-based approaches successfully every day. But many parents have found these streamlined speech-to-print programs a better choice for their children, and one that gets them reading much faster.
The bottom line is that you can explore other possibilities if your child is struggling with reading without feeling like Orton-Gillingham is the only choice. I hope this post will help you see that there are alternatives, especially for those who find the Orton-Gillingham interventions either too costly or too cognitively demanding for their children or who simply find it isn’t working for their child.
* Photo by James Wheeler (with modification on sign): https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-pathway-surrounded-by-fir-trees-1578750/