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What the picker changes
  • Top topics digest — the cards score the selected period against the prior 4 weeks.
  • 12-week heatmap & outlet matrix — show the 12 weeks ending at the selected week (they slide back with the picker, they aren’t a fixed snapshot).
  • Per-topic volume / alias drift — same 12-week trailing window, anchored on the selected period.
  • Coverage gap quadrant — scores the selected period against the 12 weeks before it (not including it).
  • Anomaly cards — only show alerts the detector fired during the selected period. Quiet weeks legitimately show none.
What stays as-is
  • Outlet orientation strip / lean colours — context-only, drawn from the last 12 weeks of activity regardless.
  • Co-occurrence graph — recent-activity anchored, not picker-driven.
  • Source & topic profiles — all-time data for the topic; the picker doesn’t affect them.
Rolling 7 days is a sliding live window for “current vibes”; switch to Weekly to compare specific weeks side-by-side.
Weekly Rolling 7 days
live window
Press topic

Phonics Test Validity

2 articles · 2 aliases in press · peaked week of 17 May 2026 · first seen 14 May 2026

The article questions the validity of claiming 'transformational' reading improvement in New Zealand schools, arguing that phonics test results do not reliably indicate real reading ability and are based on limited, non-representative data.

Coverage by outlet lean Methodology →

Stacked weekly counts; colour by editorial lean. Stuff and The Spinoff lean centre-left, NZ Herald centre-right, others centre.

Alias drift

How press outlets have named this topic, week by week.

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Recent headlines

Most recent 2 articles linking to this topic.

Sample framings

Up to 12 framings spread across outlets. Each framing is the LLM's one-line characterisation of the article's editorial angle — not a quote.

rnz Centre

decoding skills don't equal reading comprehension

Why claims of transformational school reading improvement are premature
20 Oct
nzherald Centre-right

low pass rates in early literacy checks

After a full year of schooling, less than half of 5-year-olds pass new phonics test
17 May
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