Threats to any early literacy programs have a way of arousing passions. After the Nova Scotia government of Darrell Dexter announced in early February 2011 that it was “phasing-out” Reading Recovery, the immediate response was predictable. Parents of early elementary age children were panicked, early years teachers were up in arms and , before long, a “Save Reading Recovery” Facebook group rallied in its defense. Then on March 9, 2011 dozens of parents and teachers descended upon the Nova Scotia House of Assembly to make their personal pleas with heart-rending stories and a few tears. http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/9020121.html
Passionate supporters of Reading Recovery were desperate to save the embattled literacy program for Grade 1 pupils. Many assumed that killing RR meant a further decimation of both literacy programming and special education services. Since the promised alternative was described in only the vaguest terms, they feared the worst. Few educators, let alone the general public, had any inkling that Reading Recovery was a problematic program, according to a mounting number of research studies. Fewer still knew that both its cost and effectiveness had been called into question.
Reading Recovery (RR) is a hardy plant in the garden of elementary education. Since being developed by Marie Clay in New Zealand in 1985, it has attracted a loyal following as a means of responding to the alarmingly high incidence of reading failure in early elementary grades. It actually emerged out of the “Reading Wars” as a kind of antidote to the rise of phonics (the “sound-out -letters” method ) While critics of Whole Language (WL) (“see and say” methods) campaigned for the restoration of systematic phonics, Reading Recovery programs popped up all over North America as a “band aid” for what ailed WL-based literacy programs.
The RR program was seized by Education Departments and boards as the latest panacea. By 2000, RR had spread to 10,000 American Grade 1 classrooms and had made inroads in Ontario as well as Nova Scotia. Over a 15 year period, Nova Scotia poured millions into RR, training some 600 teachers and running 33,000 kids through the 12-week, intensive, one-on-one program.
Thousands of parents in the 1990s were “hooked on phonics,” but school boards found their salvation in Reading Recovery. “These days,” Ramesh Ponnaru wrote in the OQE Newsletter (March 2000), ” it’s rare to find a school that does not claim to teach phonics, but whole language programs like Reading Recovery remain prevalent.” Simply stated, RR filled the need for a “balanced” program where phonics was “embedded in the context of a total reading/language program.”
Overzealous promoters of Reading Recovery contend that it works miracles with struggling readers. It focuses only on 6-year-old children who show signs of reading difficulty and score in the bottom 20 percentile in reading. Pupils selected for RR are provided with 30 to 40 minutes of daily one-on-one “pull-out” instruction for at least 12 consecutive weeks. The one-to-one delivery model and the use of regular “on-grid” teachers make it exceedingly expensive to run.
Reading Recovery does have a fiercely loyal following, but independent educational research has shown that it is not good value for money. Not only does it serve only a few students (and those are Grade 1 students) per year in a school, but for the same or less cost a school could offer a variety of more empirically validated, effective interventions for groups of children at several grade levels.
With Reading Recovery, what do school boards get for their money? The best validated research says not enough in terms of improved reading skills to warrant the expense, compared to other early reading programs and interventions. One leading authority, Dr. Melissa Farrall, reviewed the literature and conclude that it fell short on five different counts. She cited research studies identifying high program withdrawal rates, challenging the company’s success rate indices, and analyzing the negligible effects on demand for special education language services. “Independent research, ” she stated bluntly,” does not validate Reading Recovery’s claims of success.” http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/read.rr.research.farrall.htm
Struggling readers cry out for support and should be an educational priority for schools. So if Reading Recovery is not the answer, what is?
School districts in Britain, California, and even New Zealand have demonstrated the success of systematic phonics. One school, Elmhurst Primary in Newington, UK, a low SES area, has had amazing success with such an program for all Grade 1 students. They actually found they no longer had a need for Reading Recovery after implementing a structured and systematic reading program. http://www.teachers.tv/videos/applying-a-systematic-phonics-scheme.
The stakes are high for kids when it comes to learning to read. What explains the remarkable spread of Reading Recovery in school boards across North America? Why has Reading Recovery survived, in spite of the independent, validated research findings? If it is overly expensive and of dubious merit, why do parents cling so passionately to the program? To what extent does the fixation start in faculties of education where novice teachers continue to be socialized to believe in Whole Language and its methods?
Supporters of Reading Recovery welcome fair commentary. It is always good to have reviewers of any program and you represent yourself as an “independent thinker with sound ideas for better schools.” If this is the case, it is unfortunate that have been unable to accurately describe Reading Recovery.
Reading Recovery is a not for profit intervention, designed to be supplementary to good classroom instruction and is an essential part of a balance literacy program. Phonics is a part of what is taught but more importantly children are taught to read for meaning. Isn’t that what reading is about! Professionals who understand Reading Recovery do not claim it to be a miracle cure, it is effective teaching based on theory and research. Results, which are collected on every child and reported annually clearly demonstrate that most of the children who have access to Reading Recovery are able to get back to the average of the class within 12-20 weeks and continue to learn from classroom instruction.
What other intervention has the data to prove its success? Check rrcna.org to learn more about what the US government says about Reading Recovery.
Welcome to the Reading Recovery Wars. Just when you thought that its time had passed, the fierce defenders circle the wagons and defend RR by questioning the motives or legitimacy of others.
Reading Recovery has produced “success stories” that are trotted out whenever the program is questioned. Some defenders, like Dianne Stuart, direct you to “official” government sources.
One of our regular posters, TDSB, is right on top of the research literature. Much of my supporting evidence was actually unearthed by the fearless and perceptive TDSB, one of Educhatter’s most authoritative commentators. Like TDSB, I put more faith in sound research than in U.S. “government sources.” I trust them to grade beef, but not literacy programs.
Enough of the rhetoric! How about a little more evidence that Reading Recovery falls short?
Two leading experts, New Zealanders William Chapman and James Tunmer, who have conducted extensive research on Reading Recovery, have actually developed alternative interventions that yield better results at lesser cost.
Chapman and Tunmer are scathing in their assessment of Reading Recovery. After challenging its effectiveness in four critical areas, they concluded”until such changes are made to Reading Recovery (aimed at addressing its success rate and cost), we strongly recommend that schools do not adopt the program.”
That’s not much of an endorsement.
Edited for Clarity:
Might I suggest a correction? When citing the research, let’s make it William Tunmer and James Chapman. It was actually Tunmer (with Gough) who first posited the Simple View of Reading in 1986.
Synthetic phonics has it’s place, but so do diapers and rattles. The point of reading is to comprehend. The starting point is motivated by sociocultural norms (see Bandura), the end point is yet to be discovered. Along the way some people do need extra work on making the letter-sound linkage, and others need to hugely increased their vocabulary while still others are limited by their cognitive skills.
I prefer not to get sidetracked by Reading Recovery, because any system that tries to apply a single solution to every problem is going to have it’s successes and it’s failures. How about looking towards some other ideas like the Response to Intervention (www.rti4success.org) and look at some other tools for literacy analysis there?
The religious-like cult following of RR these days could be happening because we have a population of educations who as students themselves were fed a steady diet of Whole Language and RR almost in tandem, so what we have now are educators who really don’t know anything different who were largely still spoon-fed RR in their faculty.
I too value the expertise of TDSB rather than Diane who’s singing the same tune using the same eduspeak that rings hollow.
You make a convincing case, Educhatter.
After having done a little background research, I would like to add to the review of the National Reading Recovery Center and its program. They do claim to be a non-profit organization, but.. Non-profit has different meanings among the general population, and most take it as a sign that an organization is not making a profit on their products. A legal definition, “An incorporated organization which exists for educational or charitable reasons, and from which its shareholders or trustees do not benefit financially. Any money earned must be retained by the organization, and used for its own expenses, operations, and programs. Many non-profit organizations also seek tax exempt status, and may also be exempt from local taxes including sales taxes or property taxes. Well-known non-profit organizations include Habitat for Humanity, the Red Cross, and United Way. also called not-for-profit organization.”
Read more: http://www.investorwords.com/3331/non_profit_organization.html#ixzz1GD175Xcf
As for “The Reading Recovery program, a not-for-profit intervention with collaboration among schools, districts and universities is based out of the Ohio State University. The program has a registered trademark allowing the name and logo for Reading Recovery to be used free of charge by those who follow the mandates set up in the Standards and Guidelines of Reading Recovery in the United States published by the Reading Recovery Council of North America in 1998.
Ohio State University is also the home of the International Data Evaluation Center (IDEC), which oversees the ongoing research and data collection of Reading Recovery programs around the world, as well as supports 22 university-based teacher-training centers for Reading Recovery. Educators trained at these centers facilitate classes that are found throughout the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.”
Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/education/special/articles/103035.aspx#ixzz1GD055IeH
The only thing that is offered for free, is the use of their logo, and I bet they make a sweet profit to pay for the training, and retraining sessions that occurs every few years. Oh I forgot, the resources, especially the assessments and membership fees.
Why has RR spread rapidly? Could the reason be, that it is the way the structure of the organization, Reading Recovery is set up? I would say a resounding yes, since the point of entry is at the faculties of education. What better way to spread a program, but to sell it first to the education faculties, and than give them the leadership in the training sessions.
“First introduced in the provinces of Ontario and Nova Scotia in 1987, Reading Recovery quickly expanded across Canada and today is implemented in boards/districts in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, and the Yukon Territory.
In 1992, Dame Marie Clay, originator of Reading Recovery, granted the Canadian Institute of Reading Recovery (CIRR) the right to register the royalty-free trademark for the term Reading Recovery in Canada. The CIRR was formally opened in 1993 at the University of Toronto through a partnership with Scarborough Board of Education and the university faculty. Prior to this time, Canadian teacher leaders trained at the National Reading Recovery Centre in New Zealand or at The Ohio State University in the United States.
In 1995, the Western Canadian Institute of Reading Recovery was established in Manitoba, followed in 2003 by the Eastern Canadian Institute of Reading Recovery in Nova Scotia, and in 2006 by The Central Canadian Institute of Reading Recovery in Ontario.
In 2009, the Canadian network was reorganized, with four divisions replacing the three former institutes. These divisions work in collaboration with the CIRR under the Standards and Guidelines set by the CIRR Board of Directors. ”
http://www.readingrecovery.org/reading_recovery/canada/history.asp
What is the Canadian Institute of Reading Recovery (CIRR)? I have never come across them, in all the years I have undertaken reading research, to help my youngest. Apparently there is no web site, and really any research that I have read on Reading Recovery contains criticism of the program, and of course one just has to go on the LD sites, to here parents describe RR as another layer to delay for a few more years the remediation of children whose main problem is low phonemic awareness. On the RR site, they have smoothing words for children who popped up in the later years, having reading problems, but than it is only smoothing words of being referred to special education services for further evaluation.
“Most children are able to achieve accelerated progress and develop a self-extending system in reading and writing. In 2008-2009, 64.8% of the Reading Recovery students were successfully discontinued (n=7,474).
Children referred are identified early and receive specialist help or long-term support. Of the students leaving Reading Recovery in 2008-2009, 27.3% had not yet developed an effective processing system after being in the program and were referred (n=3,150). These students represent only 4.6% of all Grade 1 students in Reading Recovery schools.
A small proportion of students were unable to complete their programs (7.9%), either because they left the school before completing the program (i.e., moved) (n=479) or were progressing but not able to be continued for other reasons (n=426).”
The above quote is from a report, “THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE OF READING RECOVERY®
NATIONAL IMPLEMENTATION DATA: 2008-2009
Click to access 2008-2009_CIRR_Executive_Summary.pdf
Whatever an effective processing system is in edubabble, but I have run into the term processing in the early days trying to get help for my youngest. Imagine if they replace RR with a systematic phonics system for all children, and not just the few that are being pulled out. Which I will add, that even my child would not be identified as needing RR, because of the criteria that a child must meet, for consideration to be in RR. A child like mine and a good deal more children, would be overlook, because they are not failing in at least 5 to 6 areas.
“The measurement of early literacy behaviors is complex and requires a commitment to careful and systematic observation. An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement (Clay, 2002, 2006) provides a systematic way of capturing early reading and writing behaviors and is the primary assessment tool used in Reading Recovery. All of the tasks were developed in research studies to assess emergent literacy in young children.
The Observation Survey is also widely used by classroom teachers and researchers. The Observation Survey is a teacher-administered standardized assessment that adheres to characteristics of sound measurement instruments: standard tasks, standard administration, real-world tasks to establish validity, and ways of knowing about reliability of observations.”
http://www.readingrecovery.org/reading_recovery/accountability/observation/index.asp
As a parent, the weakness of RR, is the heavy use of subjective data in determining who will have RR, and it also determines when the child is removed from RR, or stay for the full 20 weeks. It is really based on grades of the child, and many children in grade 1, especially the ones with core deficits such as phonemic awareness, have excellent compensatory skills, such as memorizing words because they cannot sound out words, are kids who generally sit just above the lowest levels, that automatically disqualifies them for the RR. My youngest would not have qualified for RR, just based on her work and grades, and yet she was in desperate need for reading help.
And yes, RR does help in the short term, but it is in the long term that the data reflects a different story, of the reading, writing and numeracy levels of high school students. From what I have read, there is no tracking of students who received RR and to follow-up the final outcomes in grades. Sure my youngest would have benefited from RR, but it would only be short-term, because the core deficits in reading are not addressed adequately.
“Reading Recovery lessons include all five essential components of reading instruction identified by the National Reading Panel (2000). The panel cautioned against making phonics instruction the dominant component in a reading program, either in the amount of time devoted to it or in the significance attached. They acknowledged that learning to read and write is a complex process.
Within a comprehensive approach, Reading Recovery teachers understand the importance of phonemic awareness and phonics for beginning readers and writers. During lessons, teachers attend to letters, sounds, and words and incorporate learning about letter-sound relationships during the reading and writing of extended text and as explicit, direct instruction.”
http://www.readingrecovery.org/reading_recovery/phonics/index.asp
The sole purpose of RR is to bring students up to average readers and achievement levels for grade 1. What RR defines as average is vague to say the very least, but I think that the program is not designed to produce good readers. It focuses on introducing a basic level of reading, without regard for how well children can read.
And how many of those non-profits pay their directors/executives six and seven figure salaries?
Reading Recovery is unique in every way even when it comes to Directors. There are no executives just a very committed group of individuals who volunteer their time and expertise in trying to make life better for kids and families. No doubt a hard concept for some people to comprehend. Money isn’t everything
More education for profit.
Perhaps RR has a louder voice than those who advocate for educational sanity.
What a great line Andrew! Although it’s hard to square any sanity in education some days.
What is coming down the pipeline for the older students regarding reading issues, that is 100 % approved by the educrats? A program that is an upscale version of RR. Although not connected to RR, the structure is much the same, providing the teachers with the training, and resources, and where it makes the most profit.
“READ 180 is an intensive reading intervention program that helps educators confront the problem of adolescent illiteracy and special needs reading on multiple fronts, using technology, print, and professional development. READ 180 is proven to meet the needs of struggling readers whose reading achievement is below proficient level. The program directly addresses individual needs through differentiated instruction, adaptive and instructional software, high-interest literature, and direct instruction in reading, writing, and vocabulary skills.”
http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/read180/overview/
Here is a sample of what a teacher might send home, to inform parents.
http://www.ahs.dcps.org/eaglenet/curriculum/read180/first_day.htm
As for independent research studies for the effectiveness of Read 180, I could find only a few. The main bulk is singing the praises of the Read 180 reading intervention program.
Here is from one that is balance, and from a respect source known to have balance views.
“Results indicated that the Read 180 treatment group outperformed the control group, but only for students who were at moderate risk. For those who were at severe
risk (i.e., Level 1 students), there were no differences in the gain scores between students in the treatment conditions (including Read 180 EE) and students in the
control group.”
Click to access READ180.pdf
I let the reading experts to expand on it, but how many of the moderately at risk students actually meet the criteria to be in a class that has Read 180? I have my doubts, that it is another place to dumb the SE children, other than SE classes judging on the criteria. A child like mine, would be missed once more, because of the criteria, even though she would benefit from the program, on fluency and vocabulary.
As combing through the research that hails from the public education arms, it was no surprised to see the singing the praises of RR , and other such reading interventions that depends on training, supplying the teachers with resources, and retraining from time to time, However, every chance they could get, criticism is harsh for any reading program that has systematic phonetics as its base using direct instruction. And this is coming from the teachers – the fans of RR and other reading programs that centers around teachers needs.
“In addition to the questions this program raises for me in terms of student growth, I also worry about how teachers are being affected. My greatest concern is that schools will not be able to retain teachers who are required to ignore the humanity of their students and themselves in favor of a script and a dog clicker. Above all else, teaching requires the cultivation of a human relationship. To reduce the art of teaching and learning to discrete word lists must be demoralizing for both students and teachers. ”
http://www.thenotebook.org/blog/102275/corrective-reading-raising-questions
The above is one of the many comments on the Corrective Reading program, which is a spin-off from the Direct Instruction. Direct Instruction, has a comprehensive and has been well researched as to its effectiveness and producing proficient readers. I sure wish that my child had received reading instruction along the lines Direct Instruction, it sure would have saved the demoralization sins of balanced literacy or whatever name they now call whole language instruction. At least with Direct Instruction, there would have been a pretty good chance, of her never needing special education services for reading and writing issues.
In the region of the SSRSB reading recovery has been a recent fixation for parents and educators alike. My SSRSB rep assured me the program has met with considerable sucess and should be retained.
However, at the same time as parents were informed of cuts to this program, the SSRSB executed several cuts to special needs which will directly effect the classroom. By the way, with no promting from the government.
Future cuts will be no doubt be implimented which will hurt children in the classroom by the SSRSB once the enrolment numbers are in for next year, says a SSRSB spokesperson.
Hypocracy at its finest!
Champions of education one minute, and executioners the next.
I am reminded of a recent statment of a SSRSB rep at a Petite Riviere school meeting. ” Reviews are Good!”
Did the main character from Wall Street not say “Greed is good!”
Have school boards become the public ‘Geco’?
So when do we start boycotting public schools?
You realize that governments (and that includes school boards) cannot function without the people.
A simple example: What would happen if no one, and I mean no one, showed up for Primary registration? or what if no one showed up for class in September?
I’d wager it wouldn’t take long for the educrats to pay attention. Their livelihoods depend on it.
I know I’m off-topic but the insanity has to stop.
Boycott what a novel idea, to counteract the spin on how happy parents are with the public education system. But parents are far too busy to be boycotting, when they have bigger concerns over their children’s education, and the only choice that most parents have is the public education system. We are too busy working the system to benefit our children, and so very little time is devoted to counteracting the spin from the educrats.
It doesn’t take very long with the people not cooperating.
It took the Egyptians 18 days to topple an entire dictatorial government that had been in power 30 years.
Interesting article.
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/Reading_Wars.html
I often have sat back and asked the same question, what would happen if no one showed up at the school door? What happens if someone graces my doorstep, education may be a topic for discussion. By the end of the visit, there goes another firm believer that no longer believes the spin from the educrats, especially in reading and numeracy. Parents really need to become as fixated over reading and numeracy as the educrats are with RR and the new way of doing math. Perhaps than, the educrats would offer real education services built on a firm foundation of the basics.
Funny thing, just days of the first country uprising to get rid of their leader, I mentioned it to one of our favourite educrats, that it could be compared to what is happening in North America and Europe concerning government services such as health and education. Apparently the Middle-East leaders believe in their own spin, how happy their citizens were, just like the educrats or the health officials believe in their own spin how happy we are with services being receive. I have not met a parent in the middle to low income level that has expressed dissatisfaction at some level over the public education system. And yet, parents who are in the higher income brackets, far removed from the ups and downs of a free market, cannot express enough satisfaction of the public education system. As one discovers talking to this set of parents, they send their children to private tutors as soon as there is trouble in learning. But if one points out to them how can someone sing the praises of an education system, and at the same time make use of private tutoring services for their children? There response is priceless. How can one expect to attend to all the needs of children, when the system is not funded properly. The first time I heard this, was a conversation with a highly paid bureaucrat back in 2003, and it has not change much among the high-income groups. The first conversation ended as all the other previous conversations that I have had, that I should be happy with whatever services that my child is receiving, because the education system is trying its best dealing with scarce resources and the needs are so great. All I even wanted was my child to read well, and even here that is asking for the moon.
Reading Recovery is just another trendy “system” successfully promoted by an alleged non-profit. The term “non-profit” is pretty darned flexible in the the US.
Benny Hinn Ministries is a “non-profit”.
21% of RR’s expenses in 2009 were “managerial”.
Click to access Annual_Report-08-09.pdf
I think I can only try an give an answer to the third question, “Why are parents clinging so passionately to the program?” The parents, in this area at least, are in a panic because they think they are seeing something that has been good for their struggling child being ripped out from underneath them. I hear them saying they are very afraid that Reading Recovery will not be replaced with anything good enough because first of all, nothing has been presented and secondly, that is the history of the system here. The students have been lost in the shuffle for years and the parents have been chasing down supports and services like blood hounds chasing wild game, noses to the ground, never stoping until they find something and then barking like mad when they feel they have found something. I don’t think they care at all about Reading Recovery. The intensity is coming from the desire to protect their children.
So, if the DOE can remain calm, control the message, give status updates to the parents on the development of the new program that is being developed in house, I think his would do wonders for the situation.
The politics being played right now is beyond annoying.No wonder we have so many problems to solve. It is very difficult to even define the problem because one party says one thing and the other puts out the opposite stance just to score points.
The notion that parents are “clinging” to this program has to go up as another baseless “myth”.
Why? Because it’s being force fed them and little choice of programs that work are being presented to parents.
The key here is to start educating parents BEFORE they get sucked into believing the RR cult that comes complete with handy dandy edu-speak and faux-facts coming out their wazoo.
If there are educators who don’t buy the program either, contrary to their top-down school authorities parents would be grateful to them to come out of the RR closet and speak up.
They cling to the program because there is no alternative AND educrats still cling to WL cum Balanced Literacy philosophy.
Better that schools do “preventative medicine” of systematic explicit phonics instruction when children are beginning reading, than to try an expensive intervention, that has questionable results, when it is much more difficult to fix.
Resource Links:
When Older Children Can’t Read:
http://www.ldonline.org/article/When_Older_Students_Can%27t_Read
Peggy is correct, judging from the newer news clips. It could have been done better, than the original statement it will be replace by a new program. Actually what is coming out now, should have come out in the first announcement.
“Education Minister Ramona Jennex, a former elementary school teacher, said school boards had identified Reading Recovery as a fairly expensive program. Deputy minister Rosalind Penfound, who appeared at the committee meeting, said the program carries an annual licence fee of about $35,000. The province spends about $250,000 a year training teachers to use the system.
Penfound said Grade 3 test results show the children who went through the program aren’t doing as well as one might think. She also said a lot of students who didn’t go through the program should be doing better.
Jennex said Reading Recovery, in use in the province for about 15 years, is a good program, but she said its replacement will see support for more children from Primary to Grade 3.”
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1232175.html
Further down, “”Maybe a Grade 2 student might be showing signs of struggling, or some concept that they’re having trouble with in literacy. We’ll be able to intervene then, so we’re looking at a broader-based program.”
Jennex said there will also be flexibility in the new program. She said some students may still get the one-on-one instruction offered through Reading Recovery, but there may also be small groups, and students may get assistance for more than the 20 weeks available through Reading Recovery.
She said Reading Recovery will stay in place until the end of the school year, and the new program, developed with school boards, will begin in September. Details will be available in the spring.”
What should have been stated, is our own in-house reading program developed between the ministry and the school boards. Even here parents would still be upset, and rightly so, since I myself do not know of any successful reading intervention programs developed by education staff that is based on the whole language approach.
“The new program will also make closer links between board literacy specialists and classroom teachers, meaning fewer students will be taken out of the classroom. Like Reading Recovery, there will some one-on-one support, but the focus will be on small groups within the classroom
“We are building on the collective experience and expertise of our highly trained literacy specialists at the department and in school boards to establish an evidence-based, cost-effective early identification and intervention practice,” said Ms Jennex. “It will give young learners the support they need to boost their development and success, as readers and writers.
“Reading Recovery has its merits, but it does not allow us to serve all the children who need support. I recognize that some parents are concerned about changes in reading supports. I want to assure them we are making changes that will result in more support to more students.”
http://www.scotiaweb.ca/201103104245/nova-scotia/department-of-education/new-reading-intervention-program-will-help-more-young-students.html
Inclusive, small groups is language that is not good to hear, in the absence of details of the program. My youngest had to deal with the shame factors related to reading and writing in the early grades. Group activities just made the situation worse, because tales on her reading and writing ability spread far outside the school walls, including other children. Progressive methods and its philosophy, frowns on ability grouping. I sure hope that this is what the ministry of education is aiming for, ability grouping within an inclusive classroom. Somehow I have my doubts.
““We have over 300 teachers who have been trained in reading recovery techniques and we think those skills are transferable,” she said.
The Reading Recovery program offers short-term one-to-one tutoring for low-achieving first graders. They get a 30-minute lesson each school day for 12 to 20 weeks with a specially trained teacher until they can demonstrate an ability to work independently in the classroom.
Education Minister Ramona Jennex said the new program will be more inclusive and cover students from Grades Primary to Three.”
http://ipolitics.ca/2011/03/09/n-s-government-pressured-to-keep-reading-program-slated-for-budget-axe-2/
Or will it be, a copy of the Reading Recovery program, with changes so it would not infringe copyrights? I do think this will be the likely outcome, and if so parents should start demanding systematic phonic reading program, that already has built-in interventions, for children who may be struggling in reading. But that would mean some retraining of teachers, and initial start-up costs would probably be more than the 5 million dollars that is being budgeted by the ministry. I can only conclude it will be a pale version of the Reading Recovery program, using the 300 teachers that are already trained on Reading Recovery and the techniques.
Peggy is right, the ministry shoudl start being transparent and clear on its communication. Their plans should be an open book, for the public to understand, and judge for themselves. Reading Recovery, just like any other intervention program, parents get attached to them because it offers the extra help for children who are struggling, and it does not matter if it is an effective intervention program. What matters to parents, that RR existed in their local school, unlike so many other programs where access is limited by narrowly define criteria.
Nancy, I’ve come to realize what others may have already figured out . An announcement is just an announcement. If there is no action on it afterward, it was a big heap of nothing. I am trying, in my own way, to put pressure on the Department of Education to act on the announcement. It is going to take a lot of work, co-operation and goodwill among the school boards, and the teaching staff to get this in-house program ready to roll next September. We , who have had any involvement with schools, know that things do not happen fast. School is not known to be an agile place for changes in plans. The buy-in problem exists. PEBS for example (Positive Effective Behavioral Supports) is a good example. money was spent on that too, then teachers were trained, yadda, yadda. Not all schools followed it and it has been forgotten about.
I honestly think we can get away from buying the product for reading, the product for behavior, the numerous products for math, etc, etc, etc.
It would be great if they would hold a press conference or something with the Programming people from the boards and give us an update on how the new reading program is cpming together.that way, we know they are at least working on it.
Personally, I would not trust the word of the educrats in programming either. It is where the greatest use of edubabble comes into play, making something sound very good for the students, but in reality it is not very good for any student. Effective communication is not the norm for educrats, because they are not willing to debate their decisions in an open process, where honest dialogue occurs and exchange of information. Informed citizens are much more apt to disagreed with decisions of educrats, than citizens who do not have all the information.
Just like the other day in my area, the school board voted on closures of school, by allowing the trustees to vote with secret ballot. The citizens that were in the room, or for that matter the parents that have children going to the schools slated for closure, does not have the information on who voted for closure and not closure. A prefect cover for trustees to denied that they voted for closure.
“Peach defended the secret ballot, saying the members are volunteers who also lead professional lives.
“All of those people, myself included, around the table have businesses to run, things to do, professions to work in and we should not be judged back at our work by the way we voted at a table,” Peach said.
Parent Sarah Colborne Penney speaking in St. John’s on March 9. (CBC)Some parents, such as Sarah Colborne Penney, weren’t satisfied with Peach’s response.
“They are elected and they should be accountable to the voters. So, I think they should stand up and be counted,” she said.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2011/03/10/nl-school-vote-310.html
Now even accountability for trustees is up for grabs, making them less accountable than in the past.
“Better that schools do “preventative medicine” of systematic explicit phonics instruction when children are beginning reading, than to try an expensive intervention, that has questionable results, when it is much more difficult to fix.”
Very true, but than the educrats have their reasons for not practicing preventative medicine in the education system.
“Educrats have their reasons” souds like a book title that could be subtitled – “The X-files of Education”
Seriously though, readers to this blog should get a hold of two articles by Dr. Louisa Moats: [http://louisamoats.com/Policy_papers.php]
“Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of “Balanced”
Reading Instruction”
[ http://www.ldonline.org/article/6394 ]
and
“Whole-Language High Jinks: How to Tell When
“Scientifically-Based Reading Instruction” Isn’t”
[ http://www.margaretkay.com/PDF%20files/Dyslexia%202010/Whole%20Language%20High%20Jinks%20by%20Louisa%20Moats.pdf ]
Ty, Peggy for hitting the nail right on the head in your first post here on this blog. We as parents of children who have gotten huge success with this program, are scared to lose it but it is because we haven’t heard the detailed description of this new one. We just don’t want our kids to be “lost in the shuffle” as Peggy said! Our kids get lost in the shuffle in the education system anyways, we are just trying to prevent it from happening again. We have to fight so hard to get the services our kids need, and to hear that we are going to lose a good program that helped our kids makes us worry.
Show us detailed descriptions of the program, what it entails and how it will be presented and run! Don’t get fed up with us, we just care about our kids and want to protect them…people don’t understand unless they walk a mile in our (parents of kids with Special Needs/LD’s/mental illnesses) shoes.
Catherine L.
I am struck by the pure ignorance of many of the comments presented here. The inaccuracies are astounding and reckless. I would question how many of you have ever even observed a full Reading Recovery lesson and teacher training session. While I even hesitate to grace many of the comments made with a reply, the error of your statements compels me.
– “12-week, intensive, one-on-one program” – INCORRECT – all children in Reading Recovery are entitled to receive 20 weeks of individualized instruction if needed. Because of the accelerative nature of the intervention, many only require 12-16. If a child has not reached the average band of his grade one class by the end of 20 weeks of individualized instruction that is a good indication that a deeper learning issue is at play and children are recommended for further specialist help and/or assessment. As a pre-referral intervention, Reading Recovery provides an opportunity for children with profound learning difficulties to be identified early.
– “whole language program” – INCORRECT – While reading for meaning is at the forefront of instruction in Reading Recovery the intervention was adapted many years ago in response to research that indicated that including a phonics component in the daily lesson would reap greater benefits for children. Lessons provide specific and explicit attention to letters, sounds, and words, both while reading and writing extended text. Reading Recovery teachers recognize that decoding must be purposeful. They help children learn to use connections between letters and sounds and to use their knowledge of how words work in order to solve problems with difficult words while maintaining comprehension.
– “it focuses only on 6-year-old children” – INCORRECT – Reading Recovery is designed for children who are the lowest achieving readers and writers in the grade one class. Age is NOT a factor. An all-inclusive definition is used!
– “30-40 minutes of daily one-on-one pull-out instruction” – INCORRECT – Lessons in Reading Recovery are thirty minutes long, exactly! Because of the intensive nature of the lessons, research indicated that extending lessons beyond 30 minutes is counterproductive to learning. Also, it is important for children to return to classroom instruction where their skills can be practiced in the group setting. While Reading Recovery has historically followed a pull-out model, there is no ‘rule’ to that effect and if individuals felt that doing the individual lessons in the classroom would be better for particular children then, by all means, that would be recommended.
– “serves only a few children” – A balanced literacy program should include three tiers, good classroom teaching, small group instruction and 1:1 tutoring. For those children having difficulty getting underway with literacy 1:1 intensive teaching is not negotiable. When the first wave of instruction, classroom instruction, is effective there should be no need to serve but a ‘few children’. Approximately 20 per cent students in any grade one classroom is typical…sometimes less and sometimes more.
– “the only thing that is offered for free is the use of their logo” – INCORRECT – Perhaps a closer look at Canadian information would be helpful before making such suggestions. Dame Marie Clay, originator of Reading Recovery® granted the CIRR royalty-free the right to use the trademarked term in Canada. This permission requires adherence to a variety of Reading Recovery principles that are essential for successful implementation and the highest quality service to children. The primary purpose of the trademark is to ensure that the integrity of the intervention is respected at all times!!
-“heavy use of subjective data in determining who will have RR” – INCORRECT – Again, an all inclusive definition is used. Classroom teachers identify those children who are having the most difficulty taking on literacy after their first year in school. Reading Recovery teachers then assess four of the lowest children per available space on their caseload using a battery of standardized observation tasks. The very lowest children are then selected for entry. As children discontinue their series of lessons, the process occurs again in order to fill vacancies.
-“what RR defines as average is vague to say the least” ¬– INCORRECT – Given that Reading Recovery is meant to complement classroom instruction rather than replace it, close collaboration between the classroom teacher and Reading Recovery teacher is essential. Careful data collected over the course of a child’s series of lessons, classroom observations, and classroom teacher comments determine whether it can be confidently stated that the child is operating at the average of his/her peers. Ongoing monitoring of progress for two years following the intervention is key.
-“how may of those non-profits pay their directors/executives six and seven figure salaries” – In the case of the Canadian Institute of Reading Recovery, the answer to that question is NONE. The CIRR is governed by VOLUNTEER board of directors from across that country who quite simply care about children’s literacy! Perhaps consider the fact that the CIRR is not-for-profit as a reason why you haven’t found a website for it…such things cost money and the main priority for the CIRR is investing in children’s literacy.
– ‘not good value for money’ – Reading Recovery provides a long term return on investment. Children who are discontinued from Reading Recovery are placed back into the average band of their peers and are able to continue to progress at an expected rate.
This means students are able to benefit from regular classroom instruction and avoid unnecessary and costly placement in special education and resource programs. Reading Recovery then allows the Special Education/Resource teachers to focus on those students who require longer-term support.
Parents, teachers, and administrators who are passionate about Reading Recovery in a ‘cult-like’ fashion as one commenter suggested are such because they have witnessed first-hand the ability of Reading Recovery to bring children to the average of their peers and transform them into capable, confident learners. They do not need to read research and commentaries such as yours. Any successful program like Reading Recovery will have its detractors. We are not phased by it at all because we know the difference based on actual experience, not speculation and misinformation.
There are numerous flaws in Reading Recovery-you need to be less zealous and see that many kids are failed by it.
It is not the holy grail as you describe it.
Then the teacher training isn’t very good since that is NOT what happens in the schools.
I know that teaching explicit systematic synthetic phonics works best-we need to teach it intensely and immediately age 5-6-the insanity is created by the legislation from Ministries of Education that REFUSE to accept the research on phonemic awareness-phonics(synthetic),fluency training of taught orthographic concepts-vocabulary-greatly accelerated by the ability to read and comprehension-ditto.
The refusal to administer the empirical evidence as described in the synthesis of the National Institue of Child Health and Development-Bonnie Grossen of U of Oregon did a good job synthesizing the research results-creates a 40% pot for reading intervention-it should be 10%.Also,the kids should be given lots of time with trained teachers-in this stuff-K-2 TO BECOME READERS-IT IS THE MAJOR GOAL OF EDUCATION.
So, lighten up on the curriculum.
Not only is RR sinfully expensive-it is not honouring the empirical research and it encourages guessing!Bonnie Grossen and someone else did a research paper on the comparison of the 2 methodologies.
RR pretends it honours this reserach-it does not it encourages guessing.Because it does-what seemed to be great results slips off the kids andmany return to problems very quickly.
Jo-Anne the Grossen Study is here: http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED452494.pdf
“Reading Recovery: An Evaluation of Benefits and Costs”
If I may quote from Dr. Moat’s “Whole Language High Jinks” cited in my earlier comment:
“Reading Recovery is a high-profile individual tutorial approach that has been widely used in the United
States, particularly for first graders. Analyses of Reading Recovery by independent researchers have
shown that between 25 and 40 percent of students have been dropped from the program’s own data
analyses because they do not do well enough in the program to be maintained in it.
“For readers below the 25th percentile, Reading Recovery is not effective unless it is modified with systematic, sequential instruction in decoding and phonemic awareness. Without these changes, the gains have been almost zero for the poorest readers instructed with Reading Recovery. The better students who do complete the Reading Recovery sequence in first grade lose many of their gains without subsequent systematic
phonics instruction, and may suffer lasting problems with self-confidence in reading.
“Even if the model were to be repaired with a systematic phonics component and emphasis on a codebased word-reading strategy, Reading Recovery is not cost effective. Teacher training is very expensive,
and caseloads for Reading Recovery teachers are supposed to be limited to five children per day.
Paraprofessionals and tutors trained in SBRR (scientifically based reading reasearch) can get results that are just as good using less expensive
programs, and small groups are just as effective as one-on-one tutorials for most at-risk students.”
Also read this open letter from 30 reknowned experts in SSRR who say Reading Recovery is not worth it:
http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/read.rr.ltr.experts.htm
Many children will learn to read and write despite the instructional approach used. For those who have the most difficulty, however, providing purely phonics instruction will most certainly make it more difficult to learn. We don’t put a puzzle together without having seen the completed picture first. When we bring children to the lowest level of language (sounds and letters) and ask them to put them together to create meaning we are making the task harder than it needs to be. Jo-Anne has clearly never seen a Reading Recovery lesson because if she had she would know that phonics instruction is embedded into the daily lessons. Inaccuracy, yet again!!!
embedded phonics-not correct way to teach the sounds-have to be systematic-and RR does not understand the phonemic piece-different than phonics.
Frankly Heather,I am truly saddened by the Reading War and the nonsense-no one in their right mind feels phonics alone is enough-it is the decoding piece.Sadly,to win the waron Reading everyone goes there.
There is more than Marie Clay and her disciples-Read Children of the Code .org-there are several researchers there who talk about it.
And it`s discussions like this that are helpful.
I have taught as many kids as you have I`m sure and many of them had been through RR.
Heather wrote “They do not need to read research and commentaries such as yours.”
That’s where you’re so wrong Heather. Parents especially need to know that RR isn’t the only game in town. They need to be aware of other more proven successful programs out there that do a much better job than RR.
Too many parents trust blindly without ever knowing that other reading programs and methods are out there for them to demand of their educators and education systems.
Peggy and Nancy have nailed it pretty much, as has TDSB who at the very least gives us all sides of a much respected perspective.
One very good reason the system has latched onto RR as it has, is because the teachers now in the system were the ones fully-exposed to the steady diet of whole language philosophies and we’re not simply seeing those, once students, at the teaching helm.
I’m thrilled that parents are becoming educated to the fact that they have choices to just about everything public education offers.
“For readers below the 25th percentile, Reading Recovery is not effective unless it is modified with systematic, sequential instruction in decoding and phonemic awareness. Without these changes, the gains have been almost zero for the poorest readers instructed with Reading Recovery. The better students who do complete the Reading Recovery sequence in first grade lose many of their gains without subsequent systematic
phonics instruction, and may suffer lasting problems with self-confidence in reading.
_______________________________________________
Wll isn’t that interesting.
Our boards have the same approach when testing time comes around. The poorer students very quickly end up with an IPP and therefore are not tested.
A great way to keep those test scores up, eh?
Extensive research on brain development has concluded that all brains are different and that there are multiple ways of learning.
It would logically follow that such a rigid system as RR would be effective for only a few students out of the many needing additional help.
That`s where multisensory comes in-if you serve all the modalities during research based instruction-not RR- you will succeed with many more children.
What is Reading Recovery like in a small school (like the many small schools we have in Nova Scotia)?
The rr program is one of the many responsibilities of the Special Ed teacher. She can do 1 (one) rr per term. She consults with the Grade 1 teacher. There are 6 students who need rr! Oh dear, what can we do? They do NOT choose the two who will benefit the most. The rr program has strict rules that are not negotiable. You must choose them by their birth dates. The two oldest students in Grade 1, whether there is any hope that they will benefit or not, are the ones who will receive the instruction.
The program follows a strict guideline that does not allow any changes to meet the specific needs of the student. When the DOE purchased the program they had to agree to follow those guidelines. Even when a teacher KNOWS that a student needs one more repetition (or one less), they have to do exactly step by step what the program states.
When the student completes the program and returns to his/her classroom, he is only seen by the Special Ed. teacher once or twice a year – great follow up for two years, eh!
You truly do not know anything about Reading Recovery!! Reading Recovery takes the lowest achieving grade one children based on scores from the Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement in consultation with the teacher. In other words it is based on EVIDENCE not a teacher’s deciding who should and should not have the opportunity of learning to read and write! IF implemented as designed all the children who need it should have the opportunity usually about 20% of the grade one population. As far as it being strict and step by step that is just foolishness as a RR teacher works from the child’s strengths based on what the child does each day. IT is NOT a prescriptive program. Not sure what packaged program you are talking about but it is not Reading Recovery
You truly do not know anything about small schools in Nova Scotia. What I said is exactly how the Reading Recovery program works in small schools. I did not say that a teacher makes the decision. I said decision is based on birth date. And yes it is a step by step program that must be followed explicitly down to the exact 30 minutes per day.
Heather, I am a veteran parent that has gone through the nightmare system that is otherwise known as a public education system. In the process of obtaining help for my child, I gained a lot of knowledge over the years, and I learned fairly early the fault lines of the education system, that traps parents and their children in a nightmare that never seems to end. Take RR for example, in your words – ” in Reading Recovery the intervention was adapted many years ago in response to research that indicated that including a phonics component in the daily lesson would reap greater benefits for children. Lessons provide specific and explicit attention to letters, sounds, and words, both while reading and writing extended text. Reading Recovery teachers recognize that decoding must be purposeful. They help children learn to use connections between letters and sounds and to use their knowledge of how words work in order to solve problems with difficult words while maintaining comprehension.”
It is one thing to teach the sounds of the alphabet, but what should be taught first are the 44 phonemic sounds in the English language. As Joanne has state, “embedded phonics-not correct way to teach the sounds-have to be systematic-and RR does not understand the phonemic piece-different than phonics.” Joanne and Doretta are more of the experts in reading, but my expertise came from the hours spent studying and learning how to help my child. Along the way, and discovered fairly early on is programs like RR is pseudo-reading programs to imitate what reading instruction should be. “The whole-language approach to reading instruction continues to be widely used in the primary grades in U.S. schools, despite having been disproven time and again by careful research and evaluation. Whole language still pervades textbooks for teachers, instructional materials for classroom use, some states’ language-arts standards and other policy documents, teacher licensing requirements and preparation programs, and the professional context in which teachers work. Yet reading science is clear: young children need instruction in systematic, synthetic phonics in which they are taught sound-symbol correspondences singly, directly, and explicitly. Although most state education agencies, school districts, and federal agencies claim to embrace “balanced” reading instruction—implying that worthy ideas and practices from both whole-language and code-emphasis approaches have been successfully integrated—many who pledge allegiance to balanced reading continue to misunderstand reading development and to deliver poorly conceived, ineffective instruction.”
http://www.ldonline.org/article/6394
As a parent, RR is just a redress pull-out program, to make it more acceptable for the children being pulled out for reading lessons, and making it sound good for the parents. Of course 30 minutes (by the way on the RR site is states 30 to 40 minutes), of one-to-one will help all children but as Doretta has referenced to Dr. Moats, ““For readers below the 25th percentile, Reading Recovery is not effective unless it is modified with systematic, sequential instruction in decoding and phonemic awareness. Without these changes, the gains have been almost zero for the poorest readers instructed with Reading Recovery. The better students who do complete the Reading Recovery sequence in first grade lose many of their gains without subsequent systematic phonics instruction, and may suffer lasting problems with self-confidence in reading.”
Further to RR in Nova Scotia, CBC radio has a short clip explaining the decision to canceled it. It was based on the last Grade 3 testing. A total of 7000 children participated in the test. Out of the 7000 children, 1300 children had RR. A percentage of 18.6 % of children had RR. Going by the figures cited by Mr. Lowe, 755 RR children failed the Grade 3 testing in silent reading. Another 1000 children that did not have RR, fail the test as well. It brings the total of children that failed the Grade 3 testing at 1775 children. The percentage of children that failed Grade 3 testing or did not meet expectations is 25.3 percent in silent reading.
http://www.cbc.ca/informationmorningns/2011/03/replacing-reading-recovery.html
The 25 % figure fits in the RR research and results, where the most often figure quote is at the 30 % mark. On independent research, the figure is higher and as Joanne has stated, “RR pretends it honours this research- it does not – it encourages guessing.Because it does-what seemed to be great results. slips off the kids and many return to problems very quickly.” A pseudo-reading program that does a pretty good job on hiding the true reality of reading proficiency. But than again on the RR site it states, “Mission: We prevent literacy failure by supporting specialized and continuous professional development that results in strong teaching to improve student achievement.
We accomplish this through collaborative partnerships which foster the following:
Reading Recovery and its reconstructions (Descubriendo la Lectura and Intervention Préventive en Lecture-Écriture) as essential components of a comprehensive literacy plan
expert, responsive teaching of children professional development, grounded in one-to-one instruction, for teachers in various roles ongoing development of knowledge and practice based on research, data, and the theoretical work of Marie Clay.
http://www.readingrecovery.org/rrcna/about/mission.asp
Sounds more like teacher development, using the reading program as a front. In response to Heather’s comments on: ” “the only thing that is offered for free is the use of their logo” – INCORRECT – Perhaps a closer look at Canadian information would be helpful before making such suggestions. Dame Marie Clay, originator of Reading Recovery® granted the CIRR royalty-free the right to use the trademarked term in Canada. This permission requires adherence to a variety of Reading Recovery principles that are essential for successful implementation and the highest quality service to children. The primary purpose of the trademark is to ensure that the integrity of the intervention is respected at all times!!”
And her other comment on: “-“how may of those non-profits pay their directors/executives six and seven figure salaries” – In the case of the Canadian Institute of Reading Recovery, the answer to that question is NONE. The CIRR is governed by VOLUNTEER board of directors from across that country who quite simply care about children’s literacy! Perhaps consider the fact that the CIRR is not-for-profit as a reason why you haven’t found a website for it…such things cost money and the main priority for the CIRR is investing in children’s literacy.”
Heather you do like to omit information, that is not likely to mesh with your points. First point, the CIRR is under the umbrella of the Reading Recovery of North America. Second point, the RRCNA is a non-profit and by American law they have to make their financial statements public. On a side note, if there is any readers that have business connections please use your resources because I cannot find the statements, unless I decide to pay for it. But I have obtained enough information, that the core profit making is conducted by a small group of paid and more than likely highly paid employees at the RRCNA. Otherwise, they depend on their army of volunteers, including the branch in Canada to peddle their education wares.
Click to access 2010-311429018-069239fd-9.pdf
The above link is the tax form 990 – the Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax.
“At A Glance
Formerly Known As: Category (NTEE): B Educational Institutions / B92 Remedial Reading, Reading Encouragement B Educational Institutions / B24 Primary/Elementary Schools B Educational Institutions / B20 Elementary, Secondary Ed Areas Served:Internationally
Year Founded:1996 Ruling Year:1997 ”
http://www2.guidestar.org/organizations/31-1429018/reading-recovery-council-north-america.aspx#
From what I can gather, it sure looks like the satellites offices have paid employees, plus filed their own financial and income tax statements.
http://www.netprospex.com/company/executives/Reading-Recovery-Council?companyID=1571683
“Any successful program like Reading Recovery will have its detractors. We are not phased by it at all because we know the difference based on actual experience, not speculation and misinformation.”
I heard that line a few times on actual experience from the educrats to dismiss information and science research that tells a different story. Reading Recovery and other programs like it are very good for having their troops fan out singing the praises to everyone that wants to hear it, but there are especially good at infecting the teachers’ colleges so future educrats are well infected to dismiss the research and other information that are telling a different story. Once upon a time, a highly ranked educrat said words of another version to me when I did not know much, ” That they are the only ones to determine the needs of a students, because they have the experience and are qualified to do such things. In response to the health documentation of my youngest starting from the age of 13 months old. My reading concerns were dismissed, very much like Heather has dismissed ours. You see I was one of the lowly parents, that did not have qualifications and was badly misinformed by health professionals. Funny thing though, the Ontario health system and its agencies certainly spent a nice study sum of taxpayer’s monies using a good number of health professionals to address the needs of my youngest. I am glad that the services were available, but it never ceases to amaze me, how health documentation that will inform the educrats of potential education and learning problems, seem to be dismissed as being suspect and filled with misinformation, as the educrats would like us to believe.
At least in Ontario, for the children under the age of 5 that are receiving intensive speech therapy, and no other therapy, the parents are alerted that these children will have a very good chance of having learning problems in reading and writing. In fact any child with a minor or major speech delay, will be at high risk for reading and writing failure. The research that confirmed this finding was done in multiple studies, and it has been known since 2001. Now if schools actual had explicit systematic synthetic phonics program, very few of these children would be at great risk for reading and writing failure.
Some will no doubt benefit from Reading Recovery but to state that all or even most will do so is pure nonsense.
Only those whose brains function in a particular way can learn using RR’s rigid system.
Nancy is so right-you could prevent so much day one with proper instruction-it has become a religion to rant against phonemic awareness and systematic synthetic phonics.
One researcher in Canada with so much clout he is like the conductor of a symphony,reading teachers K-3 across Canada,has finally conceded that children need phonemic awareness instruction.But then,he refuses to accept that the kids need the picture of the phoneme-the grapheme or phonics.As they say in the song.”you can`t have one without the other”ridiculous!
That is how badly they refuse to accept the fact that children need to learn their sounds.We are encouraging kids to read on the wrong side of the brain-memory versus process.
I feel that Paul`s statement”What explains the remarkable spread of Reading Recovery in school boards across North America? Why has Reading Recovery survived, in spite of the independent, validated research findings? If it is overly expensive and of dubious merit, why do parents cling so passionately to the program? To what extent does the fixation start in faculties of education where novice teachers continue to be socialized to believe in Whole Language and its methods? ”
It is completely true that teachers are innocently brainwashed against research based instruction at University-we have found the genesis of the problem.The other,implied here,the teachers graduate without the knowledge they require to teach children to read,spell and write.In a way,they are at the mercy of RR.
Follow the research-www.childrenofthecode.org,not RR.
This is directed at parents who are fans of Reading Recovery, and their belief that it has help their child to read.
Whole language instruction and the newer name that it is calling themselves, balanced literacy, statistically speaking at least 60 % of students will learn to read without the need of further help. It is the other 40 % of children in a classroom that is in need of phonemic awareness and systematic synthetic phonics. Within the 40 %, RR concentrates on, and it is rather easy to sort out the better readers from the poorer readers, before selection begins for the bottom 20 %, using RR’s Observation Survey. RR concentrates on the bottom 20 % only, based on observation by teachers, where the first set of bias enters the picture. Further, ” The assessment battery used in Reading Recovery does not include tests that provide teachers with more comprehensive knowledge of
children’s control over vital aspects of the reading acquisition process; namely, phonological awareness, knowledge of spelling-to-sound patterns, and knowledge of
word-based strategies for identifying unfamiliar words. In addition, the major outcome measure of Reading Recovery, reading book level, appears to be a highly unreliable
measure of reading achievement that yields inflated estimates of children’s progress (Tunmer & Chapman, 2003).”
Click to access Reading%20Recovery.pdf
Parents will find that RR help their children to read. But as in the last link, and many other studies have confirmed, “Because Reading Recovery involves intensive, one-to-one instruction that is in addition to the regular classroom reading program, it comes as no surprise that the program has been shown to be beneficial for many students with early reading difficulties (Pinnell, Lyons, Deford, Bryk, & Seltzer, 1994). Research has clearly demonstrated that regardless of the subject matter taught, one-to-one instruction is much more effective
than classroom instruction (Bloom, 1984). Moreover, given what is known about the general developmental progression in learning to read (Ehri & McCormick, 1998; Spear- Swerling & Sternberg, 1996), it is likely that many beginning readers who have fallen behind in reading (most likely as a consequence of developmentally limiting deficiencies in phonological awareness skills; Stanovich, 1996) may have taken longer than usual to acquire the self-improving phonological receding skills (i.e., the ability to translate letters and letter patterns into phonological forms) necessary for achieving progress in reading. The process of phonologically recoding a specific printed word a few times ultimately cements the word’s orthographic representation in lexical memory (Ehri & McCormick, 1998). Phonological recoding therefore functions as a self-teaching mechanism that enables beginning readers to acquire sight word (i.e., word specific) knowledge, including knowledge of irregularly spelled words (Share, 1995). Struggling readers who have a working knowledge of the major graphemephoneme correspondences (which may, or may not, have been acquired through explicit instruction; Liberman & Liberman, 1992), and possess phonemic awareness, are able to execute phonological recoding operations, but only very slowly and laboriously. Delayed readers at this phase of development are described as “gluing to print” (Ehri & McCormick, 1998, p.150). For these children the heavy emphasis on text reading in Reading Recovery lessons provides them with additional opportunities to apply their developing phonological decoding skills to identifying unfamiliar words in text. This extra practice is likely to be beneficial in helping these struggling readers to catch up with their peers.”
RR is designed as one to one, and to the parent who is observing, parents will naturally see the benefits of RR. Further down in the first link, there is discussion with reasons given why 30 % of RR students, are not helped by RR, and other reasons as well. It is important to note, that RR is based on the whole language/balanced literacy approaches, that the educrats have latched on and not on phonemic awareness and systematic synthetic phonics.
So as Peggy has suggested, parents should be more concerned on what is planned for the replacement of RR, rather than focusing on the positives of RR and how it has helped your children. The positives are actually over-rated, constantly on display by the big PR machine of RR and their volunteer troops that are always willing to covered up the negatives of RR. There is other programs out there, based on phonemic awareness and systematic synthetic phonics that will give more students help, in classes of 3 to 5, in far less time than RR, have a much higher success rate of 90 % or so, and the gains made in reading do not disappeared, like RR students. Plus, it will reached the 40 % of students who do struggled with reading using the whole language/balanced literacy approaches.
Does anyone know, was the fee for RR a flat rate per year, or was there a per capita charge? With declining enrollment, there would be fewer users, so if the cost didn’t change with that, it would cost more per student every year. Just wondering.
I must say that I find all this highly amusing… and rather pathetic.
If I understand it correctly, “Whole Language” was replaced by “Balanced Literacy” and “Big Books” was replaced by “Guided Reading”. Ironically, this is nothing but the same stuff with new packaging and new buzzwords and yet, in the effort to be “cutting edge”, we spend millions in tax dollars to buy nothing but fancier new packaging.
Enter Reading Recovery – millions in tax dollars and a huge investment of time- which was found to be wanting, so a phonics element was added requiring more money and time… It seems to me that instead of investing millions of dollars and hours of training for the same old stuff, the more sensible approach would have been to use the resources we already had – properly trained special education teachers.
Why not? They were already there in our schools and all that was needed was more one-on-one time for those students encountering difficulties.
So, after all the nonsense is said and done, why is it that high school graduates are barely literate, cannot write grammatically correct sentences, can’t spell properly, use words such as “then” and than”, “their”, “they’re and “there” interchangeably and are frequently incoherent in their writings?
The “sensible approach” is to prevent reading problems from developing the in the first place.
The more sensible approach was to get it right the first time by using reasearched based proven-effective, systematic explicit phonics to teach beginning reading.
What was it our grandmothers’ used to say?
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Want to hear the really ironic part ? Over 80 % of students with SE status, have reading problems, and yet SE teachers are not equipped or trained to handled the reading issues where the root cause is low phonemic awareness and decoding. Instead, teachers are trained using the strategies within whole language/balanced literacy to remediate reading and writing problems of the SE children. If a teacher wanted to be trained in phonemic awareness and systematic synthetic phonics or the Orton method, more than likely they would have to pay for the training themselves, since teachers’ colleges do not have the courses to begin with. In my neck of the woods, the board’s SE teachers are trained using the Orton method, and it has expanded to the other boards. There has been improvement in the primary grades, where the 43 phonemic sounds are being addressed first, before learning to read commences. The bad news, is due to the structure of SE, the rules/regulations actually prevents many of the SE children from having their core weaknesses addressed in reading and writing.
When my youngest was receiving an Orton method, a pull-out program for 3 hours per week, within 10 hours there was massive improvement in my youngster’s work. She was finally stringing sentences, reading improve, and she was sounding out words for the first time. It was the teachers that were reporting it. Reading Recovery is just that, a reading program that is pretending to offer the same results as a systematic synthetic phonics program.
“The whole-language approach to reading instruction continues to be widely used in the primary grades in U.S. schools, despite having been disproven time and again by careful research and evaluation. Whole language still pervades textbooks for teachers, instructional materials for classroom use, some states’ language-arts standards and other policy documents, teacher licensing requirements and preparation programs, and the professional context in which teachers work. Yet reading science is clear: young children need instruction in systematic, synthetic phonics in which they are taught sound-symbol correspondences singly, directly, and explicitly. Although most state education agencies, school districts, and federal agencies claim to embrace “balanced” reading instruction—implying that worthy ideas and practices from both whole-language and code-emphasis approaches have been successfully integrated—many who pledge allegiance to balanced reading continue to misunderstand reading development and to deliver poorly conceived, ineffective instruction.”
http://www.chelationtherapyonline.com/anatomy/p132.htm
All the money that has been spent on reading curriculum in the primary grades, which for the most part is another version of whole language, could have been better spent on training teachers in systematic, synthetic phonics for half of the money spent. Throw in the money being spent on remediating the reading problems, the money saved in that area alone, could be better spent on addressing the individual child’s unique learning and educational needs. Instead, the SE children are thrown together where only a small part of their individual’s needs are being met. My youngest spent two years in a SE math class, getting straight As, and her follow classmates called her the Whiz Kid. I am sure some of them were scratching their head, why she was in the class, as I was trying at every opportunity to get one to one instruction following along the grade 4 regular math curriculum. There would be more opportunities for SE children to have one-to-one, or very small classes for most SE children to be able to followed the regular math curriculum, without dumbing it down, or dropping it by two grade levels.
Peggy, costs have increase despite declining enrollments. The costs for Nova Scotia according to the CBC radio link, was 7 million dollars in total. $35,000 is the license fee and about $225,000 go to training. The main bulk of costs associated with RR is the number of teachers needed, the materials/resources, and part of the 7 million dollars teachers’ salaries are included in the costs. Even though student population is declining, RR is designed to take the bottom 20 % of students in a classroom. The design is deliberate, because the grade 1 classroom will always have students who are in the bottom 20 %, because students do not come to school with the same skills and abilities. Someone has to be at the bottom in a classroom, and it gives rise for more money each year to addressed the training, new materials/resources, and etc., because the program is set up on the premise what the student knows, and not as it should be, what the student does not know. What is not measured are things like phonemic awareness, sounding out words, and other important measures that are needed that are the subset skills that are needed to begin reading. RR does not really address it, but rather the aim of RR, is to have the children returned to the classroom, being able to do the school work at the level of other children. Sort of like a tutor might do, to bring a child up to speed, so they are able to keep up in class.
It is a cycle that is repeated each year, where costs increase, and where RR is making a steady profit on the lowest grade 1 children.
I agree wholeheartedly with Nancy-and Andrew-it isn`t quite like that-there have been advances in reading research that are empirical.Look at whole language as the literacy disease of our century.
Having phonics as step 2 and phonemic awareness as step 1 means we educate the ear to hear the speech sounds-THEN we show them the picture of the sound.
I am also listening to Dr.Linnea Ehri a lot because I am in the instruction field and there is debate on showing what the speech sounds look like -then having the child orally segment them.
Speech sounds look a bit different than phonics sometimes and render English 90% decodable.We call it the science of reading-if you Google those words the researchers Torgesen, Moats, Foorman and Reid Lyon will come up.
Sadly-the fight is ferocious and the new science is still not in the Universities that prepare our teachers.
The universities will tend to teach that which matches the policies of the DOE and the school boards.
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/356
Here is a wonderful user friendly article and Doretta and Nancy gave us some great links as well.
Andrew, I am afraid that is what the educrats would like us to believe. It is actually the opposite way, where the Ministries and boards will accept the current teaching training and pedagogy, and have their policies fit the training at the teachers’ colleges. Whole language and the many different name changes, is entrench because of the beliefs of the education professors at the teachers’ colleges. Every year a new crop of teachers are infected with whole language nonsense, and this cycle gets repeated each year. One of the problems at the teachers’ college level is : “Whole Language is a Philosophy, Not a Teaching Method
Whole language is hard to define because different people view it in different ways. It is a philosophy of instruction and learning, not a teaching method or program.
Many tenets of the whole language philosophy do not seem to be scientifically accurate. For example, whole language espouses the notion that learning to read and spell is like learning to speak. Therefore, kids can glean the form and structure of written language through exposure to context meaning-making activities that do not require direct instruction. This idea flows from the notion that learning to read is natural and develops in a similar fashion to listening and speaking. These philosophical notions have not been supported by scientific evidence.
Reading development takes place over a relatively proactive period of time where many of reading skills have to be very systematically and explicitly taught to kids. ”
http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/read.what.works.lyon.htm
There is some good links at the bottom of this page.
Here is a quote from a top educrat in his field, defending whole language. “The reaction to California’s actions was predictable. “Whole language is being used as a scapegoat for dropping scores, when California has many minorities and high immigration,” says University of Arizona education professor Ken Goodman, regarded by many as the godfather of whole-language theory. It is true that whites are a minority in California and a large portion of its Hispanic population are recent immigrants who speak bare-bones English. Yet apologists for whole language ignore the fact that scores dropped equally among children whose parents graduated from college.
“These data [from the NAEP] underscore the fact that reading failure is a serious national problem and cannot be attributed to poverty, immigration, or the learning of English as a second language,” says Reid Lyon, who has directed the NIH reading studies for the past six years.”
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6730
More on the last link:
It is the philosophy undergirding whole-language theory that troubles linguists and research psychologists who study how the brain processes language. The founders of whole language set themselves apart from the look-say crowd by advancing not only a new method of reading instruction but a new theory of how children acquire written language abilities. Isolated drilling in sound-symbol relationships was unnecessary, they argued, because learning to read would be as natural as learning to talk if meaning and purpose were emphasized. Indeed, whole-language theorist Frank Smith argued that skilled readers skip around instead of reading each word, using context to confirm hypotheses about the meaning of text. Hence education professor Ken Goodman’s description of reading as a “psycholinguistic guessing game.” To a whole-language disciple, phonics instruction can only take place as a rare intervention while children are actually reading.
Whole language’s infatuation with the contextual nature of reading is moored in a 1965 study by Goodman. During the study, beginning readers were given a list of words and then a passage with the same words in context. Observing that children’s word-identification skills improved after reading the passage, Goodman concluded that context plays a central role in deciphering text.”
And guessing words is a main feature of whole language approaches. And I can tell you, it is one bad habit to break for a child like mine, and causes most of the heart ache for parents who have children with LD. These children end up memorizing whole words, because they just are not equipped to do it in the whole-language approach, which if reading the last link, (and there is many more like this), is a philosophy and not a theory, based on the science. The reading science has repeated and confirm what they knew 60 years, whole language approaches are bad for all children. The top reading researchers have opened up their research to the public. Children of the Code is one such site, of a group of the world’s top reading researchers to try to force the issue, and put an end to the reading wars. So unlike the research that occurs in the teachers’ college, where much of it remains shuttered to the public. There is a reason for it, they would not have to deal with the public and their pesky questions, that this does not make sense or other questions. And yet, the top researchers in the education field, always welcome questions from the public, and especially from parents who have taken the time to contact them. Try contacting one of the educrats at a teachers’ college – now that is a lesson in frustration. Or better yet, contact the main branch of RR, but be prepare to get an earful of how wonderful RR is, but the person you would like to talk to, is never available.
Andrew, I am afraid that is what the educrats would like us to believe. It is actually the opposite way, where the Ministries and boards will accept the current teaching training and pedagogy, and have their policies fit the training at the teachers’ colleges.
_______________________________________________
Not sure I agree with that. McGill even has a course dealing with the political aspects of teaching as part of their BEd program.
I think people are jumping the gun by lashing out at the government before the new reading program is announced. We need to tackle literacy issues at a young age and reading recovery was a tool to do that. Wouldn’t it be great if we can make that program even better?
I’m willing to with hold judgement until the government puts forward its replacement program. If we can help more students for a longer period of time then I think the government should be applauded.
Since When Do Student Needs Come First?
Parents and other well-meaning people are dumbfounded when dubious education programs continue, even when research supports their termination.
Questionable reading programs have been at issue since the 1950s when the first Rudolf Flesch books came out: Why Johnny Can’t Read. A well-known education writer, Samuel L. Blumenfeld, has just written a piece on our continuing “Reading Wars” – still here over the last 55 years. http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/opinion/sam-blumenfeld/6283-why-johnny-still-cant-read
Blumenfeld repeats what has been discussed here about the persistence of poor methods: 1) The remedial reading industry has a huge stake; 2) The universities perpetuate certain methods above others; 3) progressives dominate educational policy and practice.
What Blumenfeld adds to current discussions is the political/ideological slant about deliberate dumbing-down. He sees John Dewey and current socialist/progressives decrying phonics because it produced “independent, individualistic readers who could think for themselves … [whereas the] whole-word approach produced readers … easier to collectivize and control.”
He ends by saying: “How long will America continue to suffer this literacy blight? As long as there are government schools controlled by the progressives, there will be no true reform. Thus, if parents want their children to become successful, literate human beings they will have to do it themselves or place their children in private and church schools they can trust.”
Much wider school choice for everyone is what we need. Parents must be able to seek out the best education for their children – in the best interests of the child, not in the best interests of the blob (bloated education bureaucracy).
(I’m submitting this comment simultaneously into two current discussions in Ontario – Educhatter and School for Thought blogs.)
I agree with Brandon.It is admirable tp stop doing what isn`t working and have kept data that shows it.
What is the definition of insanity?We know the answer and this Department of Education is going to try new ideas and protocols to improve their literacy.
You can be critical all day long,action is a totally different response.
Brandon, I could provide studies and research, that methods like RR are not at effective and should be banned from all public schools. I could provide reams of parents’ complaints of RR and other pull-out programs, along with parents who have paid for private assessments in the early primary grades, who are the harshest critics when it comes to reading programs like RR. ” Five minutes of research will show that Reading Recovery was a waste of time.”, is just one milder example of a parent’s frustration when they have a child with reading problems. RR is not about learning to read well, with fluency, comprehension, and deep understanding. It is about getting the child back in the classroom, doing grade level work at a passing level, of 50 %. As Tunya has expressed, “What Blumenfeld adds to current discussions is the political/ideological slant about deliberate dumbing-down. He sees John Dewey and current socialist/progressives decrying phonics because it produced “independent, individualistic readers who could think for themselves … [whereas the] whole-word approach produced readers … easier to collectivize and control.” RR and other programs like it, are programs that fit nicely with the current political and ideological approach that educrats based their programs on.
As you have stated, “I think people are jumping the gun by lashing out at the government before the new reading program is announced. We need to tackle literacy issues at a young age and reading recovery was a tool to do that. Wouldn’t it be great if we can make that program even better?
I’m willing to with hold judgment until the government puts forward its replacement program. If we can help more students for a longer period of time then I think the government should be applauded.”
RR and other like reading programs are designed with purpose, to profit from the inefficiencies and faults of whole language approaches. Whole language approaches do not produce independent readers and high literacy levels. I could say a lot more about RR, but statistically speaking, RR program, has a 30 % failure rate. Parents should be up in arms, at the 30 % failure rate, but this is not the case. Why? The public education system, counts on parents to trust the system, not asked nosy questions on the processes, and to allow the educrats to decide on what is best for the children. Attitudes of parents, such as Brandon go a long way in switching the picture from the inadequacies of RR, to the more pleasant picture of holding off judgment, until the government puts out the new program. RR rapid spread came about from several factors including attitudes of parents who think that the public education system are in the best position to decide on policies and programs, and not the children and parents.
From Tunya’s post, I was reminded of a Canadian reading program, that was developed by Dr. Linda Siegel, a researcher from B.C. Cost far less than the 5 million dollars and the statistical data, in the longitude study is very impressive, where failure rate is in the single digits. The program was developed by the teachers and Dr. Linda Siegel. But the real irony here, ““There are districts and people who are opposed to phonological awareness and phonics as a method of teaching reading,” Linda Siegel, a University of B.C. professor and special-education expert, said in an interview “These are the whole-language people and they believe that you shouldn’t teach these separate skills. “They really prevent the use of [early-screening] programs.”
http://testingforkindergarten.com/articles/detect-learning-problems-early-studies-say-by-janet-steffenhagen-vancouver-sun
In the above link, it further states: “Several years ago, Siegel led a study in North Vancouver district that saw teachers use a simple tool to measure the ability of kindergarten children to hear sounds and rhymes in speech before they started reading instruction. They discovered that 25 per cent of children who spoke English at home and 50 per cent of those learning English as a second language were at significant risk for learning difficulties.
After the children were identified, the schools took remedial action and by the end of Grade 6, only 1.5 per cent of kids in both groups were still struggling.
Early screening is critical, Siegel said. When teachers know which children need extra help, they can take simple but effective action. “They might sit them in the front of the room or … call on them when they know the answers. In other words, they pay special attention to those children at the beginning [of their schooling] because it’s so much cheaper and more effective to remediate children when they’re younger than when they’re older.”
1.5 eh? Now that is impressive. The links below will provide further information on Dr. Linda’s Siegel research, the program, and the school board that is operating the program.
http://www.nvsd44.bc.ca/FirmFoundations/main.html
Click to access F2.pdf
http://www.nvsd44.bc.ca/Reading44/main.html
Click to access Key%20Steps%20to%20Literacy.pdf
The last link, is a paper authored by two parent advocates in B.C., stressing on the reading process. A must read for parents. It is called, Reading: Breaking Through
the Barriers A Discussion Guide
Click to access reading.pdf
I wonder if a “test group” tends to perform better/same/worse than a non-test group.
Maybe we’re approaching this issue from the wrong angle. Instead of trying to figure out why RR has survived perhaps the real question is how do we help it die?
If there’s a way around “the blob” let’s find it.
I think that the DOE and the School Boards are approaching things from the wrong direction.
They are obsessed with having a “system” that tries to make children adapt to the rigid bureaucratic mindset rather than having a flexible teaching methodology that is adaptable to the developing brains of students.
One might compare it to trying to view the moon through the wrong end of the telescope.
That would create chaos-we all know that multisensory instruction is imperative to serve all brains and a curriculum supports teachers,they are not trained at University to teach Reading because of the myth that learning to read is intrinsic like learning to speak.They need something to support them.
The non researched idea from the GOODMAN era was spread throughout the English speaking world through the IRA.There are many Ph.D`s that fight tooth and nail for it`s effectiveness in spite of the fact that the data shows otherwise.
Totally agree.
Defenders of Reading Recovery in Nova Scotia have found a new champion — retired educrat LeRoy Peach of Port Morien, NS. He’s a former educator once employed by the Department to assess Outcome-Based-Education.
His Opinion piece ( The Chronicle Herald, March 16) describes phasing-out RR as “the unkindest education cut of all.” Most of his defence rests on two pieces of evidence. One is the often cited American government study,; the other is a 1999 Suzanne Ziegler study reviewing the early evidence.
For the record: Neither of these studies have found much support in subsequent independent assessments.
For the full column, see:
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Letters/1233300.html
Seeing the piece reminded me just how compromised “education research” has become. It has taken the RR lobby a month to respond and, when they finally did, it came from an educrat who favoured its introduction into Nova Scotia schools.
Reading the piece, I was reminded of a telling comment by Dr. Bernard Shapiro, former Ontario DM of Education (1991): ” All policy decisions are made by leaping over the data.” That may explain RR and its long run as the “band aid” for Whole Language- based early reading instruction.
So how is education doing in the US?
Worse than here, as I understand it… and having lived there I can assure you that it was already worse than here during the mid 90s.
Apparently, we can’t resist following them along the path to failure.
“If Reading Recovery is expensive, most of the expense is in the training. However, those people who are trained become a great benefit to the classroom as well.”
B.S. to the last sentence, that teachers who are are trained become a great benefit to the classroom as well. According to the CBC report – “Nova Scotia taxpayers will continue to foot the bill for a teacher who is midway through a Reading Recovery training program, even though the literacy program was canceled because it was deemed too expensive.
The teacher with the Tri-County Regional School Board is enrolled in a one-year leadership program at Ohio State University. She is learning how to train other Reading Recovery teachers.
Education Minister Ramona Jennex said the teacher would finish the program.
“It’s between $60,000 and $65,000 for the training, and that includes the living expenses,” Jennex said. “The teacher is also paid her salary, so the full cost of training for one year would be $120,000.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2011/03/16/ns-reading-recovery-teacher.html
Imagine that, the use of a RR teacher that has been trained at a cost of $65,000 , and how many teachers can be trained in the summer in a 6 week systematic explicit phonics program? Insanity at its best. considering $65,000 would go a long way to pay the costs of a post-secondary institution, in a 4 year program. And yet the educrats are quite willing to spurge on RR training, and thumbs down for SE teachers that would like to take the training courses for teaching dyslexics and other reading disorder students. And for what, to reproduced the same dismal reading levels of 60 % at grade reading level or above and 40 % that are below grade level. By high school, grade reading levels are reverse, where it is now 60 % that are below grade reading levels, and where some students are as much as reading at a grade 5 level.
Now taking a look at reading levels in NS, and before I take a peek, I know I will not be disappointed. A very nasty habit of educrats when a program is in heavy discussion, such as RR – the stats for the Junior High Literacy Assessments cannot be access, or for that matter any assessments. So back to the reported stat of 40 % of the Nova Scotia adult population that have low literacy skills. Sure they can read, but they are not very good readers. Another indicator of producing low literacy skills, is the number of private tutors offering services in basic reading, writing and numeracy. Most who are being tutored are upgrading their basic literacy skills before high school graduation. If not than, there is chances in post-secondary education, and adult education where one can upgrade their literacy and numeracy skills. Now my question is, the students who were apparently successful in RR, how many of those students had to take upgrading courses or tutoring to upgrade their literacy and numeracy skills? Now how many students who were lucky enough to have been taught from the primary grades, using the systematic explicit phonics programs? I do not have the stats for it, but LD children who have had similar programs of systematic explicit phonics, do not have the need of ever having the need of upgrading their literacy skills. They become good readers and writers, but they read and write at a slower pace than the normal population. Hence the need for accommodations such as extra time, or tech devices, to work around phonological weaknesses, that still present themselves.
Further, “Education Minister Ramona Jennex is currently selling the notion that “there are early intervention programs that will benefit more students.” Yet the research points out that most of those programs fail because key components — such as professional development, collaboration and skilled, sequential instruction by knowledgeable teachers — are not consistently present.”
One can easily tell that this educrat, ” LeRoy Peach “, has never read the science research in reading except through the slanted and bias lens of RR. They have the easy answers for their failures, that sets up the parameters for future expense in upgrading literacy/numeracy skills and the constant revision of standards and curriculum that is undertaken every few years. They see not the classes where reading skills are essential to do the grade 10 unit of physics, and a teacher performing acrobats trying to show students how to break down a physics word problem extracting the numbers from the other information that is not important. Perhaps it is the reason why the South Shore board’s math stats are so dismal. “Just 36 per cent of South Shore Regional School Board students passed their Math 12 exams in 2008, compared to the provincial average of 51 per cent. In Advanced Math 12, those figures were 57 per cent on the South Shore and 70 per cent in Nova Scotia. In 2007, a meagre 24 per cent of South Shore students passed the Math 12 exam, while 61 per cent passed the advanced assessment.”
http://www.southshorenow.ca/archives/2010/080310/news/index017.php
RR, and all the other programs that are based essentially on whole language approaches and ideology, are programs that helps to replicate the same dismal results in the high school maths, sciences and social sciences. Imagine teaching at a high school level, and being reduce to teaching fundamental reading strategies that should have been taught in the elementary grades. I could not believe my ears yesterday, when my youngest told me what was happening in grade 10 science class, but I should not have been surprised about it. Whole language/balanced literacy have severe fault lines, and they show their faults at the high school level.
In closing a paper called ‘Why Reading Teachers Are Not Trained To Used A Research-Based Pedagogy.
“A society cannot afford to continue funding teacher training institutions whose educational philosophy promotes a bankrupt theory and its associated pedagogy in the name of social justice (or “inquiry”) in order to disguise their own intellectual bankruptcy. Alternatives to dysfunctional institutions must be created. A civically healthy society needs a system for teacher preparation
that respects and honors rational approaches to issues in curriculum and instruction.
References
Atwell, N.”
Click to access CIMSE.pdf
Parents in the United States that are pushing for reading reform, and want to see systematic explicit phonics reading instruction in their schools, are now calling for a massive class action suit. I am inclined to agree that this is also is the case in Canada as well. Who would be the star students highlighting the fault lines of RR and other whole language approaches? All the failures of RR and other whole language approaches. It should be some fun time, to see how lawyers defending whole language approaches, would twist and turn an accomplished successful adult, that it was all their fault that they did not learn to become accomplished readers using the whole language approach. And yet the successful adults became good readers, being taught explicitly and systematically using one of the methods of explicit phonics. Fifty thousand witness could easily be had in the United States, with each one telling their nightmare story of whole language. I certainly would like to live long enough to see a lawyer telling a topped best selling author, that he was not just bright enough or had poor SEC factors to succeed with whole language in one breath, and in the next breath stating that explicit phonics is too hard to teach in the classroom.
Dianne has responded to BCMG – “As far as it being strict and step by step that is just foolishness as a RR teacher works from the child’s strengths based on what the child does each day. IT is NOT a prescriptive program. Not sure what packaged program you are talking about but it is not Reading Recovery”
Packaged program – True, because teachers cannot go pass the time requirements in each part of the 30 minute lesson. As for working with strengths, the RR program is designed with the purpose of working with one strength that most children have in spades by grade 1, including the children who are already shown signs of a learning disability. The ability to memorized words, rather than sounding them out. What is not in the non-independent research of RR, is tracking the successful RR students into the older grades. How many are reading below grade level, because they have now reach their capacity to remember words, and the nature of work has change from learning to read, to reading to learn.
Next, is a series of articles that should give the RR advocates howling.
” Remedial Programs can function to preserve the status quo by protecting the structures of schooling – and, by implication, the society within schools reside – from social criticism.”
The above quote, comes from an article called, “A political critique of remedial reading programs: The Example of Reading Recovery”.
Click to access eled3250vaPoliticalCritiqueOfRemedialRdgPrograms.pdf
If that is not enough to raise tempers, how about this one.
“The Reading Recovery program, which typically costs an astronomical $8,000 to $9,000 per student, has come under fire in five major research studies. As summarized by Bonnie Grossen and Gail Coulter of the University of Oregon and Barbara Ruggles of Beacon Hill Elementary School, these studies found that “Reading Recovery does not raise overall school achievement levels. . . . Research-based alternative interventions are more effective than Reading Recovery . . . and far fewer students than claimed actually benefit from Reading Recovery.” Columnist Debra Saunders has written in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Reading Recovery-a program designed to prevent reading failure-is to education what the $600 toilet seat was to the military. Except that no one ever said the $600 toilet seat didn’t work as promised.”
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6211
The last link will put a tear in the eyes of parents, and others who are dealing with the disaster of whole language. It is a satirical thank you letter.
“Thank You Whole Language
A satirical story of the elimination of teaching the mechanics of reading
Thank you Whole Language. Thank you for your many pearls of wisdom. Thank you for Context Clues. Thank you for Prior Knowledge. Thank you for the Initial Consonant. Thank you for Picture Clues. Thank you for Miscues.
But most of all, thank you for my wife. The other day she and I were riding along the highway and saw a sign for a town called Verona, so my wife read “Veronica”. It’s very simple, you see. First she applied Context Clues (she knew we were looking for a name). Then she applied the Initial Consonant (“V”). Then she applied Prior Knowledge (she already knew of a name “Veronica”). She put these Whole Language strategies together and … success! At least, as much success as we can expect, I suppose. …….”
http://www.sweetsoundsofreading.com/Preventing-Reading-Learning-Disabilities.html
Just like my youngest, and it is hard work to eliminate context clues and prior knowledge – two nasty bad vices of whole language/balanced literacy, Reading Recovery and other remedial programs that uses the strategies instead of the more simple method of:
“A Simple Solution
There’s no great mystery to teaching reading. It’s as easy as a, b, c. The best approach for the overwhelming majority of children is systematic phonics, the simple concept of teaching the 26 letters of the alphabet, the 44 sounds they make, and the 70 most common ways to spell those sounds. For most children, learning this basic code unlocks 85 percent of the words in the English language by the end of the first grade. Although some words such as “sugar” or “friend” have irregular spellings, children of all levels of intelligence can learn to read most words simply by learning the correspondence between sounds and letters.”
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6211
The ending of the thank you letter is powerful.
“Thank you Marie Clay for inventing the phenomenally expensive Reading Recovery, a program installed in virtually every public school, it seems, and designed to treat the educational effects of Whole Language by applying yet more Whole Language. Thank you for giving my school district more stuff like this to spend my tax money on. How is it that I am not clever enough to imagine things like this?
Thank you Richard Allington, current (2005) president of the International Reading Association, for your campaign of misinformation against Direct Instruction (a successful phonics-based program). The cleverness of your propaganda puts the Soviets, the Chinese Communists, and all the other tyrants of the 20th century to shame. You know of course that Direct Instruction (DI) participated in a huge study (Project Follow Through) in which all the participants except DI failed, and in which DI succeeded brilliantly. And so you twist this around to say that by virtue of its association in this study with the constructivist-favored instructional styles that failed so miserably, we should all conclude that DI must necessarily also have been a failure. Your logic, so typical of that of the IRA, the NCTE, and the rest of the Constructivist Cabal, is irrefutable.
But once again thank you all for my wife. Hardly a day goes by when she does not demonstrate the success of Look-Say, or Whole Language, or Balanced Literacy or whatever you all call it now. Really, it’s so amusing I really can’t even quantify it. I never know what she’ll read next … and neither does she! Just imagine all her Miscues!
The sheer unpredictability of listening to her read is astounding … and unpredictability is the essence of entertainment, right? I mean, she might read “deleterious” as “delicious” or perhaps “injurious” as “injustice” or “parabola” as “parachute” or maybe “quintessence” as “quintuplet”, or “signify” as “signature”. I could go on and on almost endlessly. The laughs just never stop here.
And all thanks to you. All of you.
So thank you, Whole Language. Where would we be without you? The possibilities just boggle the mind. ”
http://www.sweetsoundsofreading.com/Preventing-Reading-Learning-Disabilities.html
And I shall add another thank you to whole language and the educrats that advocate and the remedial reading programs like RR, that promote more and more whole language, so a day does not go pass, that I do not hear a word being mispronounce by someone who is reading, and truly thinks that he or she is correctly pronouncing it. How anyone can pronounce concern for the word consider is thanks largely to the legions of troops dedicated to whole language and their science based on non-science.
“
Public Education Is The Biggest Consumer Fraud Ever
Or something to that effect — is the title of an article in a magazine 40 years ago by Nat Hentoff.
I am far from home at the moment where that article sits. I do want to do a digest of it for this discussion.
The insights are as relevant to today’s issues as they were then. Maybe, even more so. The scams are ever more sophisticated and larger in scale and sheer insolence than before, however.
If I remember rightly, Nat closed in this way: If 23% of our televisions were failing there would be riots in the streets. Why is there no rebellion about the failures in our schools?
Dianne made another response to Andrew this time.
“Reading Recovery is unique in every way even when it comes to Directors. There are no executives just a very committed group of individuals who volunteer their time and expertise in trying to make life better for kids and families. No doubt a hard concept for some people to comprehend. Money isn’t everything.”
Yes the legion of volunteers to support the paid salaries and high life for corporate headquarters in Ohio, under the name Reading Recovery of North America. But let us take a look at one of the branches manned by volunteers, the Canadian branch called, Canadian Institute of Reading Recovery(CIRR), which is the lead dog doing the bidding of RRNA and to ensure that all volunteers are following the prescribe program to the tee. What best interests are the volunteer top dogs at the CIRR are working for?
Looking on the RR site:
“Vision: The vision of CIRR is that that children will be proficient readers and writers by the end of Grade 1.
Mission: The mission of CIRR is to ensure that all children who are experiencing difficulty learning to read and write have access to Reading Recovery in Canada.
Purpose: The purpose of CIRR is to sustain the integrity of Reading Recovery by upholding the trademark for Reading Recovery in Canada, and to expand the implementation of Reading Recovery in Canada by increasing the number of individuals who understand, support, and collaborate to achieve the mission of the Institute. As outlined in the Standards and Guidelines, it is the responsibility of CIRR to
Act as the executive body which oversees the use of the term Reading Recovery in Canada
Maintain the integrity of Reading Recovery by upholding the standards as outlined in the CIRR Standards & Guidelines 2007
Train and support Canadian trainers and teacher leaders ensuring that the standards are maintained to provide quality implementations
Oversee the teacher leader training courses at approved Reading Recovery Institutes in Canada
Ensure service to sites across Canada on a cost recovery basis which include trainer visits and support;
consultation with Reading Recovery trainers;
participation in the Teacher Leader Professional Development Forum;
involvement in the National Data Collection Process and reporting;
course completion cards;
administrative services;
ongoing professional development for teachers, teacher leaders, and trainers; and
advocating for Reading Recovery and promoting advocacy efforts within Reading Recovery Training Centre. ”
http://www.readingrecovery.org/reading_recovery/canada/cirr.asp
It does appear that their best interests is to protect RR against all, to protect the tidy profits being made and certainly not for the children.
Further evidence: “The purpose of CIRR® is:
a. To sustain the integrity of Reading Recovery® by upholding the trademark. Reading Recovery® Trainers represent the advisory body to the CIRR® in the use of the Reading Recovery® trademark
b. To expand the implementation of Reading Recovery® by increasing the number of individuals who understand, support, and collaborate to achieve the mission of the Institute.”
Click to access Canadian_SG_3rd_edition-5-07.pdf
Sounds more and more like the makings of a mini-corporate empire, working the levels of a capitalistic empire, trying to captured the biggest share of the public education remedial and primary classrooms of Canada.
At $60-$65 thousand a pop it doesn’t take an accountant to realise what a huge profit centre this is for Ohio State. To top it off, they have developed a network of volunteers and semi-volunteers to proselytize the Reading Recovery religion.
Billy Graham would be so proud.
Interesting. The parents of a dyslexic son successfully sued RR in Ohio.
Readers of Educhatter may want to examine this resource, Stairway to Reading, that is freely available on the SQE website. It is our most popular website destination for anyone who is looking to help a struggling reader. STR is based on sound reading research that has been extensively cited in comments above.
http://www.societyforqualityeducation.org and click on Remedial Programs in the menu.
Here is a letter to the editor of March, 1999, on RR and the bad results.
The ending of the letter: “The 1998 National Academy of Sciences review of reading research devotes four pages to a thoughtful analysis of Reading Recovery research. The review points out some of the valid criticisms leveled at RR research conducted by the program’s developer, Marie Clay, and other RR disseminators. One of the many serious concerns is that results reported by RR are only for children who have successfully been discontinued from the program, excluding about 30 percent of the participants.
Not all of the teaching tools used in Reading Recovery are ineffective. Many are research-based. The fundamental reason that RR and literature-based reading instruction have proven woefully ineffective is that they rely on the disproved theory that contextual guessing strategies are the best ways to identify words. In The Reading Teacher, the distinguished reading researcher Keith Stanovich, who initially thought the context view was correct, says that “our initial investigations of this problem revealed just the opposite: It was the less skilled readers who were more dependent upon context for word recognition. The reason for this finding eventually became apparent: The word recognition processes of the skilled reader were so rapid and automatic that they did not need to rely on contextual information. Over 10 years later, this finding is one of the most consistent and well replicated in all of reading research.”
Another distinguished researcher and author of the 1990 landmark review of reading research, Beginning to Read, Marilyn Adams states it this way:
“(S)cientific research converges on this point that the association of spellings with sounds is a fundamental step in the early states of literacy instruction…There are literally hundreds of articles to support these conclusions. Over and over, children’s knowledge of the correspondences between spellings and sounds is found to predict the speed and accuracy with which they can read single words, while the speed and accuracy with which they can read single words is found to predict their ability to comprehend written text” (American Educator, Summer 1995).”
http://www.nrrf.org/rr_update_3_10_99.htm
Yet RR keeps on pushing the disproven theory of contextual guessing strategies.
The next letter is written by a teacher, who describes her journey from whole language to the much superior and proven method of synthetic phonics that is practiced outside of North America. I believe it is the same method as systematic explicit phonics. Correct me if I am wrong.
“There is some hope however. Some practicing teachers have begun to use a synthetic phonics approach and are achieving rapid results. When this happens, word spreads. But, the transition is very slow. Literacy co-ordinators and Reading Recovery teachers in some schools feel confronted by the synthetic phonics approach and reluctant to ‘allow’ their teachers to use it. It is like a religious belief, and phonics is heresy. Perhaps we need a university fellow to undertake a local action research project on this subject, to add some validity and local evidence to the huge quantity of international research into effective teaching practices.
I will persist with promoting the research findings and encouraging teachers to train up in a synthetic phonics approach. I hope I can offer some assistance to teachers, to make a difference in the lives of our children.”
http://www.phonicsinaustralia.com/about.html
In the letter, there is mentioned of Phonics International which is now in Canada. I am sure it is much cheaper to trained teachers using this program, compared to the price tag of 1 trained RR teacher at a price tag of $120,000.
http://www.phonicsinternational.com/
The Canada Link: http://www.phonicsincanada.com/
Hey is one of our own naysayers, and probably a deep fan of RR.
“In this article, the author argues that there is minimal scientific support for the pedagogical approaches promoted for low-income students in the federal Reading First initiative. In combination with high-stakes testing, the interpretation of the construct systematic phonics instruction in Reading First has resulted in highly teacher-centered and inflexible classroom environments. By privileging these approaches, Reading First ignored the National Reading Panel’s finding that systematic phonics instruction was unrelated to reading comprehension for low-achieving and normally achieving students beyond Grade 1. Also ignored was the significant body of research suggesting that reading engagement is an important predictor of achievement. Alternative evidence-based directions for rebalancing reading instruction for low-income students are suggested in the context of the impending reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind legislation. ”
Author of study: “Canada Research Chair in Language and Literacy Development in Multilingual Contexts at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Canada M5S 1V6; jcummins@oise.utoronto.ca. His research focuses on instructional strategies to promote academic achievement among culturally and linguistically diverse students ”
http://edr.sagepub.com/content/36/9/564.abstract
I can only assume he is into social engineering of the first degree.
Boy, it is going to be tough to unlodged the hold that whole language/balanced literacy has on the public education system. I found it rather amusing, that one of interests is in hearing impaired students. Some of the best advice that was provided to me, came from the educators of the deaf school in my province. They too often used many of the methods from the LD files, to help their children to read and write.
Diane wrote:
“Reading Recovery is a not for profit intervention, designed to be supplementary to good classroom instruction and is an essential part of a balance literacy program. Phonics is a part of what is taught but more importantly children are taught to read for meaning. Isn’t that what reading is about!”
A-Non profit who cares-you charge sinful prices to train 1 teacher-we are all too sophisticated now Diane to buy into “non profit”.
Also,balanced literacy is just like whole language,just repackaging.Phonics is not enough,plus RR is a sprinkle of phonics,it is not taught properly and according to what the research recommends,explicit,systematic,synthetic,in and out of the brain or blend,segment, blend-fluency training, non existent because that involves brain work,phonemic awareness which begins at articulation missing in action-
The comprehension part-all of us involved in teaching explicit systematic synthetic phonics are tremendous at achieving reading comprehension;once kids read to fluency and automaticity we easily teach them the words they don`t understand and we don`t teach them contextual guessing,naturally we are committed to teaching vocabulary and semantic webbing so the children understand the main ideas.The arguments are nothing short of ridiculous!
Finally,the Nova Scotia government has stats to prove RR doesn`t work for many many children,in spite of it`s prohibitive costs.
Big problem,many many teachers trained and brainwashed!
What will they do about that?
The alleged purpose of RR is to prevent students from falling behind the Grade 1 literacy standards, as I understand it.
Who are those who would need RR, then? I should think that the average/advantaged students don’t need RR. So who is left?
Does RR overcome dyslexia? ADD/ADHD? hearing difficulties? speech problems? or any of the other impediments to learnng?
I wouldn’t think so since RR isn’t designed to address these problems.
Why does RR even exist?
Andrew, you have asked an interesting question, that I have asked myself earlier from Joanne’s post. It is essentially the same question, but with a little bit of a twist, when asked by who benefits from having such programs within the school structure. The answer that I have arrived to is the big profits being made on the backs of children, in the developing nations, as well as the developed nations of the world.
In the education sector, often new products are developed under the umbrella of non-profit. In turn, the non-profit companies are brought up by the big education corporations that will transformed their products to be used in the classroom settings of schools across a nation. Than there is the mergers that occur in the big education companies, giving them more influence and ability to spread their education products and to be able to react to the forever changing political and ideology stamps of politicians and the high level educrats. Where doe RR fit into it? From what I have read, that RR becomes useful because their product is the training of teachers to become RR teachers, and not so much in the materials. RR is not a good fit to purchase, but it is a good fit in the playing out the reading wars at the top levels and where political ideology is at its greatest.
In a paper by an educrat, called Phonics and Politics, “Sounding Out the Consequences”, the main argument from the educrats of the teachers colleges, unions that systematic phonics, is that it would produced unexpected harmful and costly consequences.
Click to access LTL_2.2-Jones.pdf
The above link is rather a good read, to understand the proponents of RR and other whole language approaches. Another paper, on a speech made by Jim Cummins who I mentioned in another post, is another high ranking educrat in Ontario, that is a fan of RR and other whole language approaches. “In a simultaneously scathing and humorous talk, “I’m not just a coloring person,” Cummins laid out a case that what is happening now in the schools is not science but ideology, with federal and state policies imposing a pedagogical divide in which “poor kids get behaviorism and rich kids get social constructionism.” In practice, that means skills for the poor and knowledge for the rich. That ideologically based approach ignores and rejects research into the way students learn, particularly how they learn language and how to read, he said.
Cummins challenged educational practices resulting from federal No Child Left Behind legislation, with its emphasis on standardized tests and consequent teaching “to the tests,” saying instructional approaches now being imposed are something that most in the audience wouldn’t want their own children to suffer. These approaches have, he said, more to do with teaching rats than humans. He urged his audience to reclaim good instruction with attention to the lessons of social constructionism instead of treating students with a behaviorist approach in which, as B.F. Skinner proved, even pigeons can be taught to play ping-pong.”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/07/26/362834/-Jim-Cummins-Demolishes-NCLBs-Ideology-and-Practice
Cummins solution is: “Cummins offered an alternative to the NCLB approach – under which more and more inner-city schools are failing every day. That alternative is school-based language planning which instructs along the lines of what the research has shown. Boiled down to its essentials, Cummins said, literacy attainment is directly related to literacy engagement. Such engagement requires participation, and effective participation requires that student identity is affirmed, which means first language learning should not be discouraged because “new understandings are constructed on a foundation of existing understandings and experiences.”
His alternative focuses on a four-element approach: scaffolding meaning, activating prior knowledge and building background knowledge, affirming student identity and extending language in a way that uses the students’ first language.
One example of a technique for developing participation is the student identity text – a kind of “journal” that can be written, spoken, visual, musical or multimodal combinations of these, and which holds “a mirror up to the student in which his or her identity is reflected back in a positive light.”
Find and dandy, until the poor person is in a work situation, and the boss does not have the time to understand one’s cultural identity, or the time to translate poor communication skills of his employees. Suffice to say, that Cummins would be lost in a grade one class, where students don’t much care to have one’s cultural identity to be confirmed, when their main interest is to be able to read just like the other kids, and not be told that they have to try harder to become good readers., by affirming their cultural values. I wonder what the lesson would be on riding a bike?
Back to the big education companies, and how they play the role of keeping RR in place. I ran into this article, by the fans of RR. “UK Study Reports Reading Recovery’s Effectiveness owned by Voyager Learning
A three-year, £ 10 million initiative funded by charitable trusts, the business sector and the government of Great Britain focuses on Reading Recovery as a key strategy to make Every Child a Reader. Every Child a Reader: the results of the first year… reports that children who received Reading Recovery lessons made on average a gain of 21 months in reading age in just 4 to 5 months while lowest achieving children in schools with other early interventions fell further behind their peers.
2011 K-12 education materials specialist Cambium Learning Group acquires Voyager Learning, expected it would achieve growth through synergies associated with similar products and implementing best practices across two management teams.”
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/literacy/texasscam.asp
I immediately knew of the name Cambium and Voyager, and I thought to myself owing RR? Can’t be, these companies having been buying other companies that really deal with leaning disabilities, reading remedial products, and other products that are so far away from RR. It turns out that there is a consortium in Jolly England, “Every Child A Reader is an initiative designed to tackle these children’s difficulties. It is supported and funded via a unique collaboration between charitable trusts, the business sector and government. The partners are the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), London Challenge, the Primary National Strategy, the University of London Institute of Education, the KPMG Foundation, Man Group plc Charitable Trust, the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, SHINE, the Indigo Trust, the JJ Charitable Trust and the Mercers’ Company. The DfES is match-funding donations from business and trusts with £4.55 million over three years.
The initiative is funding highly-skilled Reading Recovery teachers in primary schools, to provide intensive help to children most in need. The aims are to:
•
demonstrate the effectiveness of Reading Recovery as an intervention for children who would otherwise not learn to read;
•
explore the potential for Reading Recovery teachers to support tailored literacy teaching more broadly within a school, with an impact beyond those receiving intensive one-to-one support;
•
secure sustainable and long term investment in early literacy intervention.
This report evaluates the outcomes of the first year of the initiative against these three aims.”
Click to access first_year_final.pdf
So RR training is now being supported by charities and other private education companies in England. It is happening in the United States as well, where the reading wars plays out at the top levels in full display. In Canada, not so much because our top levels have been throughly infected by whole language approaches, which makes it tough to bring systematic explicit phonics into our schools.
By why are the private education companies doing this? When one goes on their sites, it will become obvious that RR is retained for one reason only, to sell their education products in the older grades, to redress the education weaknesses that arose from whole language, and other ineffective progressive methods/reading methods.
http://www.soprislearning.com/cs/Satellite?c=Page&childpagename=Sopris%2FSopris_Layout&rendermode=previewnoinsite&pagename=Sopris_Wrapper&cid=1277940983053
http://www.cambiumlearningtechnologies.com/
http://www.learninga-z.com/
http://www.voyagerlearning.com/index.jsp
The real losers are the children and the smaller reading businesses, that have developed superior reading products that would essentially stopped the gravy train for both camps, and the majority of children in the primary grades would have the necessary skills and ability to do advance work, without the need of any remedial help what so ever. It would also include most of the LD children, who are often regulated and stuff into SE classes doing dumb-down work often two grade levels behind, and the LD kids inside the inclusive classroom. I lost track of how many times, my child was faced with lower expectations than the child beside her. It tells her the message of she is too dumb to do the work at grade level. There is also losers in other areas of education, especially in math programs. Why JUMP math which is a Canadian product is not being used in classrooms across Canada one would arrived at the same conclusion, it would put a stopped to the remedial math profits that is generated from the present math curriculum.
As for RR, they don’t much care about putting a stopped at the criticism being leveled at the high levels in an education system. What they do care is stopping criticism at the bottom levels of the education system. It is at this level, that most parents, educators, trustees and other lower level educrats, have various knowledge levels and ideology on reading and other learning issues, where RR propenents can wage war on and do an effective job on shutting down the criticism of RR.
The most recent example, “”Parents and teachers have witnessed the overwhelming success of Reading Recovery firsthand – none of us understand why the NDP would cancel a program that has led to such significant results,” said a press release from Liberal leader Stephen McNeil, who also attended the meeting.
“Literacy is the foundation on which learning is built and Reading Recovery’s early one-on-one intervention ensures that each one of our children has that strong foundation.”
Reading Recovery teacher-leader Gretchen Gerhardt said the interesting part about that meeting was the fact many people other than parents attended.
“There were business owners, community health workers, grandparents, retired teachers and more. All these people are concerned about our community and the importance of basic literacy skills. The impact of being illiterate on a person and a community is massive. I think the community needs to understand that not having basic literacy skills can result in unemployment, costs to health care and trouble with the law.”
About 80 per cent of South Shore Regional School Board Reading Recovery students typically read at an appropriate grade level within 20 weeks of beginning daily, half-hour sessions of one-on-one learning with specialized teachers.”
http://www.southshorenow.ca/archives/2011/031511/news/index030.php
Newspaper articles, are often done this way, glossing over the criticism. ” Education Minister Ramona Jennex says she has seen too many children fall through the Reading Recovery cracks.
“It’s like a lotto system in many ways,” said the former classroom teacher in a March 4 interview.”
The two comments is telling, on the lack of knowledge but both parents are expressing their frustrations. The second one is of interest, “It seems to be that we don’t put enough emphasis on education because we are a rich nation that was resource based and you could drop out of school and still support yourself but not anymore. We are still resourced based nation but we have big machines to harvest the trees and large fishing trawlers to harvest the fish and you don’t need as many people to do the labour. The trick is to get kids reading about something they are really interested in, seems like its vampires nowadays.”
A lot of people think reading is some sort of magic trick, that requires tinkering around the edges. Reading needs to be taught in a systematic explicit phonic method, and not in a whole language approach that does developed other problems where reading material must become interesting first and foremost, and meet cultural and SEC factors of the child. A whole new industry is growing around primary reading books, where cultural and social parameters is incorporated within the text. Another name for it, is brainwashing. But than that is a whole new topic……..
Effective, well-trained and involved classroom teachers don’t need all these gadgets and gimmicks such as RR to be effective. What they need most is what they aren’t getting… competent help in the classroom (EAs, parent volunteers) so that there is more time available for one-on-one instruction tailored to individual student needs.
What they ARE getting is more of the same-old repackaged nonsense in pretty new wrappings with all the attendant new era eduspeak at high cost to the public education system.
Reading Recovery is simply a prime example of what Rick Hess has aptly described as “the same thing over and over again.” School reform initiatives like Whole Language or Reading Recovery are trumpeted as panaceas and implemented well beyond the point of diminishing returns. Lead administrators, education professors, and licensed trainers start acting like “disseminators” instead of reflective, evolving educators.
What can be done to reverse the trend? It starts with concerned citizens like you.
Here in Nova Scotia, we are actually beginning to take some action.
We have organized a Public Forum on “Putting Children First and Fixing Our Schools” to be held on March 28 in Halifax, beginning at 6:30 pm. Michael Zwaagstra is our featured speaker and he will be joined by Doretta Wilson (SQE), Charles Cirtwill (AIMS), and Denise Delorey (Save Community Schools)
If you live in Nova Scotia, check out the snazzy poster:
Click to access PublicForumMarch28-2011-w-links.pdf
Click on http://www.aims.ca to register online!
Yes, Educhatter will be there, in the flesh, doing his best to act as moderator of the Forum. It would be great to see a good representation from our online community.
Andrew, what do you proposed to increase competent help in EAs and parent volunteers? They can only do so much given the structure of the education system, and the rules governing the two groups on what they are allow to do and not allow to do. On top of the repackaged programs that are based on doing things in the whole language philosophy and ideology. just promote more individualized attention, by creating new growth industries in education consultants. The education consultant sector is becoming big, and where their advice follows along the same philosophy and ideology of our present public education system.
One example, is an Alberta firm. “Consulting Services’ staff support success in student learning by: providing leadership in teaching and learning, developing and maintaining exemplary consulting practices, pursuing leading-edge research and development and
nurturing a collaborative learning community.
Our focus is to support success in student learning while addressing special needs or concerns. We also offer customized professional learning sessions for schools, districts and individuals. Our services include specialized assessments for students with learning difficulties and for students with special needs. ”
http://consultingservices.epsb.net/focus.cfm
This Alberta firm, supports balanced-literacy and RR, with the claim of helping SE students. Often whole language approaches and RR, are the very reasons why these children are struggling so much in the first place.
They can only do so much given the structure of the education system, and the rules governing the two groups on what they are allow to do and not allow to do.
How about changing the structure?
Isn’t that a huge part of the problem?
I picked this up in a news article, where it might give the general direction of what will replace RR.
“If the program is Leveled Literacy, then Reading Recovery teachers tell me that it is no substitute for Reading Recovery. In fact, normally it begins in Grade 2. In any case, how is this to be done? Experienced educators tell me that beginning learners will never get on their feet with a literacy program that involves group instruction alone. Nor does the research favour small group instruction as remediation. More students will fall behind. Reading will become a barrier to them.”
http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/Letters/1233300.html
Leveled Literacy – what is it? Had to go and look it up.
“The Fountas & Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention System (LLI) is a small-group, supplementary intervention system designed for children who find reading and writing difficult. LLI is designed to bring children quickly up to grade-level competency—in 14 to 18 weeks on average.
LLI serves those students who need intensive support to achieve grade-level competency. These children are the lowest achieving children in the classroom who are not receiving another supplementary intervention. Each lesson in the LLI system also provides specific suggestions for supporting English language learners who are selected for the program.
Three systems are available for LLI. Each supports instruction at different levels on the Fountas & Pinnell A–Z Text Level Gradient:
Orange System (Kindergarten): 70 titles leveled A through C
Green System (Grade 1): 110 titles leveled A through J
Blue System (Grade 2): 120 titles leveled C through N ”
http://www.pearsonschoolcanada.ca/index.cfm?locator=PS1zOw&PMDBSUBCATEGORYID=&PMDBSITEID=2621&PMDBSUBSOLUTIONID=&PMDBSOLUTIONID=25862&PMDBSUBJECTAREAID=&PMDBCATEGORYID=25873&PMDbProgramID=60764
The program is copyright in 2009, and the same publisher, Heinemann that is in charge of RR materials for North America. “Heinemann is proud to have been the distributor of Marie Clay’s work in North America for the last 20 years and an enthusiastic, gold-level sponsor of Reading Recovery® Council of North America (RRCNA) for the last 10 years.
The Fountas & Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention System has the potential to broaden the effect of Reading Recovery® in your school. Click on the link below to see how LLI and RR could be used together to serve more low achieving children in schools.”
http://www.heinemann.com/fountasandpinnell/supportingMaterials.aspx#rr
Surprise, surprise how the education publishers gather together whenever their is profits to be made on reading instruction programs, that will generate future profits in remediating future literacy problems, and other growth potential in remediation well into adulthood.
RR is also consider leveled literacy intervention. I bet this is what the Nova Scotia ministry is planning to bring in, since they do not appear too worried about the implementation in the new school year, or are not too eager to share plans with the parents. The teacher who had written the letter to the editor, may be very well on the right track, that it is leveled literacy, but she is fudging around the facts on RR which is another leveled literacy intervention just like the Fountas & Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention . The difference lies in the number of students, where Fountas & Pinnell has small group instruction, and RR is one student at a time.
The Nova Scotia education stats, are back online. I can see why the ministry is concern, since they is a small downward trend in reading and writing. and math stats are even worse. To me, it appears to be flat-lining where 20 % of students have serious problems with literacy, leaving another 20 % or so, who are passing their grade 9 literacy testing, but just barely. Since the stats do not tell a reader what percentage passed at what level, I am inclined to think that it follows the same type of numbers in other states and provinces that publishes the extra information because the different education departments have one thing in common – the same common curriculum in reading, writing and numeracy. The nasty progressive methods, that leads to more and more remediation, dumbing down, and low levels of literacy.
http://www.ednet.ns.ca/index.php?t=sub_pages&cat=82
http://plans.ednet.ns.ca/content/ministers-report-parents
I hope they learned their lesson Nancy-if they didn`t it would be very sad.
However,teaching with sounds(explicit systematic synthetic phonics starting with phonemic awareness training) exudes vitriolic responses in this country;the brainwashing is immense.
My company is pitching Nova Scotia Education government sector to let us train their SK and Grade 1 teachers in prevention work and remediate Grade 1-Grade 3.
I have encouraged a pilot-done with integrity,it will prove our point.
Oy vey.
Another “system” being pitched,
How many millions this time?
Oh well,let`s leave it to Pearson and RR then.
Same church, different pew.
Competent teachers with the proper support at the classroom level would be both more effective and less costly.
Joanne glad to hear it, because I have heard nothing but good things on your program. Now, BCMG – a little fact on reading programs that are explicit systematic synthetic phonics with phonemic awareness training. The first point, the developers of these types of programs are not the text book publishers. “The owners of the methodologies are not big text book publishers like Harcourt, SRA, etc that can afford lobbyists to push state politicians and administrators to approve their curriculum’s. Publishers make money by selling hundreds of thousands of text books.”
http://www.examiner.com/special-education-in-national/the-best-kept-secret-special-education
Second point, explicit systematic synthetic phonic programs are far less expensive to trained teachers, compared to RR and other programs like RR. The next link is one such example, and is present in a number of boards across Canada. http://www.remediationplus.com/news_lic.shtml
Third point, the text book publishers are not fans of explicit systematic synthetic phonic programs, because it would put an end to the gravy train and their profits in remediation of reading and writing issues. Plus put an end to the regular retraining of teachers and new curriculum based on the newest fads in whole language.
Actually, if one made the point of researching the LD fields and the advances that have been made in the last 30 years. One would discovered, the balanced literacy have been stealing the conclusions of the reading research in LD, and than have it adapted to the philosophy and ideology of whole language. RR orignally did not have a phonics portion, and now they do. The newest claims that RR now has a phonemic awareness portion. But than again, whole language approaches have made claims that their approach includes systematic explicit phonics, but public education boards in the United States has lost civil suits where they had to pay big dollars, to send the students to a private tutor to address their reading problems. At least in the United States, a student has a legal right to a free appropriate public education, and that includes the right to read. In Canada, it is not so enlightening as in the United States, because all Canadians are entitled to a free public education, but not held liable for the quality. But hey, most of the educrats feel that they are not held legally accountable for even the students who have low skills in literacy and numeracy, and that is roughly about 40 % of the graduates leaving high school. After 12 years of high school, about a total of 11,500 hours based on a 190 days school years, and they still cannot manage to teach improve literacy and numeracy skills to 40 % of the student population, that are good enough without having the need to have remediation at some point, in their adulthood.
Take a good look at Nova Scotia and the stats that I provided in my last post. It is not much different than what is happening in other provinces, but what should be asked when reviewing the stats, why some of the statistical information is missing? The missing information, that would take the shine off their good news statements. The missing information would present a more balanced view, and it would focus the attention on what should have been the educrats focus in the first place – curriculum and methodologies. And than the teachers’ colleges, where most of the problems originates from. I have had my share of talking to the educrats in teachers’ colleges, and I can certainly tell you, they will defend their approaches and methods even to the point of belittling a parent. I do not know what is worse – an educrat at the board or the ministry level or the ones at the teachers’ colleges? As some LD parents in United States, have pointed out. The children in the public education system become their guinea pigs and the schools become their personal labs to test their latest pet theories.
By the way, check out the research coming out of the teachers’ colleges and in particular the math research. At the end of the research papers, check out the sources used, and look for dates. Often, they are cherry picking out research that will support their hypothesis, plus much of it is outdated, and has been disproven. At least with the reading science, research has been consistent for over 60 years that the best method is systematic explicit phonics for reading and math as well. Math research is not as well developed as the reading research, but the conclusions are consistent with the recommendations of systematic explicit instruction for all children. One can’t say that about the research from the teachers’ colleges, when a lot of it is really a thesis about constructism, or some other mad method such as invented spelling, that speaks volumes on philosophy and so little on the science.
Let us hope, the Nova Scotia ministry will put a stopped to the insanity, and be the first province to introduce a systematic explicit phonics reading program. Rather have this, than the expensive Fountas & Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention System , that mimics RR.
I have no deep attachment to RR but I can tell you this, it is very popular. Attempts to reduce it are met with “why would you not want students who are behind to recover or catch up? Only people opposed to weak readers would oppose RR. Don’t you want my kid to catch up?”
Marilyn Adams 1998-
“In collecting ‘renditions’ of the three-cueing system in the USA, Adams came across several ‘boldly headed with the admonition: “Let’s all work together to avoid the phrase, ‘sound it out!”’ In the UK, the NLS policy seems to be to allow phonics teaching as long as it is enmeshed with searchlights and provided that synthetic phonics is never implemented with a proper understanding of how it works. In the conclusion of this section Adams states categorically: ‘Poorly developed knowledge or facility with spellings and spelling-sound correspondences is the most pervasive cause of reading delay or disability (Rack et al. 1992, Stanovich, 1986). Research further demonstrates that, with the exception of no more than 1-3% of children, reading disability can be prevented through well-designed, early instruction (Vellutino et al.1996)’. Should the backlash against synthetic phonics prove effective, we will be stuck with a figure approaching 20%. ”
In my view,the figure approaches 40%,we see it tabulated in adult literacy scores,Stascan 42%;the school boards do their best to twist the numbers more favorably.All this so they can be right.
I can tell you that in my experiences training teachers,not one of them was happy with the results they were getting and they all felt badly they were sent out not knowing how to teach children to read,spell and write.
How on Earth did we end up with the world’s best readers? (OECD PISA).
PISA tests 23,000 students.They can miss a great deal.
The results of our struggles are noted everywhere including the TD Bank`s Frank McKenna.
By introducing a bunch of IPPs just before test time.
An easy way to skew results and believe me, that is done in our board.
A good summary of our public school system in NS.
“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
Donald Rumsfeld
“Children show reading failure for many reasons, including limited exposure prior to school, developmental delay, language delay, and phonological-based learning disabilities. Learning to read is a complex process and our children in grades primary to 3 need evidence-based classroom-wide approaches, standardized screening in Grade Primary and again in Grade 1 for “red flags” for reading failure, and evidence-based models for small-group intervention for children showing risk factors for reading failure and for those diagnosed with learning disabilities.
These risk factors and standardized screening methods for identifying those at highest risk are well established and our school psychologists and speech and language pathologists would be well equipped to provide our schools direction in these areas. It may be that our Department of Education is moving in a good direction, however it is hard to tell as it is unclear what the new model will look like.
I realize I have not expressed the popular opinion here. However, as both a professional psychologist working in this community and a mother of child in Grade 2 with a reading disability who received no intervention at school until well into this year, I feel it is important that we are informed of the current research evidence. Parents are their children’s advocates and it is hard to advocate when we are not informed.
Parents need to know that a child’s reading ability in Grade 3 is the strongest predictor of their future reading. A poor reader in Grade 3 is likely to be a poor reader for life. Many children are not identified as reading disabled until Grade 2 or later and Reading Recovery only targets the bottom 20 per cent. What then?
I am seeking a clear description of the new model and an explanation of the evidence it is built on.
Dr. Julie MacDonald”
http://www.capebretonpost.com/Opinion/Letters%20to%20the%20Editor/2011-03-18/article-2345448/Reading-Recovery-program-should-be-dropped-but-what-will-replace-it/1
The parents with expertise are now stepping in, demanding a clear description of the new model and an explanation of the evidence it is built on. I wonder if the ministry of education is heeding her words.
I was exploring this morning, on the selection process of RR. Overall, by RR teachers they state the children that are selected are the hardest to teach reading. I would indeed question the statement, the hardest to teach reading. Question it on the basis of the RR selection process and the use of the Observation survey. How many children like Julie’s child, in a typical classroom are not selected? I would estimate about 25 % are excluded, because they met expectations or exceeded expectations in parts of the Observation survey.
” The teachers are all trained to access and monitor with the Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement
developed by Dr. Marie Clay. The survey is composed of six evaluative literacy topics: Letter Identification, Word Test, Concepts about Print, Writing, Vocabulary, Hearing and Recording Sounds in Words, and Text Reading.”
Click to access Reading%20Recovery.pdf
Most children would meet expectations in the first 4 tests, and the last two, the difficulties would show. These children would not be selected, since they would not be considered the highest at risk for reading failure, compared to the students who for whatever reason are having difficulties in all 6 areas of the Observation Survey. As I was exploring the comments from RR teachers on hard to teach children that are in the RR program, one common phase was used, that these children were not exposed to an early enriched literacy environment in their early years, compared to the children who were not selected.
Is RR an intervention program for a few children at great expense, as a means to keep whole language and the many variations entrenched in our public schools? I would say a resounding yes, based on the difficulties and hardship that is occurring across Canada, for children who have reading and writing problems and need access to systematic explicit phonic programs., but are not receiving the crucial lessons. I would say yes, based on the stats, and as Joanne has expressed in her last post. I would say yes, based on the increasing numbers that have been identified with LD, and other learning disorders even though RR makes the claim that their is far fewer students that are identified as SE, because of their whole language approach. I would say yes, based on the increasing numbers of students accessing private tutors for reading and writing problems. I would say yes, based on the number of remedial courses at the college and university levels to address the reading and writing issues that is the result of using whole language approaches. I would say yes, based on high school teachers who must deal with the various levels of reading and writing of our students, ranging from a low of grade 5 level to the few who have excellent reading and writing skills. I would say yes, based on the achievement grades in the provinces that have public exams for grade 12 students. Anywhere between 45 % to 20 % will fail the public exams, and yet the mantra here from the educrats the fault lies with the student. In part but what they do not tell the public a good part of the failure rates in public exams, is the reading and writing levels of these students. RR, whole language and the other progressive education methods is the source of most of the troubles in achievement of students. The only achievement of whole language has succeeded, is that students can read and write, but for the greater majority of students that they are not very good readers and writers.
I wish parents could vote-there needs to be a group formed that would work hand in hand with the government in choosing a reading intervention as well as methodology for instruction.
It seems the ultimate form of bullying to not give parents and their children an intervention that is based on the research;as Nancy said,with what we know about LD and Reading,the critical time between K-3 to fix it or 75% of them will always be behind,parents need representation.
How can we be assured that corruption will not come into the equation?Sorry,I am skeptical,so many of us who are in this field and know about the research say,”what is it?”
Well,it could be many things,one thing for sure is that what goes on makes no logical sense.
Yes,it could be edubabble and it could be something else.
Publishers should have to present to parents like Julie and Nancy and votes come from both sectors.Parents are truly bullied in Education.
We recently watched the power of the media in Ontario where a young woman could not get an early stage treatment drug for her small breast tumour because the tumour was too small.I couldn`t help but think of RR.
Perhaps people don`t see the psychological death that children go through when they don`t learn to read and spell and the hell their parents go through along with them.The discouragement is overwhelming,9 years of schooling after grade 3 in this state-if they make it through.
Parents should be involved,like this woman who went to the media for her medication-she got approved.
I can tell you,we have enough research knowledge to help all children learn to read,spell and write;like Marilyn Jaeger Adams says,1-3% have a true reading disability,the others are victims of educational malpractice.
Ask yourself this question, why no groundswell? Could it be that most people are satisfied and simply don’t see things your way? Just asking.
Competent teachers with adequate classroom resources don’t need all this pre-packaged nonsense that costs millions every time these ballyhooed programs fall short – and so far, all of them have fallen short.
“Parents should be involved,like this woman who went to the media for her medication-she got approved.
I can tell you,we have enough research knowledge to help all children learn to read,spell and write;like Marilyn Jaeger Adams says,1-3% have a true reading disability,the others are victims of educational malpractice.”
I also seen the same analogy as Joanne did, when I read about the woman with the small tumor. Like the old saying, how pregnant does one need to be, to have access for diagnostic testing in the health system back in the 1970s, and now in the year 2011, how much cancer is needed to have access to drugs and other medical procedures?
I would state, that it is educational malpractice concerning my youngest child. Especially when viewing in the light of the reading science and cognitive science, how many students never reach their full potential and more importantly reach a standard level of the basics that is crucial to navigate in adulthood, without the need of the state to intervene producing more ‘nanny’ laws, regulations and adult remedial education?
I would state it is educational malpractice, when the primary grades are loaded with education outcomes.
“Outcome-based education (OBE) is a recurring education reform model. It is a student-centered learning philosophy that focuses on empirically measuring student performance, which are called outcomes. OBE contrasts with traditional education, which primarily focuses on the resources that are available to the student, which are called inputs. While OBE implementations often incorporate a host of many progressive pedagogical models and ideas, such as reform mathematics, block scheduling, project-based learning and whole language reading, OBE in itself does not specify or require any particular style of teaching or learning. Instead, it requires that students demonstrate that they have learned the required skills and content. However in practice, OBE generally promotes curricula and assessment based on constructivist methods and discourages traditional education approaches based on direct instruction of facts and standard methods. Though it is claimed the focus is not on “inputs”, OBE generally is used to justify increased funding requirements, increased graduation and testing requirements, and additional preparation, homework, and continuing education time spent by students, parents and teachers in supporting learning.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcome-based_education
It never made sense when my youngest was in the primary grades, to be tested for knowledge with no concern over reading and writing issues. It never made no sense to me, the school’s emphasis was on knowledge content, and not my youngster’s ability in reading and writing skills. Alas, the favourite response from the educrats and still is, there is no problems in reading and writing skills, because the student has made a passing grade. By grade 3, I observed that my youngest was more or less passing in language arts and math, for a reason. Questions that dealt with the whole concept, she would aced these questions, and questions that dealt with a small piece of the whole concept she would fail with. The educrats had no explanation for this, except that it was used as another reason, that she is meeting the outcomes, and therefore there is no issues with reading and writing. By grade 4, I made another observation that about 60 % of her grade 4 class had the same issue as my youngest, receiving C or below, in math and language arts. I concluded, there has to be something more since most students were not suffering from a learning disability. What are the differences between students who are Bs or higher and students who are Cs and lower?
Rather simple, it is their reading ability. The use of whole language and progressive teaching methods creates the dynamics and sets the stage for grade 7 and up, where passing a test, become highly dependent on the reading skills of the students. When my child was in SE math for two years, she was considered the ‘whiz kid’, by the other children. She became the ‘whiz kid’ for a reason, she had a much higher skill in reading, than the other SE children. I have worked with my youngest on her reading and writing skills over the years, because I believe that basic reading and writing skills are crucial for her to reach her full potential, as well as the other 60 % of students.
Since I live in a small rural community, I have the advantage of observing my youngest and her classmates over the years. I have noted the same 60 and 40 split where knowledge is not the problem, but the reading and writing skills of students, and their ability to expressed themselves on paper. The same 60 % and 40 % still holds at the high school level, where 60 % of the students have weaker skills in reading and writing, than the students who represent the 40 %. Students sitting in the 60 percent group, have to work much harder to obtain a B or more in core subjects, because of the weaker reading and writing skills.
Whole language and other progressive teaching methods doesn’t much care about ensuring each student reaches a standard level of 70 % or higher, in basic reading and writing. The goal for the current public education system is at the 50 % mark for basic reading and writing skills, which is the minimum needed to pass tests at the 50 percent mark in the future grades, and to meet outcomes based on OBE. It is here that parents have the most difficulty with educrats, because the majority of students are already reaching the public education system’s low standards at the 50 % grade. In my day when I went to school, 50 % was a failing grade, and the goal of my school was to ensure that all students reached a 70 %. But than again, back in my day, students were taught the basics and given the tools to addressed the individual’s learning weaknesses that targeted the reading and writing issues.
My youngest if anything, needed systematic explicit phonic instruction from the beginning, and yet it was met with denials and turn downs based on the 50 percent grade from the start. Whole language and progressive methods have lead parents down the garden path of mediocrity for our children. But as Joanne has suggested parents should become more vocal, and start to asked tough questions on achievement, especially in standard testing. If anything they should start demanding hard copies of the standard testing, to ascertain where their child stands in rankings and comb the hard copy for reading and writing issues. Often is the case, students are not doing well on testing, because of the reading and writing issues and not the knowledge, at the elementary level. At the high school level, it is a combination of the two where knowledge is harder to retain, the weaker the reading and writing skills are. Parents should never accept the word of the educrats, without questioning carefully what lies behind the decisions and policies of the educrats.
As to Doug’s question, “Could it be that most people are satisfied and simply don’t see things your way? Just asking.” It has been my experience that educrats used this ruse, for the parents who have children with learning difficulties, and are asking for more help, or are dissatisfied with the options. Just like the woman with the small tumor, and where the health authorities response was to downplay the cancer, and emphasis was put on the size of the tumor. A lot of people fall for it where medical knowledge within the average person framework, because most people do not processed high levels of technical medical knowledge, and as a result cannot question health authorities’ decisions. The same for people, when dealing with education. In the case of education, often people do not have all available information, and therefore are making decisions for their children strictly on the basis of information obtained from the education system and the educrats. As for questioning it, that depends entirely on the parent’s personal knowledge and experiences, and trust levels.
A lot of parents do not dare to voice their dissatisfaction because they think many other parents are happy with the education system that is repeated daily by the educrats. I have not met a parent, who have not expressed dissatisfaction at some level regarding the reading, writing and numeracy levels of their children. And the public education do not dare to asked the right questions, where an explanation is required, beyond the yes and no check boxes.
Here is another study that does support RR.
“The failure of RR to significantly improve the reading performances of children in the present study is most likely due to the instructional philosophy and practices of RR. Reading Recovery stresses the importance of using information from many sources without recognizing that skills and strategies involving phonological information are of primary importance in beginning literacy development. Yet, children in the present study who were placed in RR were clearly deficient in phonological processing skills during the year preceding entry into the programme, and during the 18 months following the programme. The failure of the RR programme to eliminate the phonological processing deficiencies of the discontinued children is not surprising because systematic instruction in word-level strategies is not a central component of RR programmes. Rather, RR instruction stresses the importance of using sentence context cues for identifying unfamiliar words in text with as little as possible letter-sound information being used to confirm language predictions. Even with the emphasis on the development of language prediction skills, however, the discontinued RR children performed poorly.
We conclude that the findings of the study do not support the philosophy of RR that reading instruction should focus on teaching children to use sentence context cues as a major strategy for identifying unfamiliar words in text. Rather, our results provide further support for Pressley’s (1998) claim that reliance on the use of semantic or syntactic cues in recognizing unfamiliar words is a highly ineffective strategy. For Reading Recovery to be more effective in a whole language intsructional context, the results of this study strongly support the view that children in RR programmes should be encouraged to look for familiar spelling patterns first, and use context to confirm hypotheses about what unfamiliar words might be based on available word-level information. ”
http://www.nrrf.org/rr_study_chapman.htm
Here is an interesting news article: “The Nova Scotia Government stresses the new program will be much more cost-efficient because it eliminates the training costs and fees associated with Reading Recovery, which is an internationally trademarked program that the Nova Scotia government pays to license.
Nova Scotia was the first province in Canada to implement Reading Recovery province-wide. Since 2006, more than 750 Grade 1 students each year have completed the program in either English or French.
According to Doug Hadley, Coordinator of Communication Services for the Halifax Regional School Board, approximately 60 per cent of the students who participated in Reading Recovery met standards for their grade level and needed no further literacy support when they left the program.”
http://peninsula-news.kingsjournalism.com/?p=999
What is assume to the readers, that the other 40 % needed further literacy support. The percentages are not something that anyone should be boasting about, in the light of the costs of RR. As well, it is further evidence of the ineffective methods of RR and whole language.
According to Doug Hadley, Coordinator of Communication Services for the Halifax Regional School Board, approximately 60 per cent of the students who participated in Reading Recovery met standards for their grade level and needed no further literacy support when they left the program.”
______________________________________________
Does that include those with IPPs who are not tested?
If not, are those numbers bogus?
Andrew very few children if any, received IPPs in the primary grades, associated with learning disabilities and reading disorders. A lucky few, will receive assessments by grade 3, but for the most part the large bulk of them are not tested until after grade 5, but before the start of high school. It is within the 40 % are the children that may be identified as needing an assessment for reading and learning difficulties. They may be identified, but due to long waiting lists, it may take 2 to 3 years to get tested. On top of that, there is children within the 60 % group, that are children like mine – the dyslexics that do have major problems with phonemic awareness, and has been found, that they also have had delays in oral speech. Some would call them stealth dyslexics, because they also have strong strengths that masks their phonemic awareness weaknesses. How many children like that, are just memorizing the words, appearing to be very successful in the RR program, and by grade 3 and higher grades are having great difficulties in reading and writing, because the strategies that were taught in RR, are no longer effective in the text material that is typical in the elementary grades.
RR methods in the stats, are not only bogus but I would call it cooking the numbers, to produce only fantastic success. Much the same way, the public education system hides the the bad results in their stats. RR does not count the children who have discontinued the program, and that includes the ones who need further testing. Overall, it is about 30 % of the RR children who are under the discontinued column, leaving about 70 % under the successful column. As for follow-up in the later grades, there isn’t any real tracking of these children, to confirmed their reading ability, by using standard reading assessments to confirm it.
Andrew very few children if any, received IPPs in the primary grades, associated with learning disabilities and reading disorders.
______________________________________________
Not so in the AVRSB. My wife is a former P-1 teacher.
But Andrew, how many children with the typical garden variety reading disorder LD, have been assessed for LD in grade 1? Most parents who have children like this are not identified early on, because most school districts are not testing for it.
“Surrey is one of only a few B.C. school districts where teachers routinely screen students in kindergarten and Grade 1 for phonological awareness — the ability to hear and produce the sounds that make up language. Another district that has also embraced early identification of learning problems is North Vancouver — once the site of a protracted legal battle over whether schools do enough to help their learning disabled students.
In those two districts, students who aren’t able to identify rhyming words and seem unaware of different sounds are flagged for special attention because of concerns that they will also have difficulties learning to read, said Pius Ryan, Surrey’s director of instruction.”
http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun/blogs/reportcard/archive/2010/10/05/children-s-learning-difficulties-identified-early-in-some-school-districts.aspx
I don’t know the evaluation being used, but I am assuming it includes phonemic awareness as well. If all schools were using this kind of testing in early grade 1, children like my youngest, would have been picked up and flagged as being high risk for reading and writing problems. Another program in Ontario, and I am not sure if it is for all the province: “The new Ontario program-the Dynamic Screening and Intervention Model-will help identify kindergarten kids with learning disabilities at 115 schools so teachers can address the problem promptly. “We hear every week of kids who are in high school or just going into post-secondary who are just being diagnosed with a learning disability,” said Yaworski. ”
http://archive.vancourier.com/issues01/094201/news/094201nn10.html
” In Nova Scotia, students who cannot meet grade level outcomes, even with various accommodations, will follow an individualized program plan, better known as an IPP. An IPP will set out the goals for the student, the strategies which will be used to achieve those goals and the roles and responsibilities of teachers and others, such as Speech Language Pathologists or teachers’ assistants”
http://reachability.org/news/articles/the-rights-of-special-needs-children/
From what I understand, an IPP in Nova Scotia comes after the process of determining if a child has special needs. A child with autism, or another medical disorder can be easily determined because most of these disorders if not all, have all ready been determined and assessed through the health system, prior to entry into school. On the other hand, reading and writing disorders are a different kettle of fish within the public education system. The main indicator for schools, for the invisible disorders such as low phonemic awareness/reading disorders, is first the assessments/evaluations conducted by educational psychologists, and than the IPP is put in place. But the kicker is that the process does not start until the child is no longer meeting grade level outcomes, despite the school’s attempts at addressing the reading and writing issues, prior to the assessment. How many children who may have LD/reading problems are not meeting the outcomes in grade 1? I would say based on my own experience as a parent, most are meeting the outcomes, but just barely. My youngest, in grade 1 was meeting the outcomes, despite her obvious signs in writing and learning to read. I began requesting an assessment for my child in grade 1, and finally received one three years later. Throughout the first three years, it was insisted by the board staff, the principal and one teacher, that she did not have a learning disability, nor a reading problem or a writing problem. The assessment stated otherwise, and my story is typical of most parents who have children with learning disabilities. They are not identified until much later in the school system, and for some children they are not identified at all throughout the K to 12 system.
The RR program would not applied to my child, because she would not meet the criteria in their Observation Survey, that does not test for phonemic awareness, the major indicator for a reading disorder. Children like my youngest, are found in every grade 1 class, but they are usually not in the bottom 20 %, because of their compensatory skills that will masked the reading and writing problems.
Andrew, how does the board sort out the children who may be at a high risk for reading and writing disorders, and to developed IPPs for this set of children in the early primary years?
“Official testing” isn’t required to know that there is a learning disability. A competent teacher may not be able to label the disability but s/he will usually notice that there’s a problem and, if the resources are available, do something about it right from the git-go. But, as the educrats would have it, the students aren’t “officially tested” until the end of Grade 2 at which time they are already 3 years behind since the resources simply aren’t available at the classroom level.
This is true Andrew,it`s their whole language theory-that Reading is a developmental milestone.That`s why they postpone it.Most teachers are taught at University that it will ‘kick in” and parents shouldn`t worry.They tell parents that till the end of Grade 2,then they see the behaviour escalate and they fret that things are NOT getting better and they start to go downhill FAST.
SELF ESTEEM ERODES,ANXIETY ESCALATES.Child being left behind,on my God,it is terrible to see this right at this junction.Parents besides themselves.Teachers,helpless.
However,anyone who has invested in RR is very well intentioned.It`s the fact that it doesn`t work for most kids and doesn`t stick that disappoints.There was a tremendous amount of good will in that purchase.My God,why else would you buy something so prohibitively expensive.
Nancy is truly astounding,she is doing what I did for years,applying logic and arguments that are completely brilliant,astute and back by research.
Since education is insanity based as a realm,the logic flies in the face of the educrats.
Nice to meet a teacher who knows it`s a problem that will exacerbate annually.
A study done by the Oxford Centre of Child Studies at McMaster, the main conclusion “The striking differences in school readiness within language groups in relation to the children’s fluency in the language of instruction are a
very clear indication that more effort has to be directed toward language support for families with young children. Placed within the appropriate context, these results can guide practical intervention and prevention strategies at school and before, as well as provide broad-based background for more detailed, in depth investigations of specific populations.”
Click to access 2010_05_06_SR_subgroups_SN_Lang_CCL.pdf
Also found the majority of the special needs children in the public education system, are children with language and speech difficulties. It also offers insights on why children are not receiving the educational services early in the primary grades.
As Andrew had stated, ” A competent teacher may not be able to label the disability but s/he will usually notice that there’s a problem and, if the resources are available, do something about it right from the git-go.” But the educrats prevents it, by not supplying the proper resources, and testing such as DIBELS – the free early literacy testing, or another type of assessment that measures the same things as in the DIBELS.
“The DIBELS measures assess the 5 Big Ideas in early literacy identified by the National Reading Panel:
Phonemic Awareness
Alphabetic Principle
Accuracy and Fluency
Vocabulary
Comprehension ”
https://dibels.uoregon.edu/
I wonder how many teachers in Canada, uses the DIBELS for assessing literacy concerns for students they have concerns with? Or is the DIBELS assessment frown upon by the educrats? Note here, apparently in Ontario may have some districts using DIBELS, since DIBELS stands for
Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy and Ontario early literacy assessment is called, ” Dynamic Screening and Intervention Model” Perhaps Ontario educrats, created a new model based on the DIBELS, and than charged the boards and schools for the use of the material.
I remember bringing in a DIBELS assessment twice, in grade 2 and 3, among the other early reading assessments that were available to the public on the web. All stated phonemic awareness problems, and the recommendation that she needed reading remediation. At the time, I did not know as much as I do now, so I was pretty naive back than, so I accepted the lame reasons from the educrats not to trust the results of a DIBELS or other early reading assessments, and secondly, since I was not a qualified administrator to test my child on reading problems, that in itself was problematic. Meanwhile, DIBELS is an effective assessment, short in duration for teachers to determine problem areas in reading, and target remedial help for the problem areas. At least the teacher has the blind fold remove, and is better able to help their students, and so unlike the current approach, where the teacher is blind folded, and the best one can do, is using the hit and miss method or right on target. Resources as well as systematic explicit phonics instruction is lacking. One can have all the resources to draw from, but when the reading approach is whole language, or one of the many variations, the resources may not be used as they were meant to be used, and the resources may not be appropriate for the children who are having reading problems.
“
Teachers are NOT PERMITTED to do any unofficial testing.
All I know is what I see. I have had some RR training. As a Reading Specialist in our building, I find that most of the kids taken by the RR teacher usually have such rapid decline that the so-called success they exited with, doesn’t last long. So have they truly achieved success? By 3rd grade, most kids end back up in the literacy center where they receive a variety of approaches based upon need, an RTI approach. It is a very expensive program for school districts to maintain when there really is just limited short-term success.
The cult-like attitude makes me sick. I have heard the same “RR speak” over and over like there she is a brain washed zombie.
Elizabeth, your observations mirror those from studies on RR out of Australia and NZ. RR’s quick gains do not stick with students. It’s not worth the effort and expense. There are much better remedial programs (as Jo-Anne can attest) using systematic, explicit phonics. Even better is to use them in the first place.
Yes,I agree wholeheartedly.It`s a marketing phenomenon,not one that works,the gains don`t hold because the methodology is flawed.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/01/30/ED20575.DTL
This probably reflects your experience-next they`ll buy levelled readers,if they haven`ty already done it,rather than teach properly or remediate properly in the first place.
They`re all invested in illiteracy because they are not accountable to their population.Education is just like that,anything goes from the “delivery” group.