Lessons Learned from Other State Reading First Programs

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Lessons Learned from Other State Reading First
Programs
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Reading First Goals

• The Reading First program involved the following
  steps
• First, the relevant research on the relationship
  between reading instruction and student outcomes
  was synthesized.
• Second, the most important curriculum priorities
  and the most effective pedagogical practices were
  clearly identified.
• Third, the curricular and pedagogical priorities
  must provide the basis for the Reading First
  legislation to guide K-3 reading instruction
  nation-wide.

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Discriminating Among Examples and Non-Examples

• Reading First emphasizes the most important
  instructional practices. We must have clear
  priorities for instructional investments. We
  must discriminate among examples and non-examples
  of Reading First priorities and use this
  information to systematically and progressively
  improve instruction.

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Source of Examples andNon-Examples

• In state decisions to distribute Reading First
  funds as grants to school districts, grant
  reviewers are required to identify examples and
  non-examples of Reading First priorities. The
  following information was abstracted from grant
  reviewer recommendations.

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Issue 1. Portfolio-based Assessments Problems
and Issues
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Reading Research Validation

• The Reading First research syntheses did not
  recommend portfolio-based assessments.

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Education Research Standards

• Education research methodology provides very
  explicit standards for determining the
  reliability and validity of assessment
  instruments. The use of terms, such as
  authentic assessment, do not negate the need
  for meeting educational research criteria for
  reliability and validity of assessments.

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Reading First Regulations

• The U.S. Department of Education supports a
  national panel, the Reading First Assessment
  Committee, that identifies assessment instruments
  that meet the reliability and validity
  requirements of Reading First. The panel
  assessment categories are
• 1. Screening
• 2. Diagnostic
• 3. Progress monitoring, and
• 4. Outcome assessment.
• Portfolio-based assessment instruments do not
  appear on the panels listing of approved
  instruments.

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An Appropriate Emphasis?

• Instructional and assessment activities can be
  complementary, or these activities can compete
  for limited resources, such as instructional
  time. Any time-intensive activity, such as
  portfolio-based assessment, must have strong
  research support. The most vulnerable learners,
  already at risk because of limited instructional
  time, will be most adversely impacted.

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Issue 2. Technology-based Delivery Instruction
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Reading Research Validation

• When we place the first priority on the research
  syntheses addressing student learning outcomes,
  the type of instructional delivery system has a
  lower priority. A delivery system descriptor,
  such as technology-based, must still be
  defended based on research on students learning
  outcomes in reading.

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Cost Effectiveness

• If the content of a technology-based delivery
  system does have research validation, then it
  must compete for selection based on other
  factors, such as cost. All other things being
  equal, will a technology-based delivery system
  with an expensive infrastructure be able to
  compete for the limited financial resources?

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Delivery Systems and Pedagogical Priorities

• Reading First priorities include an emphasis on
  intensive, flexible, homogeneous, small-group
  instruction. Most technology-based delivery
  systems place the emphasis on highly
  individualized student instruction, not group
  instruction.

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The K-3 Context

• Research on the cost effectiveness of
  technology-based delivery systems tends to be
  more supportive in high school and
  post-high-school settings. For the K-3 reading
  instruction setting, with the need to link oral
  language and written language, the typical
  technology-based delivery systems may have
  limited value.

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Issue 3. Non-Aligned Application Programs
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Reading First Priorities

• Reading First is the Centerpiece of the No
  Child Left Behind (NCLB) program. Instructional
  practices must effectively address the prevention
  of reading failure, and therefore, ensure the
  acquisition and application of beginning reading
  skills with all learners, including learners at
  risk of reading failure.

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Acquisition and Application

• Reading instruction involves
• the acquisition of specific reading skills, and
• the application of these skills to text and
  books. The alignment of these two steps can
  vary. For example, Reading First requires the
  teaching of specific decoding and the immediate
  application of these skills to decodable text.
  This is a highly aligned sequence between skill
  acquisition and skill application.

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Goal Emphasis

• If a goal of a program is the application of
  reading skills, not the acquisition of beginning
  reading skills, then we must guard against an
  over-emphasis on non-aligned practice and
  application at the expense of the more fragile
  and intensive process of reading skill
  acquisition.

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Goal Emphasis

• Many application programs usually involve the
  student reading a sequence of books that have
  been arranged in order of difficulty, or
  levels. If a formal assessment is conducted,
  it usually emphasizes comprehension, and the
  assessment may involve a computer. For most
  students at risk of reading failure, the major
  causal skill deficits are decoding skills, not
  comprehension skills. If the assessment system
  emphasizes comprehension and generates a
  non-diagnostic points score, how will the
  assessment inform instruction for most students
  at risk of reading failure?

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Appropriate Contexts

• The prevention of reading failure with at-risk
  learners requires a major intensive and highly
  competent investment by teachers, instructional
  leaders, and staff development personnel.
  Application programs should align with the
  specific acquisition skills and should not
  inappropriately threaten and replace the major
  investments needed for reading acquisition goals.

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Appropriate Contexts

• Too often application programs are marketed as
  one-size fits all programs that do not require
  intensive, systematic, explicit instruction by
  the teacher. These programs do not require the
  associated major staff development investments
  needed for successful decoding instruction.

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Issue 4. Sustained Silent Reading
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Sustained Silent Reading

• The Reading First research synthesis failed to
  find strong support for sustained, silent
  reading. Such activities appear to counter the
  required emphasis on systematic, explicit
  instruction and limit the teachers ability to
  monitor student progress and provide timely
  instructional adjustments.
• As with many of these issues, the more the
  student is at risk of reading failure, the more
  adverse the impact of an inappropriate
  over-emphasis on sustained silent reading.

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Issue 5. Differentiated Instruction Not Linked
to Reading First Priorities
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Differentiated Instruction Not Linked to Reading
First Priorities

• Differentiated instruction involves instructional
  planning based on selected student
  characteristics. Reading First student
  characteristics are based on assessments that
  identify student needs in phonemic awareness,
  phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
  Very often, teachers establish small, flexible
  groups to address these changing needs.
• Differentiated instruction is often linked to
  student learning styles, brain theories, and
  multiple intelligences. These are not Reading
  First research priorities.

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Differentiated Instruction Not Linked to Reading
First Priorities

• Where is the research evidence to support
  instructional planning based on these non-Reading
  First priorities?
• How do you design and implement rational,
  effective, staff development that requires
  teachers to use conflicting theories for student
  grouping and instructional delivery?

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Differentiated Instruction Not Linked to Reading
First Priorities

• In some areas, such as learning styles, there is
  no lack of research. More than 30 years ago,
  programmatic research was conducted based on the
  students auditory, visual, and kinesthetic
  preferences. The answers were clear.
  Instruction based on such learning styles placed
  many students at risk for reading failure.
  Regardless of a students learning style
  preference, the student must achieve competence
  in phonemic awarenessan auditory skill.
• Differentiated instruction requires valid,
  reliable student assessments. Many approaches to
  differentiated instruction are very evasive about
  the reliability and validity of the assessment
  process required as the first step in
  differentiated instruction.

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Issue 6. Sight Vocabularies
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Sight Vocabularies

• The Centerpiece of the failed Look and Say
  reading approaches of 30 years ago was the notion
  of teaching a high frequency word list by rote,
  whole-word, sight instruction.
• The Reading First research synthesis is clear
  Decoding skills are the gateway to competent
  reading. For the child at risk of reading
  failure, we must emphasize decoding as the
  primary word attack skill.

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Sight Vocabularies

• What message do we give teachers and students
  when we overemphasize sight vocabulary
  instruction at the expense of decoding
  instruction?
• It should be noted High frequency words can be
  effectively taught with decoding skills, even if
  all words are not phonetically regular.
• How many students are inappropriately identified
  as learning disabled in second and third
  grades, when their over-dependence on rote
  memorization of whole words fails them as the
  vocabulary requirements explode?

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Issue 7. Balanced Literacy and Related Program
Descriptors
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Balanced Literacy and Related Program
Descriptors

• Descriptors, such as balanced literacy and
  technology-based, often serve to move the
  priorities from the research to terms that have
  political correctness and marketing appeal.
• Too often, teacher college textbooks and school
  reading programs are marketing by reference to
  current fads rather than their research
  validation.
• Marketing literature supporting such fads is
  often accompanied by seductive half-truths, such
  as, There is no one best way to teach, or, you
  can make the research say anything.

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Balanced Literacy and Related Program
Descriptors

• The reality is that the two critical attributes
  of a profession are
• 1. Respect for the law, and
• 2. Respect for the client.
• Respect for the client requires one to place a
  priority on the best synthesis of the research on
  the impact of instruction on the student (our
  client), and not on passing fads and perceptions
  of political correctness.

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Balanced Literacy and Related Program
Descriptors

• The biggest challenge will come from descriptors
  purposefully and inappropriately linked to
  Reading First terms. Marketing a program as a
  phonics program that supports Reading First may
  or may not be a valid claim. There must be
  program-specific research to support the claims.
  For example, the research on phonemic awareness
  indicates that only half the commonly taught
  phonemic awareness skills are important to the
  development of later reading skills. Skills
  linking phonemes to letter symbols, blending, and
  segmentation skills are important prerequisites
  to later reading success. The fact that a
  program is marketed as a phonemic awareness
  program does not mean that the Reading First
  research validation requirement has been met.

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Summary

• A. The positive impact of the Reading First
  program can be threatened by activities that
• Compete for and reduce the instructional time
  available for Reading First activities.
• Confuse students with ineffective alternatives
  that counter Reading First curriculum priorities.
• Confuse teachers and compound instructional
  planning with alternatives that inappropriately
  compete with, or replace the Reading First
  priorities.

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Summary (continued)

• B. The inappropriate implementation of the
  Reading First program will
• Adversely affect all students and have a
  devastating, life-long impact on the most
  vulnerable students Those at risk of reading
  failure.
• Generate evaluation data that will wrongly reduce
  confidence in the Reading First program and the
  needed high expectations of teacher competence
  and student success.

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Summary (continued)

• C. Layering is the antithesis of quality
  control in the adoption of new, effective
  practice to replace failed practices.
• Federal recommendations for the effective
  implementation of the Reading First program make
  reference to program layering.
• Program layering involves the inappropriate
  addition, or layering of the Reading First
  program on top of existing failing practices.
• The point is consistently made Reading First
  involves both The adoption of research-validated
  practices of Reading First and the replacement of
  existing, failing practices.
• The avoidance of layering will require a
  detailed analysis of existing practices.