Reading 2011

 National Literacy Policies: The View from the Classroom

Kathy Au, Kenneth Goodman, Patrick Shannon, Elfrieda Hiebert, Lesley Morrow,

and Robert Calfee

A Proposal by the Reading Hall of Fame for a Symposium at the 2011 Convention

of the International Reading Association, May 8-11, 2011, Orlando FL

Abstract

            During the past two decades, particularly with the advent of the No Child Left Behind Act, federal legislation has centered on the teaching of literacy in elementary classrooms. The symposium focuses on the influence of shifts in federal policy on the classroom setting – on curriculum, instruction, and assessment – with research and policy as background elements. The presenters will review historical trends, including NCLB, Reading First and Race to the Top, emphasizing parallel changes in the character of literacy instruction: what is taught, how it is taught and tested, and the relation of literacy to other facets of the elementary curriculum. Significant changes have occurred in the centrality of literacy and in the teacher’s role in managing the place of literacy in different classroom contexts. During the past decade,  the accountability theme has taken shape in the form of standardized test scores, with dire circumstances falling upon schools and districts that fail to meet ever-increasing performance levels. While the effects are all-encompassing, the most significant impact has fallen arguably on the teaching of reading in the elementary grades. In turn, the elementary years of schooling have increasingly centered on test-based instruction of basic reading skills. Deleterious consequences have also appeared in secondary schools, evidence that the focus on standardized tests, which has increased elementary test scores (in mathematics more than reading), has led to little transfer in the later grades. Test indicators have increased, but student engagement in the educational venture shows little gain as a consequence. Of particular importance is the projection of these changes to coming decades, and the implications of these trends for matters such as the professionalization of the teaching corps, the achievement gap, and the wellbeing of the nation’s system of public schooling. In addition to a critical analysis of the condition of early literacy  past and present, the symposium will put forward alternative courses of action for the future. 

Introduction

            The past half-century has seen significant shifts in the educational policies and practices of the federal government in the United States, ranging from post-Sputnik investments in science and mathematics to the ESEA legislation designed to alleviate the effects of poverty on student achievement. In the past two decades, particularly with the advent of the No Child Left Behind Act, federal legislation has centered on the teaching of literacy in elementary classrooms. The Hall of Fame (HOF) symposium at the 2010 Convention of the Association included presentations that brought attention to these developments, leading our group to consider a project designed to explore this territory more comprehensively (see attachment). Consistent with the historical role of the Hall, the project now under development aims to consider past, present, and future aspects of the federal role in literacy instruction, looking in turn at the areas of practice, research, and policy.

            The proposed symposium focuses on the classroom setting – on curriculum, instruction, and assessment – with research and policy as background elements. Snapshots of elementary classrooms in the decades since the end of World War II reveal substantial variations over time, from the Dick-and-Jane period to the whole-language era, and most recently the “Reading First” programs. The presenters will review these historical trends, emphasizing parallel changes in the character of literacy instruction: what is taught, how it is taught and tested, and the relation of literacy to other facets of the elementary curriculum. Significant changes have occurred in the centrality of literacy and in the teacher’s role in managing the place of literacy in different classroom contexts. Of particular importance is the projection of these changes to coming decades, and the implications of these trends for matters such as the professionalization of the teaching corps, the achievement gap, and the wellbeing of the nation’s system of public schooling. In additional to a critical analysis of the condition of early literacy  past and present, the symposium will put forward alternative courses of action for the future. 

Kathy Au (Keynoter, SchoolRise, LLC). Fulfilling the Promise of Standards-Based Education:  Four Policy Principles

What will it take to fulfill the promise of standards-based education in the United States?   We begin with the premise that the goal of standards-based education is to improve the quality of instruction provided to all children, not merely to categorize schools as successful or failing.  The first principle involves directing federal and state policies toward what Fullan (2003; also cf. Au and Valencia, 2010) calls Horizon 2.   Systems that aim for Horizon 2 focus on students’ attainment of higher level thinking, such as comprehension and critical thinking, reasoning, and problem solving.  The second principle proposes that state and federal policy should encourage schools to focus on doing a few things well.  Current policy fosters Christmas tree schools (Newmann, Smith, Allensworth, & Bryk, 2001), which fall into a cycle of undertaking too many initiatives at the same time, consequently succeeding on few if any of them.  The third principle calls for a return to the concept of opportunity-to-learn standards (Porter, 1993) in order to ensure equitable conditions for teaching and learning across schools and classrooms.   The final principle addresses ways to support teachers’ use of formative assessments that guide and improve instruction, in contrast to the current emphasis on summative high-stakes assessments (Nichols & Berliner, 2007).   Reviewing the history of the federal role in elementary education can be usefully conducted using these principles as lenses for analysis and for recommendations.  Policies linking these principles are increasingly essential in order for standards-based education to work for teachers and students rather than against them. 

References

Au, K., & Valencia, S. Fulfilling the promise of standards-based education: Promising policy principles. In Language Arts, 87(5), 373-380.

Fullan, M. (2003). Change forces with a vengeance. London: Routledge Farmer.

Newmann, F. M., Smith, B., Allensworth, E., & Bryk, A. S. (2001). Instructional program coherence:  What it is and why it should guide school improvement policy. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 23(4), 297-321.

Nichols, S. L., & Berliner, D. C. (2007). How high-stakes testing corrupts America's schools. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

Porter, A. (1993). School delivery standards. Educational Researcher, 22(5), 24-30.

Ken Goodman (Respondent, University of Arizona).  Whose knowledge is worth what?

A critical issue in literacy education today is not what knowledge exists but rather what knowledge is worth paying attention to. In the days of Galileo and Copernicus, the only knowledge worth attending to was not even in the holy books, but in the official dogma of the church as it interpreted the scriptures. Copernicus waited until he was dying to publish his findings. Galileo published his last work in secret because his scientific findings and the accompanying theoretical explanations challenged that dogma. And regardless of its origins, knowledge that challenged the prevailing dogma was viewed as heresy.

In the context of 21^st century America, everything that we as educators have learned about literacy through our research and the theory we have built from that work is less valued than conceptions of literacy that serve the political and economic purposes of those who have the power to control the decision-making of federal state and local politicians. The reason that political conceptions have become paramount in the past decade or two has little to do with literacy, but with the political formulation of policies and practices conducted by individuals and groups with little knowledge of the classroom, other than their personal experiences as a student.

Ironically, the elevation of pseudo-science over science has led a broad array of literacy researchers to draw together because of the realization that, although we may disagree on specific aspects of literacy, what we do agree on is the product of a shared history that is largely ignored or even denigrated by current federal policies and mandates. We therefore have an obligation to speak out as a collective.

Elfrieda Hiebert (Respondent. University of California, Berkeley) Who controls textbooks? Since the advent of McGuffey’s Readers in the 1830’s, curriculum and instruction for early reading has been governed by basal reading textbooks (Kaestle, 1991). The textbook publisher quickly assumed a major role in determining the content of the various series; the challenge was to develop series that were attractive to the clients, including many one-room schools, along with large emerging urban districts. Until recent decades, public schooling fell under state mandates, with states leaving many decisions, including the adoption of textbooks, to the local districts. As state funding became a larger component of the support of public schooling, states increasingly used textbook adoptions as a policy lever for achieving a variety of purposes. The increasing federal role, signalled by Nation at Risk, and continuing with NCLB, the National Reading Panel Report, and Reading First, has led to de facto federal control of “approved” reading series during the past few decades.

One of the most significant features of textbooks conforming to federal dictates if the reliance on decodable texts. In the early part of this millennium, first Texas (2000) and then California (2002) replaced an earlier “authentic text” mandate for beginning reading components with a decodable text requirement: 80% of the words in Texas’s first-grade programs needed to be “decodable” and 90% in California. Within these mandates, it was the phoneme (e.g., /b/, /i/) that was the unit of repetition. Texts were judged to be decodable if a phoneme had been introduced in an instructional lesson in the teacher’s lesson. The assumption was: “once taught, then learned.” Since it was the phoneme and not the word that needed to be repeated, the number of unique words was astonishingly high in these programs. The “decodable” policy has meant a substantial increase in the number of rare, unique words —words such as nab, sax, clan, nip, jig, sip, and yip.

Unlike 1967 when beginning reading texts were justifiably described as too easy (e.g.: 323 unique words), 2007 first-grade textbooks have around 2,000 unique words. In 2007, beginning first graders are introduced to more unique words in the first instructional unit than first graders in the 1960s had in the last unit. The decodable policy intends to promote phonics learning by early and intense immersion in letter-sound learning, with less consideration of growth in vocabulary and comprehension abilities. This policy, while consistent with the NPR Report, leaves many students in the late elementary and middle school grades able to pronounce many words that they cannot understand, and to quickly read complex texts that they cannot comprehend.

Reference.Kaestle, C. F. (1991). Literacy in the United States: Readers and reading since 1880. New Haven CT: Yale University Press,

Patrick Shannon (Respondent, Pennsylvania State University). We need green grass to grow all around:  Issues of poverty and segregation.

In  “Fulfilling the Potential of Standards-Based Education,” Au provides insightful recommendations that depart markedly from education policies typical of the last decade. If enacted, Horizon 2 and Opportunity-to-Learn Standards could improve what happens inside schools and classrooms in ways that would help students learn to read -- with civic purpose.  However, like federal policies from the 1980s to the present, these new recommendations stop outside of the school door (as if schools alone could solve societal problems), and they do not take into account the inequitable economic and social conditions in communities that prepare students differently for any school environment  (Benson & Borman, 2010). In his 2009 report, Poverty and Potential, Berliner uses international comparisons of achievement scores to demonstrate that America has two public school systems – one for the white and economically secure and a second for students of color and the poor.  The first system is notably successful; average scores rank near the top in all subjects at all ages internationally. Student achievement in the second system ranks near or at the bottom in each subject. In separate reports from a variety of angles, Berliner (2009), Nisbet (2010), Wilkinson and Pickett (2010) and Sunderman and Mintrop (2009) argue that teachers cannot unite the two systems unless federal and state governments directly address issues of poverty and segregation, because inadequate health care, food insecurity, environmental pollutants, poor housing, and income- and safety-related stress all combine to suppress students’ learning.  This paper will review these findings and argue that educators should align themselves with other groups working toward state and federal policies concerning equity in order to spread the benefits of excellence in American schools.

REFERENCES

James Benson & Geoffry Borman.  (2010).  Family, Neighborhood, and  
School Settings Across Seasons.  Teachers College Record, 112 (5), 1338-1390.

David Berliner (2009). Poverty and Potential:  Out-of-School Factors and School Success.  Education Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit.  University of Colorado. http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential

Richard Nisbett.  (2009).  Intelligence and How to Get It.  NY:  Norton and Company.

Gail Sunderman and Heinrich Mintrop.  (2009) Why High Stakes Accountability Sounds Good but Doesn't Work-- And Why We Keep on Doing It Anyway.  Civil Rights Project at UCLA.

Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett.  (2010).  The Spirit Level:  Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.  New York:  Bloombury.

Lesley Morrow (Respondent, Rutgers the State University). Early Literacy Development: Merging Perspectives That Influence Practice.

This presentation reviews several issues surrounding the types of literacy instruction deemed appropriate in preschool and kindergarten. Two major perspectives are discussed. The child-centered approach emphasizes the social, emotional, physical and natural or spontaneous intellectual development through exploring and experimenting in playful environments.  The skills-based model involves systematic explicit teaching of prescribed literacy skills. Characteristics of each perspective will be outlined, along with an account of how these practices evolved as a result of theory, research, standards, and, in particular, shifts in federal policies during the past several decades. The child-centered approach offers teachers the freedom to provide for exploration and higher order thinking. Explicit instruction exerts control over the teacher with direct scripted instruction of skills. This presentation explores how the two perspectives might blend to create a comprehensive model acceptable to both groups of thought by teaching skills explicitly and providing time for activities that motivate critical thinking. The presentation explores the policy requirements of the composite or balanced model called for in this proposal.

Robert Calfee (Stanford University, Chair and Discussant). The Chair will introduce the Federalization and Literacy project sketched below, including future plans for the overall activity. In particular, it is important to emphasize the futurist perspective on needs and opportunities in this area. The Discussant role will focus on questions designed to promote active audience discussion of the presentations and the project.

The Reading Hall of Fame presents:

Reading 2011 – Knowing Where You Are Coming From --

It’s Not Enough to Know Where You Are Going.

A Symposium Series Exploring the Impact of Federal Policies on Elementary Literacy Practices: Past, Present, and Future

Prepared by Robert Calfee, Ken Goodman, Yetta Goodman, and Lesley Morrow

Overview

The Hall of Fame (HOF) presentations at the 2010 conference of the International Reading Association brought to mind the enormous upheavals in the field of reading during the past half century. Many of these rollercoaster ups and downs have resulted from changes in national policies. Following the 1957 launch of Sputnik and the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, the US Congress moved to improve education across the spectrum, from science to children of poverty. In 1981, the  US National Commission of Excellence in Education began preparation of Nation at Risk, an excoriating indictment of public schools, which emphasized the need for higher standards and greater accountability.

 For the past decade in the US, under the banner of No Child Left Behind, the accountability theme has taken shape as standardized test scores, with dire circumstances falling upon schools and districts that fail to meet ever-increasing performance levels.  Similar actions have taken place in other English speaking countries. This policy, implemented under a Republican administration but with bipartisan support, appears to be continuing in full force under the new Obama administration. The effects of the policy appear widespread, reflecting the leveraging power of national funds, relatively modest though they may be, and of national regulations, which are much more controlling, on all aspects of public schooling. While the effects are all-encompassing, the most significant impact has fallen arguably on the teaching of reading in the elementary grades. In turn, the elementary years of schooling have increasingly centered on test-based instruction of basic reading skills.

The purpose of this project is to cast an historical lens on this situation, focusing in turn on the past (pre-2000), the present (2000-2020), and future (2020 and beyond), and on the effects of shifting national roles  on educational policies, practices, and research activities. The project calls upon the experiences of members of the Reading Hall of Fame, many of whom have lived through the past and into the present, who have contributed substantially to advances in research and practice – and who have also participated in the “reading wars” that have marked portions of this period. Those battles pale in comparison to the turmoil that now afflicts American schools. While elementary schools have been most directly affected by the policies, the deleterious consequences have also appeared in secondary schools, evidence that the focus on standardized tests, which has increased elementary test scores (in mathematics more than reading), has led to little transfer in the later grades. Some test indicators have increased, but student engagement in the educational venture shows little gain as a consequence.

Products: The goal of this proposal is four fold:

(1) to merge an array of informed and experienced voices into a cogent analysis and compelling argument for reviewing these policies;

(2) to arrange presentations to the annual conferences of several major national and international educational organizations for whom literacy is an important mandate,

(3) to combine these activities into a volume that concerned audiences can use in supporting efforts toward policy change. This Overview is designed to serve as a backdrop for the entire project.

(4) to use the international voices of the Hall of Fame members to put American experience in an international setting.

The Reading Hall of Fame is an independent organization of scholars with a wide range of points of view each of whom have made major contributions over a minimum of 25 years to the field of literacy.  The membership is international, which can help to put literacy issues into international well as historic context. Indeed, in the other English speaking countries there have been remarkably similar political issues, and American literacy policies have influenced developing nations.

The series of symposia in this project will encompass the full spectrum of literacy policies from early childhood to adults, but with a focus on the elementary grades, which are the center of most of these policies. While we are most specifically concerned with the scene in the United States, we will involve HOF members in Europe and Oceana, providing an international context for the issues.