We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot. Little Gidding

Statistics

2005 NAEP Grade 4 ReadingAll Students, Nation

38

33

30

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

All Students

Perc

en

t o

f S

tud

en

ts

Proficient/Advanced

Basic

Below Basic

Source: National Center for Education Statistics, NAEP Data Explorer, http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/nde/

2005 NAEP Grade 4 Readingby Race/Ethnicity, Nation

59

28

56 51

25

29

32

2930

35

13

40

15 18

40

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

AfricanAmerican

Asian Latino NativeAmerican

White

Perc

ent

of

Stu

dents

Proficient/Advanced

Basic

Below Basic

Source: National Center for Education Statistics, NAEP Data Explorer, http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/nde/

2005 NAEP Grade 4 Readingby Family Income, Nation

54

23

30

35

15

42

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Poor Non-Poor

Perc

en

t o

f S

tud

en

ts

Proficient/Advanced

Basic

Below Basic

Source: National Center for Education Statistics, NAEP Data Explorer, http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/nde/

Voices are more provocative than statistics. I was testing in the school library.  In came a little kid (his race and ethnicity don’t matter) wearing a Cub Scout uniform--blue with gold lettering, frayed at the cuffs and collar, but spotless and starched.  His skin was stretched tightly over his cheek bones--like an ebony carving.  I said, “Howdy, Pal.  [We shook hands.] This isn’t a test.  It’s just to see how you read so we can get books that are just right for you.  Here. Read this.  [a paragraph in a testing book] Try not to make mistakes. Okay?  Start whenever you’re ready.”

He put his index finger under the first word.  I thought “Great.  He knows how to do this!”  And he started.

“K…K…Ki…Kite (the word is Kit)…mmm…mad (made) a bowat (boat).  She mad the bowat of thin (tin).  The noise (nose) of the bowat was vvv…vvv…very tin…The bowat wants (went) ver…ver very fast…

He was trying so hard.  His proud expression faded.  He started to sweat.  His finger shook under the words.

He looked at me for help.  I said, “You’re doing fine.”  [What else could I say?]

He finished.  It took 3 minutes and he made 30 errors.  This is really poor. He said, “I’m stupid, ain’t I.”  My throat started to close.  I said, “No, I bet you know all kinds of things.  You’re one sharp guy.”

Fifth grade.900 hours/days of reading instruction.First grade level.It was over for him in grade 1.How can this be? I’ll tell you.

The Achievement gap is and will remain the result of

Intransigence in the face of school data and scientific research.

Failure of leadership.The ignorance (trained incapacity)

and therefore the gullibility of teachers and principals regarding the validity of what they are told, and

The ease with which the effects of poor instruction can be hidden, disguised, or blamed on the victims.

“And we never failed to fail. It was the easiest thing to do.” Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Southern Cross.

1. Project Follow Through.2. District-wide reform in New Hanover County.3. Reading First.

What Works? What Doesn’t?Project Follow Through

Follow Through pitted different models of early childhood education against each other to determine the most effective curricula and methods for teaching disadvantaged children. http://www.uoregon.edu/~adiep/ft/becker.htm

1967-95

139 communities.

20,000 kids – disadvantaged.

Each model had four to eight sites, with children starting in either kindergarten or first grade.

Each Follow-Through (FT) school district identified a non-Follow-Through (NFT) district to act as a control group.

Model programs were implemented in kindergarten through third grade.

http://www.projectpro.com/ICR/Research/DI/Summary.htm

Affective Skills Model

Emphasizes the quality of interpersonal relations and an environment which supports self-actualization, assuming that each child knows what is best for his personal growth. The specific programs were:

Learning Center. "Head Start" nursery school approach. Children select their own learning options at learning centers. Sponsored by the Bank Street College of Education.

Open Education. British Infant School model. Learning centers were used here also. Children responsible for their own learning, with no teacher-directed instruction provided. Sponsored by the Education Development Center.

Self Esteem. Learning centers, with curriculum emphasis on the development of self-esteem. Responsive Education Model, sponsored by the Far West Laboratory.

Cognitive/Conceptual Skills Model

Cognitive growth emphasized over the learning of specific content. Self-guided activity and interaction with the environment.

Cognitively-Oriented Curriculum: Based on Piaget's theories of underlying cognitive processes, this curriculum encourages children to schedule their own activities. Teaching emphasizes "labeling and explaining causal relationships". Sponsored by the High Scope Foundation.

Parent Education: Parents of disadvantaged children are taught to teach their own children motor and cognitive skills. Sponsored by the University of Florida.

Self Directed Literature: Whole language. Students are exposed to literature relating to their own experiences and interest. Tucson Early Education Model (TEEM), sponsored by the University of Arizona.

Basic Skills Model

Assumes that carefully designed instruction is the most reliably effective way to teach complex skills.

Behavior Reinforcement: Social praise and tokens are given for correct responses (math, reading), and tokens are traded for desired activities. Teachers use scripts, and instruction is provided incrementally. Sponsored by the University of Kansas.

Direct Instruction: Teaches language, reading, and math (basic and higher-order) using fast-paced lessons in small groups. Instruction is explicit, logically progressive, and based on each child’s background knowledge. Sponsored by the University of Oregon.

Language Development: is an eclectic approach emphasizing language development rather than explicit reading skills. Sponsored by the Southwest Educational Developmental Laboratory.

Measures of Basic Skills, Cognitive Skills, and Affect.Students in each school district were tested at entry and then each spring until third grade

Metropolitan Achievement Test: an achievement test that assess basic skills and cognitive and conceptual skills, including reading comprehension and math problem solving;

Wide Range Achievement Test: measures number recognition, spelling, word reading, and oral and written math problems;

Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices: measures cognitive skills through the use of visually oriented problems;

Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Scale: measured affective skills by assessing whether children attribute their successes and failures to themselves or to external forces;

Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory: assesses how children feel about themselves, the way they think other people feel about them, and their feelings about school.

ISO (Index of Significant Outcomes) = Number of a model’s significantly higher scores (.25 standard deviation = 3 months instruction) than comparison group, minus not significantly higher scores, divided by total comparisons. For example, significantly higher scores (8) minus not significantly higher scores (4) = 4, divided by 12 comparisons = ISO of .33

Only DI and Applied Behavior Analysis were superior to ordinary instruction and to the other models.

Disadvantaged kids usually score at the 20th percentile or lower on national standardized achievement tests. Here is the Metropolitan Achievement Test. Which models raise student achievement above what is expected? Which models move kids backwards? Which models now dominate?

Here’s another way to group the models.

You would think that Direct Instruction and Behavior Analysis would have been added to the list of methods that enjoy wide acceptance.That these approaches would be promoted.

You would be wrong, Pilgrim.“That’s not developmentally

appropriate.“That stifles creativity.” “That’s all rote learning.”

Instead, the field embraces the models that don’t work.

Whole Language Becomes Dominant

In the late 1960’s, whole language (the TEEM model from the University of Arizona), spread through the schools.

It’s appeal rode on the general “liberationist” politics of the times.

Whole language promised to deliver children from what its advocates called the tyranny of phonics. [See the Whole Language Catalogue.]

Instead of sounding out UNFAMILIAR words, children were to guess what words say using context cues on the page.

Here is Goodman’s “revolutionary” idea---based on NO data…...I offer this:… reading is a psycholinguistic guessing game….Efficient reading does not result from precise perception and identification of all the elements, but from skill in selecting the fewest, most productive cues necessary to produce guesses which are right the first time.  (pp. 127-8).The problem is that…> Skilled readers do NOT guess. > Skilled readers DO attend to ALL the elements (letters).

Notice the inappropriate application of constructivist ideas in the following quotations.

"Proficient readers seem unconsciously to use initial letters plus prior knowledge and context to predict what a word might be, before focusing on more of the word or the following context to confirm or correct." Weaver, C.  (Phonics in whole language classrooms) at: http://kidsource.com/kidsource/content2/Phonics.htmlWrong. Eye movement studies show that proficient readers examine every letter. Only POOR readers are described by whole language theory.

"Phonics is incompatible with a whole language perspective on reading and therefore is rejected." Watson, D. (1989). Defining & describing whole language. Elementary School Journal, 90, 129-142.

Is that how to make decisions?

“The student:  Attends to the meaning of what is read rather than focusing on figuring out words. ..Uses fix-it strategies (predicts, uses pictorial cues, asks a friend, skips the word, substitutes another meaningful word). Oklahoma State Department of Education (1992). Reading learner outcomes. In the Oklahoma State Competencies, Grade One, pp.15-22. [Online]. Available: http://www.ourcivilisation.com/dumb/dumb3.htm

You can’t attend to the meaning if you don’t know what the words say.

"It is easier for a reader to remember the unique appearance and pronunciation of a whole word like 'photograph' than to remember the unique pronunciations of meaningless syllables and spelling units" (p.146) Smith, F. (1985). Reading without nonsense: Making sense of reading. New York: Teachers College Press.If you memorize 10 words, you can read only 10 words.If you memorize the sounds that go with 10 letters, you can read 23,000 words.

"Sounding out a word is a cumbersome, time-consuming, and unnecessary activity.  By using context, we can identify words with only minimal attention to grapho/phonemic cues. The message then seems clear: we should help children learn to use context first." Weaver, C. (1988). Reading process & practice: From socio-psycholinguistics to whole language. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.No independent research shows that this works. In fact, experimental research shows that it does not work.

"Phonics, which means teaching a set of spelling to sound correspondence rules that permit the decoding of written language into speech, just does not work."  Smith, F. (1985). Reading without nonsense (2nd. Ed). New York: Teachers College Press. “Bumblebees can’t fly.”“Yeah? Well, THAT one is flying.”

“No, it isn’t. Bumblebees can’t fly.”

"To the fluent reader the alphabetic principle is completely irrelevant. He identifies every word (if he identifies words at all) as an ideogram." (p.124)  Smith, F. (1973). Psycholinguistics and reading. New York: Holt, Rhinehart, & Winston.

In fact, to the fluent reader, the alphabetic principle (the sounds that go with the letters) is the only thing that IS relevant.

"The worst readers are those who try to sound out unfamiliar words according to the rules of phonics." (p.438) Smith, F. (1992). Learning to read: the never-ending debate. Phi Delta Kappan, 74, 432-441.

In fact, these are the best readers.

"Accuracy, correctly naming or identifying each word or word part in a graphic sequence, is not necessary for effective reading since the reader can get the meaning without accurate word identification. Furthermore, readers who strive for accuracy are likely to be inefficient" (p.826) Goodman, K. S. (1974, Sept). Effective teachers of reading know language and children. Elementary English, 51, 823-828.

“O, that way madness lies; let me shun that; No more of that.” King Lear

Every one of these statements is demonstrably false, absurd, and flies in the face even of common sense.

How can you get the meaning without accuracy?How can you get that the word means guilty even though you read it as quilty?

And so, school districts not only adopted whole language, they mandated whole language.

Groups of reading administrators in NHC would visit schools and remove the phonics books.

Teachers had no choice but to teach kids to guess.

Most ed schools taught their students the whole language dogma, and nothing else.

THAT is why you have an achievement gap.

>Advantaged kids already know how to read, or are well along before they get to school.

>Disadvantaged kids have 1/3 the language and little or no reading skill. If you teach them to guess (and to NOT sound out words), they never learn to read.

It’s over for them in grade ONE.

New Hanover County

Men at some time are masters of their fates;

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Julius Caesar.

In the 1950s to 60s, children were taught phonics as the basic beginning reading skill.

1. Letter-sound correspondence:

m says mmm

r says rrr

a says ahhh

2. Decoding or sounding out.

r a m rrraaammm ram.

“sound it out” “Say it fast. What word?”

Result?

Most kids could read, regardless of social class or ethnicity.

With the institutionalization of whole language (and NO phonics) in the late 60’s, disadvantaged kids started falling behind in reading, and then in every subject.

Struggle -> Frustration -> Hopelessness -> Alienation -> Disruptive behavior -> Suspension -> School failure ->

Another spin of the wheel of poverty.

Dorothy B. Johnson Elementary

Most minority. All poor.

Reading Mastery.

90% passed the EOG’s.

Yet, no one at central office decided to have ALL schools try Reading Mastery. So, whole language had NO challenge.

1999 J.C. Roe and Sunset Park

Elementary

Graduate assistant---Frances Bessellieu.

Reading Mastery [k-5] and Language for Learning [pre-k—1]. Used in Follow Through.

Corrective Reading [3-college]

Summer School

Justine Lerch, Director of Elementary Ed.

John Rice, Frances Bessellieu, and Me.

Try the DI language and reading programs in summer school.

Achievement gap closed in 12 days.

20 out of 23 elementary schools used the DI language and reading programs the next year.

Passing rate rose (from 40-50% before DI) 10-15 points each year, eventually topping out around 90%.

Just as had been the case at Johnson, Roe, and Sunset Park.

Yet, again, no one at central office told principals to use these programs.

It was site-based management---which works fine when principals are knowledgeable curriculum and instructional leaders.

In five years, there was nearly complete principal turnover.

Result? The DI programs were gone; whole language was back; and scores dropped to the bottom.

Reading FirstOnce more unto the breach, dear friends, once

more;Or close the wall up with our English dead. Henry V.

2003, President Bush awards Reading First and Early Reading First grants to states.

NC changes Standard Course of Study to include systematic instruction in phonics.

Schools select programs similar to Reading Mastery.

NC develops NC READS to retrain teachers.

Early evaluation research showed that when you use the new programs properly, children read.

However, whole languagists were lobbying to get rid of Reading First, and argued that Reading First was merely political.

President Obama likely to end Early Reading First and Reading First.

"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,Which we ascribe to Heaven.“ All’s well that ends well.

And so John Rice, Eric Irizarry, and I decided to waste no more hope that persons and groups would act with reason and would be guided by the moral obligation to use whatever methods the kids needed.

We would find a way to teach the kids regardless of which methods and philosophies were dominant.