Reading

Comprehensive Literacy Legislation Introduced in Senate

Sara Mead — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:25:00 -0500

Last week, Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) introduced the Literacy Education for All, Results for the Nation (LEARN) Act, a comprehensive literacy bill designed to overhaul the federal role in supporting literacy from preschool through high school. Companion legislation is being introduced in the House of Representatives by Representatives Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and John Yarmuth (D-Ky.)

This bill addresses the important need to reestablish a federal role in supporting early literacy, following the elimination of funding for the Reading First program. It also takes important steps to support adolescent literacy. But we worry that it shifts the focus of federal literacy efforts too much towards the middle and high school years, at the expense of critical PreK-3^rd years, which build a foundation for all of children’s later literacy learning.

The LEARN act authorizes new federal literacy programs to replace both existing federal literacy investments—Even Start, Early Reading First, and Striving Readers—and the Reading First program, which Congress defunded last year. In that respect, it’s much needed. Supporting literacy development has been an important federal education priority, backed up with dollars, through the previous two administrations. The elimination of Reading First funding in fiscal year 2009, following large cuts in 2008, cut off an important source of funds for reading programs in low-income elementary schools, leaving many scrambling to figure out how to continue this important work during tight economic times.

The LEARN act would provide grants to states to develop and implement comprehensive state literacy plans, from early childhood through high school. The act authorizes both one-year planning grants, to support states in developing their literacy plans, and five-year implementation grants. States that receive implementation grants would be required to spend 90 percent of those funds on subgrants to local entities—school districts, early childhood programs and nonprofits. Funds would be awarded on a competitive basis, with priority for grantees serving high numbers of poor children, children who are struggling in reading, and school districts with high numbers of schools identified for school improvement under ESEA. States would have to direct 10 percent of the subgrant funds to early childhood (birth to 5) literacy initiatives, 40 percent to literacy programs in kindergarten through fifth grade, and 40 percent to programs in middle and high school. States could use the remaining 10 percent to conduct statewide activities to support literacy.

While Early Ed Watch is pleased to see legislation promoting a federal role and funding for literacy programs, and there are a number of things we like about this bill, there are also aspects we feel could be improved.

First, what we like: We especially like that the LEARN Act places a strong emphasis on writing as an important component of literacy alongside reading. The ability to write well is increasingly important in our information-based economy, yet too many of our students fail to master that skill. Schools should integrate writing into the curriculum from an early age—even before children can truly “write.” Many of the schools that are most effective at promoting literacy across the PreK-3^rd spectrum have adopted this practice.

The bill emphasizes integrating literacy across the content areas and using diverse and varied texts. That we like too.

We also think it’s important that the bill maintains a focus on things that were working well in Reading First—the five essential components of literacy instruction identified by the National Reading Panel (phonological awareness, phonic decoding, vocabulary, fluency, and reading comprehension); the use of appropriate screening, diagnostic, and formative assessments to track students’ reading progress and inform instruction; high-quality professional development; and additional support for struggling students.

And we are particularly pleased with provisions requiring states to conduct an audit of pre-service teacher coursework to ensure that future teachers are getting the training they need to provide effective literacy instruction to children—something all too many teacher training programs still do not do, despite the strong body of evidence that exists on effective reading instruction.

That said, we have some concerns as well. It’s unfortunate that, even as a growing number of school districts and states are building seamless PreK-3^rd early literacy experiences for young children, this bill still resorts to the same old silos—separate grants for birth to age five, K-5, and middle/high school literacy initiatives—rather than encouraging PreK-3^rd integration. That said, there are a number of simple ways that Congress could strengthen the bill to better support PreK-3^rd alignment, and abundant opportunities to do so before this bill becomes law. Even in its current form, states and school districts could use the LEARN Act’s programs and funding to promote Prek-3^rd alignment—they’d just have to think a bit creatively about how to do so.

While we recognize the need to invest more in adolescent literacy, we also question the wisdom of devoting the same amount of funding to middle and high school literacy as to elementary schools. The PreK-3^rd years are the crucial time when children develop foundational early literacy skills on which all their future learning rests, and it’s far cheaper to provide the support students need to achieve reading proficiency by third grade than it is to provide remediation later. Given the critical importance of those years for reading, we would argue for investing a larger share of the resources in early childhood and elementary literacy efforts.

Of course, how much literacy funding will be available for any grade level depends on how much Congress decides to appropriate for the LEARN Act’s programs. The bill would authorize $2.35 billion in funding annually for literacy. But that doesn’t mean that much money will actually materialize. Authorizations only provide a ceiling on how much Congress can spend for a program. The actual funding levels will be determined each year by the Congressional appropriations committees. And right now the total appropriation for literacy programs in both the House and Senate appropriations bills is an order of magnitude lower than the LEARN Act’s authorization levels--$274 million in the House and $263 million in the Senate. In many ways, the real proof of Congress’ commitment to literacy is not this bill, but how much they spend on it going forward.

Congress, with health care reform and the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act already on its plate, will probably not act on the LEARN Act this year. Rather, the legislation will probably be incorporated into the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (also known as No Child Left Behind), which Congress is expected to take up next year. Stay tuned for more in the months ahead.

Content Knowledge in the Pumpkin Patch

Lisa Guernsey — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:58:00 -0400

We're in the thick of pumpkin patch season. Children around the country have been heading out on field trips with their classes and families, bumping along on hay rides to find the plumpest pumpkins they can get their hands on.

Good teachers know how to turn these field trips into curiosity-driven moments of learning for themselves and their students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds who finally have a chance to hear, see, use and interact with objects and concepts that they rarely come across in their everyday lives. As a New York Times story highlighted yesterday, for some children a trip to the pumpkin patch means being able to hold and touch what is essentially a foreign object. When a classroom of 25 children at Harlem Success Academy 3 were asked how many had ever held a pumpkin, only two raised their hand.

The importance of content knowledge in children's reading comprehension has been a favorite topic on this blog, and field trips can be powerful conductors in this realm. A child who has explored a pumpkin patch will have a much easier time in the future when he or she comes across paragraphs about vines and tendrils, maturing fruit and harvest time. And it's not just children's reading skills, of course, that can improve. Their grasp of science and social studies becomes more sophisticated too.

For an example of how pumpkin picking can provide kids with a strong foundation of content knowledge, check out this video from a first-grade teacher who goes by the name of Wojtera and runs a class blog:

Not only are these children having a chance to see, up close, what tendrils are and how the fruit gains shape, color and heft over time, their teacher has extended the experience as a science lesson in the classroom, giving children a chance to see what pumpkin vines, flowers and seeds look like under a microscope. As students see and ask questions about pollen magnified 60 times or a tendril at 10 times the size, they gain more facility with the words and concepts of biology and horticulture. As cognitive scientist Dan Willingham writes in his book, Why Children Don't Like School and explains at the Core Knowledge blog, without this content knowledge, students may never fully comprehend what they read. They may be able to artificially pick their way through a paragraph about a farmer checking her pumpkin crop or a scientist peering into a microscope, but they will not have enough content stored in their long-term memory to be able to really make sense of what the paragraph means.

By the way, I came across the video of this field trip while reading the comments that accompanied one of the posts on The Early Years, a blog published by the National Science Teachers Association. The blog is written by science teacher Peggy Ashbrook, who last week was looking at state and national-board science standards as she grappled with what is a tough balancing act for early educators: being sure not to underestimate what children can learn about the relationships in natural systems, nor overestimate their cognitive abilities to understand abstract and tricky concepts like the importance of sampling sizes in conducting science experiments. In the post, she posed a great question: "Is anyone very satisfied with their state or program content standards for preK-grade 2 science?" Anyone with experience in teaching science in the years from pre-kindergarten through third grade should chime in.

Pumpkin on vine photo by flickr user John Carleton reprinted under Creative Commons license.

Some Words on Webkinz: Can Digital Media Actually Help Emergent Readers?

Lisa Guernsey — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:26:00 -0400

I have decided to pick on Webkinz in a post this week on the Breakthrough Learning blog -- a place where writers are stirring up ideas in preparation for a Google forum later this month called Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age. I'll be moderating the "Literacy 2.0" panel. A copy of my post is below.

P.S. If you're not familiar with Webkinz, take a look at this screen shot, which shows you one view of what children see when they play with Webkinz on screen. Webkinz, you should know, are really two things. They exist physically as hold-in-your-hands plush toys -- like stuffed horses and dogs. And they exist as virtual characters that live online in virtual worlds that children create. Each toy comes with a password so kids can log in on their home computers and design rooms and outdoor spaces for the online versions of their stuffed animals. (I know, it sounds a little odd and confusing. But trust me, these toys and their accompanying virtual worlds are perfectly understandable to the 5- to 8-year-old set.)

A young girl, age 5, sits down at her family's computer and logs into Webkinz with some help from her mother. She's got a plush toy on her lap. It's a Clydesdale horse named Mirabelle who, seconds later, appears reincarnated as a pixilated horse on the screen. The little girl grabs the computer mouse, points to the screen, and shouts, "look Mom!" A three-dimensional room is now before her eyes, and she can fill it with whatever furniture she thinks her horse might like. A catalog of food items appears too - marshmallows, carrot sticks, hamburgers, you name it. The little girl knows that she is supposed to buy whatever will make her horse happy and healthy. She clicks on the carrot sticks and feeds them to Mirabelle. A little thought balloon appears over her horse's head with tiny text inside. Maybe it says "that's delicious" or "thank you!" or "now can you buy me some apples?" But we'll never know, because it appears for only a second and then it disappears.

"What did it say?!" the girl screams. Her face is in a panic. "I couldn't read it!"

She couldn't read it. Why? Two reasons. 1) the little girl is not yet a fluent reader. 2) the digital media did absolutely nothing to help.

I offer this story not to bash Webkinz or to chastise her mother (who is me, as many readers have probably guessed by now.) Nor do I tell this tale to lead you into a sermon on the value of reading a book versus sitting in front of a computer.

I tell this story to highlight the disconnect between digital media and children's literacy today. Consider the elements in place: We have a highly motivated child sitting in front of a highly motivating piece of software. We have text on the screen. But we have no recognition anywhere that this is a moment that could be harnessed to pull her forward in reading, to help take her to the next level. Something as simple as enabling the words to appear on the screen until she took an active role, until she clicked a button to close the thought balloon, could have helped. But much, much more could have happened as well. Imagine a Webkinz world populated by characters who love to read and urge their owners to check out virtual books to stock virtual libraries. Imagine a moment in which my daughter might have been invited, first through an audio prompt, to read more about horses and how to care for them, and then led her to a page of non-fiction designed for her reading level that she could print and read later with the help of parents and teachers? Imagine the richer literacy possibilities that could be infused in the games, email exchanges or printed bulletin boards on the virtual world's walls.

The opportunities to encourage reading through digital media are endless.

And so are the pitfalls. I'm not alone in having dozens of questions about when, why and how to use digital media in a way that doesn't divorce children from reading instead. Here are just four that are on my mind:

1) How can we prevent the power of digital media become overpowering, from doing so much for children that reading seems unnecessary to them? We think of the screen as a place to tell stories visually, and as we all know, a picture speaks a thousand words. So where will children learn to read those words if they so rarely appear before their eyes? Can the "printed" word become more infused in our multimedia experiences? How do we give kids a reason to read?

2) Digital media has been held up as a motivator, but is that enough? We see children excited about using a Nintendo DS or logging onto an online game, and we say we need to use these platforms as a launching pad for introducing reading. But what happens when the novelty wears off? Can these games produce such a love of reading, or even simply a fluency in reading, that it becomes deeply embedded in children's approaches to learning no matter what technology they use in the future?

3) What can digital media do to improve comprehension, to move students beyond a rudimentary ability to decode words? Can we use multimedia and immersive gaming to introduce students to vocabulary and concepts from history, science and literature so they recognize words and ideas when they come across them in texts? And if so, will that be enough? Can digital media become a bridge to better comprehension for children from non-English speaking households? Or is that something that can only come from reading text in the first place?

4) What is the relationship between creating and reading? Digital media is renowned for its ability to spur creativity, motivating children to create videos, develop games, mix and produce music, write messages. Do we know empirically whether this might help them learn to read or propel their reading to new levels? And is one necessary for the other?

Until we find answers to some of these questions, skepticism will remain over whether digital media can play a positive role in raising reading achievement among today's young people. And parents and teachers will continue to nag their children to log off Webkinz and go read a book.

Screen shot courtesy Flickr user ouvyt used under the Creative Commons license.

New Analysis Points to Size of Early Literacy Gap

Maggie Severns — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:45:00 -0400

Jumpstart, a non-profit organization dedicated to early literacy, released an analysis last Thursday that presents some new data and zooms in on some of the more note-worthy findings in recent studies on literacy and children. In a new poll of 504 American adults, it found that 95 percent of Americans recognize that early childhood literacy is "a very important issue," but only 18 percent of Americans are aware that children who lack early literacy skills are less likely to succeed as adults.

The report focuses on the gap in early literacy skills between children from low-income families and those who come from middle- and high-income families, as well as the lack of public awareness about early childhood literacy issues in the United States. Most experts now believe that children who are introduced to literacy in their early years -- through exercises like alphabet awareness, one-on-one book reading with adults and the practice of writing their names, not to mention knowledge of content -- have a better chance for strong academic performance in higher grade levels.

At a press conference on Thursday, Jumpstart President James Cleveland stressed the extensive repercussions that await children who are not exposed to reading and books before reaching kindergarten. "The achievement gap begins early and it persists. And, the long term results can be catastrophic," he said.

Some data cited in the analysis:

A child growing up in a middle class family has been exposed to 1,000 to 1,700 hours of one-on-one picture book reading. The average child growing up in a low-income family has only been exposed to 25 hours of one-on-one book reading.
61 percent of children from low-income families have no age-appropriate books for children at home.
Only half of the children from low-income families entering kindergarten can write their own names, while more than 75 percent of children from higher income families can do so.

These are statistics that should give anyone pause, though they are probably not a surprise to those working with at-risk young children. We wrote in August about how the annual appropriations process may affect early literacy programs -- warning of the possibility that programs like Early Reading First may be folded into larger programs for children and adolescents. Reports like this from Jumpstart help to make the case that as we talk about giving children better chances to improve their reading skills, we cannot forget how important it is to start early.

Once More, With Feeling: Teaching Content is Teaching Reading

Sara Mead — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:21:00 -0400

Daniel Willingham, the UVA psychologist and Brittanica blogger, flags an interesting and important new study from Hong Kong that analyzed the relationship between 39 teacher characteristics and instructional practices and 4th grade students' reading scores on the PIRLS international reading assessment. Of the 39 teacher factors, Willingham notes, four were found to play a significant role in predicting fourth graders' reading scores:

the frequency with which the teacher used materials from other subjects in reading instruction.
using assessment to assign grades.
the frequency with which students took a quiz or test after reading.
using assessment to provide data for national or local monitoring.

These factors accounted for about 30 percent of the variation in children's reading performance, and by far the strongest predictor of the four was the extent to which teachers integrate readings from other content areas -- such as science, social studies, and the arts -- into their reading instruction. This fits with previous evidence showing that, once children learn the basic skills of how to decode, their ability to read well and to comprehend what they read depends in large part on the amount of content and general knowledge children have about the world, which enables them to connect what they read to existing knowledge and better undersand what they are reading.

Must See YouTube: Teaching Content is Teaching Reading (1/11/09)

The Critical Importance of Curriculum (6/8/09)

These findings are particularly important to keep in mind as federal policymakers ponder the shape of new literacy initiatives to replace the previous Reading First program, which Congress defunded in fiscal year 2009. Given the evidence both that reading proficiently by third grade is a very strong predictor of children's later school and life outcomes, and that far too many American youngsters fail to read proficiently by then, there is a real need for a continued federal role in supporting research-based early literacy initiatives in pre-K and the early grades. The Obama administration's fiscal year 2010 budget proposal included $300 million in funding for new Early Literacy Grants program that would replace Reading First. The information the administration has released about the proposal suggests that these grants would fund some of the same research-based early literacy strategies as Reading First funded, while also placing increased emphasis on improving children's reading comprehension.

The Hong Kong research reaffirms what previous research has shown -- the best way to improve students' reading comprehension is to ensure that they are exposed to a content-rich curriculum across the full range of academic subjects, including science, history, social studies and the arts. Unfortunately, some research suggests that many school districts have gone in the opposite direction, reducing time spent on content in an effort to increase reading and math scores. This evidence shows that approach is shortsighted. One way to solve the problem is by encouraging schools and teachers to better integrate content-rich readings from other subject areas -- especially non-fiction -- into their reading programs, replacing the sometimes vapid readings that many reading textbooks and existing commercial programs currently employ. Any new federal investment in reading needs to incorporate a strong emphasis on content, as well as decoding. The federal government could help promote this approach by disseminating information about the value of integrating content-rich reading into early literacy programs, and by creating a database or library of leveled, content-focused, "open source" reading materials that teachers could access for use in their classrooms.

A Closer Look at the President's Budget: Early Literacy Grants

Sara Mead — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:00:00 -0400

On May 7 the Office of Management and Budget released the President’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2010. As Early Ed Watch reported at the time, that budget includes funding for several new early education programs, including Title I Early Childhood Grants, Early Learning Challenge Fund, Early Literacy Grants, and Home Visitation. Previous installments have considered Title I Early Childhood Grants and the Early Learning Challenge Fund. Today we turn our attention to Early Literacy Grants.

The President’s fiscal year 2010 budget proposal for the Department of Education includes $300 million in funding for a new program of Early Literacy Grants. This proposed program would provide grants to school districts to implement strategies to improve the literacy skills of children in the early elementary school grades.

From fiscal years 2002 through 2008, the Reading First program provided funding for scientifically-based early literacy programs. But Congress eliminated funding for Reading First in fiscal year 2009, in response to complaints about the program’s management and an Institute of Education Sciences evaluation that failed to find evidence that Reading First improved children’s reading comprehension skills. The proposed Early Literacy Grants program would restore funding for early literacy programs, while also seeking to address the issues that led members of Congress to defund the program.

Under the proposal, Early Literacy Grants program would be funded out of the existing Striving Readers account. The Department of Education would make competitive grants directly to local educational agencies (LEAs). LEAs would apply for funds on behalf of schools in the LEA that are eligible for Title I schoolwide programs and have a substantial number of students reading or at-risk of reading below grade level.

Local educational agencies that receive Early Literacy Grants would be able to implement a variety of strategies to improve children’s literacy and reading comprehension. As with Reading First, these efforts must reflect the five components of effective reading instruction, as identified by the National Reading Panel: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. In addition, initiatives must place a particular emphasis on reading comprehension, vocabulary development, oral language fluency, and writing skills. Grantees would be required to use funds for activities similar to those required under Reading First: implementing an evidence-based reading curriculum; using formative, diagnostic, and outcome assessments to track student progress; providing high-quality professional development; and supporting reading interventions for students who need additional help.

We’re pleased to see the administration seeking to restore funding for early literacy programs. Learning to read and write proficiently is perhaps the most important goal for the early elementary school years, because literacy is the key that opens the door for all future learning. Evidence shows that whether or not students can read proficiently by the end of 3rd grade is a very strong predictor of later educational success or failure. Yet a staggeringly high percentage of our youngsters—especially low-income children and those from racial and ethnic minorities—arrive in 4th grade without the skills to read proficiently. Only 33 percent of 4th graders can read at grade level, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and one-third of 4th graders are not even reading at a “basic” level.

Since 1998, the federal government has provided funding to states and school districts specifically to support early literacy programs, first through the Reading Excellence Act and then through Reading First. Regardless of one’s views on Reading First generally, it is clear that some states and school districts have used the program’s funds effectively to implement reforms and research-based approaches that are improving students’ reading achievement. Eliminating those funds—particularly in the current state fiscal climate—has negatively impacted efforts to help young children read proficiently by 3rd grade. Restoring dedicated federal funding for early literacy is the right thing for the administration and Congress to do.

Moreover, we’re pleased to see that the administration’s proposal for the Early Literacy Grants maintains a commitment to the National Reading Panel’s five components of effective reading instruction. We’ve been concerned that the last few years’ disputes over Reading First had the potential to reopen the so-called “reading wars.” By maintaining commitment to the consensus created by the National Reading Panel, we hope that the administration can avoid that.

Finally, we’re very pleased that the administration’s proposal would not only allow but encourage school districts to use Early Literacy Funds to support effective literacy strategies in pre-k, as well as in kindergarten through 3rd grade. Reading First funds were restricted only to children in grades K-3^rd, and as a result elementary schools that serve pre-k students could not use Reading First funds to implement an aligned reading curriculum across the PreK-3^rd continuum, or to deploy Reading First-funded literacy coaches to help pre-k teachers improve the quality of literacy supports in their classrooms. That was dumb. Two years ago, we proposed expanding Reading First funding to serve children in grades PreK-3^rd, and we’re glad to see that recommendation incorporated into the administration’s proposals here.

That said, we do have some concerns about the Early Literacy Grants proposal. First, while we’re all for strengthening students’ reading comprehension, we’re very concerned that the program’s emphasis on reading comprehension could lead many schools to devote excessive time to teaching so-called “comprehension strategies.” Research shows that teaching students comprehension strategies—find the main idea, identify the author’s purpose, monitor comprehension, summarize—provides a one-time, significant boost in children’s reading comprehension skills, but that repeated instruction focused on reading comprehension strategies does not add additional value. Moreover, there is very little evidence that teaching comprehension strategies makes much difference before 3rd grade. There’s already some reason to believe that elementary school teachers currently spend more than the optimal amount of time instructing children in comprehension strategies—especially since questions related to comprehension strategies: “What is the main idea in this paragraph?” “Identify the author’s purpose” play a major role on many states’ reading/language arts assessments. (Linda Perlstein’s book Tested, for all its faults, does illustrate the ridiculousness, and wastefulness, of constantly drilling students in reading strategies.)

The administration says that the Early Literacy Grants program will allow school districts to “test a variety of strategies designed to improve children’s reading comprehension,” but we’re fearful that without strong guidance about effective ways to strengthen children’s comprehension, this could mean that schools just waste a lot more time on reading strategies drills. That would be both unproductive and really unpleasant for children.

As we’ve written here before, and as Daniel Willingham compellingly argues here, the best way to strengthen children’s ability to comprehend what they read is to expose them to rich and diverse content across various domains, so that they have the general knowledge to easily understand written passages on a wide variety of topics. That requires less time spent drilling comprehension strategies, and more time reading a variety of texts (especially non-fiction), and studying science, social studies, music, and the arts. If this program can help school districts move in that direction—while also maintaining a focus on strengthening students’ decoding skills and helping them gain fluency and vocabulary—that could be a really good thing.

Oh, what the heck, we really wanted an excuse to post Dan's excellent video one more time:

E.D. Hirsch in New York Times on Teaching and Assessing Reading Skills

Sara Mead — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:19:00 -0400

An important op-ed by E.D. Hirsch in Sunday's New York Times looks at how we measure reading achievement in our nation's schools. For all the conversation about using "better tests" to measure school performance and student learning, policymakers often overlook one important shortcoming of existing reading assessments: the content on them is totally disconnected from the vocabulary and content children actually learn in school. Hirsch writes:

The problem is that the reading passages used in these tests are random. They are not aligned with explicit grade-by-grade content standards. Children are asked to read and then answer multiple-choice questions about such topics as taking a hike in the Appalachians even though they’ve never left the sidewalks of New York, nor studied the Appalachians in school.

Teachers can’t prepare for the content of the tests and so they substitute practice exams and countless hours of instruction in comprehension strategies like “finding the main idea.” Yet despite this intensive test preparation, reading scores have paradoxically stagnated or declined in the later grades.

This is because the schools have imagined that reading is merely a “skill” that can be transferred from one passage to another, and that reading scores can be raised by having young students endlessly practice strategies on trivial stories. Tragic amounts of time have been wasted that could have been devoted to enhancing knowledge and vocabulary, which would actually raise reading comprehension scores.

Hirsh argues that we could improve the quality of both reading assessment and reading instruction if we replaced the current model with reading assessments in which the passages students are asked to analyze focus on topics that are aligned with the curriculum that children actually study in literature, science, social studies, the arts, and other subject areas in each grade. Doing this would also require states to improve the quality of their state standards in these subject areas so that they provided more useful information to teachers about what students are expected to learn in each grade.

Although children don't typically take reading assessments until 3rd grade, these recommendations are still important for early educators, because ensuring that students learn to read proficiently by the end of 3rd grade is one of the central goals of quality early education programs, and Hirsch's recommendations would have implications for how teachers teach reading even in the preK and early elementary grades.

This also seems like a great occassion for reminding folks of Daniel Willingham's terrific video, "Teaching Content is Teaching Reading"

Must See YouTube: Teaching Content is Teaching Reading

Sara Mead — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:44:00 -0500

UVA cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham is at it again, with a new YouTube video about the connection between content knowledge and reading comprehension. You never knew cognitive science could be so much fun!

Willingham's core message: While decoding skills and vocabulary are essential for students to read proficiently, reading comprehension requires something more. To truly comprehend what they read, students need a strong base of content knowledge that allows them to connect concepts on the page with existing knowledge to understand what the text is telling them. The implication for policy and practice? If we really want children to read proficiently, we need to not only teach them to read, but also equip them with content knowledge in a wide range of subjects.

This point is particularly relevant to the ongoing debate over NCLB and curricular narrowing: Elementary schools currently spend the lion's share of their limited class time on "teaching reading"--particularly decoding and reading strategies--but relatively little time on content areas such as social studies and science. And some schools have responded to increased accountability pressures by spending more time on reading and language arts, at the expense of time spent on other subjects. But the research Willingham cites suggests that this approach may be counterproductive, because in order to become good readers children need to acquire content knowledge in a wide range of fields.

It's also directly relevant to the ongoing debate about the Reading First program. As we've noted previously, the Reading First evaluation used a test of reading comprehension to measure the program's impact on students' reading skills. Yet a test of reading comprehension is hardly the best measure of Reading First's impacts, since Reading First is intended to build children's decoding, vocabulary, and other reading skills--not their content knowledge. What the Reading First evaluation shows is not necessarily a failure of Reading First--it also reflects a failure of our schools to equip children with the content knowledge they need to comprehend new texts.

One solution to this problem: Integrate literacy into other subjects, such as science and arts, rather than teaching it in isolation. Also, ensure that the text children read during time devoted to language arts are content-rich texts that expand their knowledge, including both nonfiction works and high-quality children's literature. As Congress approaches NCLB reauthorization, and also considers the fate of Reading First funding, they should keep the importance of content knowledge in mind and look for ways to improve both the law's accountability provisions and Reading First to increase the emphasis on content knowledge in the early grades.

Must Reading

Sara Mead — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:10:00 -0500

Richard Colvin makes the case against allowing the scandals around Reading First and the less than glowing results of the recently released Impact Study of the program to launch a new reading wars. We concur. The lesson from Impact Study is not that we've placed too much emphasis on decoding (Kids who can't decode have no hope of comprehending, and the Impact Study does show that Reading First works to improve first graders' decoding skills), but that we also have to do much more to improve children's background knowledge and vocabulary so that they can understand what they read.

Gene Linked to Poor Reading Ability

Sara Mead — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:33:00 -0400

Researchers in England have identified a gene linked to poor reading ability. Previous research had identified a correlation between the gene and dyslexia, but this research shows a correlation between the gene and poor reading ability among non-dyslexic children, as well. While the presence of the gene correlated with poorer reading performance in a population of 6000 children, ages 7 to 9, it does not affect overall cognitive abilities. Further research is needed to better understand the role this gene plays in affecting reading abilities and children's brain development.