Literacy Blogs

01 May, 2009

Reforming NCLB: What to Keep

The next version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is going to be quite different from “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB). That’s both good since real changes are needed, but it’s a little scary, too, because NCLB represented a remarkable and positive break with past federal education policy.   A quick pre-2000 history lesson: At the federal level, Republican and Democratic views of education had evolved into an unfortunate stalemate. Republicans usually opposed federal education spending for Constitutional and budgetary reasons. Their argument was that education was the responsibility of the states and that Uncle Sam should stay out of the ...

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30 March, 2009

Persistence of reading problems: Research-based fact or urban myth?

Blast from Past: First posted March 30, 2009; reposted May 3, 2018. I didn’t think I’d be re-issuing this one, but this week, I heard two of these myths repeated so, perhaps, time for a reminder of the facts.   Last week, I heard from the Education Writers Association requesting information about what happens to children who don’t learn to read well by third grade… Do they drop out of high school? End up in jail? Become wards of the state? Go into politics? (Okay, they didn’t really ask that last one, I was just checking to see if you were paying attention.) The Writers had checked NAEP reports and ...

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25 March, 2009

Demolishing a Straw Man: Should We Teach Fluency?

What’s the relationship between oral reading fluency and reading comprehension? Does fluency instruction automatically lead to comprehension? Are reading comprehension and fluency independent processes? Reasonable questions like those abound about this aspect of learning to read. However, if you are seeking answers to such questions in the recent article on fluency and reading comprehension that appears in The Reading Teacher (RT, March 2009, vol. 62 (6), pp. 512-521), don’t bother.   The problem is that the authors, M. D. Applegate, A. J. Applegate, and V. B. Modla, have made up a straw man (um, straw person) argument implying that someone out there ...

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21 March, 2009

The Problem with Guided Reading

The main point of “guided reading” is to make sure kids are being taught from books that are not too far beyond their skills. If a book seems like hieroglyphics to a kid, then not much learning could be expected. (Likewise, books can be too easy… presenting neither challenge nor much to learn). Trying to get kids into the “just right” reading level has been an issue of long interest in the field of reading.   The independent/instructional/frustration level scheme has now been around for about 60 years (since Emmett Betts described these levels in his landmark textbook). Frustration level is the ...

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17 March, 2009

Ten Things Good Writers Do

I was asked to write the following for a local high school that wanted to provide some writing guidelines for its students. This might be of use to you, too. I hope so. Ten things good writers do… 1. Good writers make a good first impression. They put extra effort into their introductions and first paragraphs because they want readers to read on. Consider this wonderful opener from E. B. White:”When Mrs. Frederick C. Little’s second son was born, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse.” That simple sentence took a lot of work, but it sure makes ...

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13 March, 2009

Why It Sometimes Looks Like Teaching Does Harm

Blast from the Past: This blog originally posted March 13, 2009; and was reissued on November 29, 2017. Teachers often experience frustration when it looks like the kids are regressing as a result of teaching. This entry may be a healthy reminder as to what is actually going on. Keep teaching.         I was speaking with a teacher who was not a big fan of phonics instruction. It was not that she was totally against it, in fact, her concerns had arisen from observing the children who she was teaching phonics too. She was concerned because, often, when she introduced ...

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11 February, 2009

Teacher Education and Reading Achievement

IES released what will be a highly influential report, “An Evaluation of Teachers Trained Through Different Routes to Certification Final Report.” You can get a copy through this link:https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED504313.pdf   The report is important because it tests the impact of young teachers who complete traditional teacher preparation programs and those who complete alternative certification programs that require a lot fewer hours of training. Sadly, it finds that the “alt-cert” teachers do as well as the traditional certification teachers in terms of children’s learning. That finding represents a serious challenge to Colleges of Education.   As with any study, this one has problems, but it ...

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08 February, 2009

Why the Stimulus Bill Will Not Really Increase School Funding

This week Congress will approve the Obama stimulus plan and soon schools will get a big pile of new money for their Title I programs and Special Education programs. How they’ll spend it will depend on current rules and regs, because the stimulus bill doesn’t seem to carry any new guidance.   Of course, those of us in education should be pleased as this new money should mean fewer layoffs for teachers. However, I suspect there will be a couple of problems with these dollars. The first is that I doubt that this assistance will do much for kids. The money isn’t ...

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30 January, 2009

Misinformation Marches On

The winter issue of The California Reader includes a spirited response by Glenn DeVoogd to an article that I published in that outlet this fall. Nothing wrong with differences of opinion, so I’ll not use this space to try to argue that I’m wrong and he’s right on those issues. However, I will address some egregious errors in his claims. Glenn says the National Reading Panel (NRP) promoted “a more skills-based approach to reading rather than a meaning-based approach focusing on comprehension” (p. 5). In fact, NRP looked at 205 studies on the teaching of reading comprehension, all with reading comprehension ...

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29 January, 2009

The Biggest Mistake Schools Make in Teaching Reading?

Blast from the Past: This was first posted on January 29, 2009 and reposted on August 9, 2018. As we get ready to start a new school year, it would be wise for teachers to dedicate themselves to avoiding wasting time this year having kids practicing answering certain kinds of questions. Reading is not the ability to answer particular kinds of questions, but to making sense of text. Many more research studies showing this since this posting first appeared. Here’s a big idea that can save your school district a lot of money and teachers and kids a lot of time: reading comprehension ...

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