[Reading-hall-of-fame] negative 'gain'

[DickaUFL at aol.com]

There seems to be a crack in the wall built by the architects of NCLB. Joe 
Torgeson, one of the NICHD researchers and head of the SE Reading First 
technical support center has been writing about "treatment resisters". It seems that 
even with up to two and one-half years of expert one-to-one tutoring some 
20-40% of the targeted kids remained below the 30th percentile. This is equivalent 
to 5-10% pf the total population but NCLB allows just 1% (and of course NCLB 
provides nothing close to the dollars it would take to provide expert 1-1 
tutoring to 25% of the population generally or up to 80% of the population in many 
high poverty schools). I address these issues in my article in the March 2004 
issue of Ed Leadership.

Still, I find all this focus on "verbal ability" a bit worrisome because 
education has a long history of using low scores on IQ tests as one method to 
restrict the instruction provided poor, immigrant, and minority students. Would 
use such tests to decide some students aren't worth investing large sums of 
money in because they will never reach "normal" levels of achievement?

Dick Allington


Quoting Joe below:

Begins by noting that the "ultimate goal" of reading instruction is for kids 
to be able to "comprehend printed material at a level commensurate with their 
general verbal ability or language comprehension skills." (p. 10) 

 "If we were to adopt a strict grade-level reading comprehension criteria,.. 
this would imply an expectation for all children to have at least average 
verbal ability. Decades of cognitive intervention research suggests that it is 
unrealistic to expect all children to attain verbal ability estimates within the 
average range as a result of special instruction." (p. 10)

    Torgeson, J. K. (2002). The prevention of reading difficulties. Journal 
of School Psychology, 40(1), 7-26.

Also see:
    Torgeson, J. K. (2000). Individual differences in response to early 
interventions in reading: The lingering problem of treatment resisters. Learning 
Disabilities Research and Practice., 15(1), 55-64.