[Reading-hall-of-fame] Have We Flat-Lined in Reading? No, not really.

[tsticht at znet.com]

Have We Flat- Lined in Reading? Yes, Its Really So.

Dick makes a good point about gains by Black and Hispanic students and how
their scores might affect averages, and it is interesting that scores for
these groups showed some remarkable increases from 1971 up to the mid- to
late 1980s, and since around 1988 they have shown some ups and downs but
not a lot of continued gains.  But this aside, I was pointing to both
averages and persentiles and in addition to the averages, percentiles have
stayed flat for some 30 years, with some ups and downs, regardless of who
is at that percentile. If students at the 10th percentile have shown no
change, it doesn't matter what their sub-group is, they are still at the
10th percentile and as a group, the 10th percentile students have not shown
any noticeable gain at age 9, 13, or 17. The same is true at other
percentiles. Dick doesn't comment on the data for adults, where some 60
years of education is represented and the scores are pretty flat,
regardless of when the adults graduted from high school or dropped out
before high school or went on to post-secondary education. Don't forget,
the purpose of K-12 education is to produce educated adults, so it is adult
reading achievement to which we need to pay special attention. Like the K-12
data, the adult data are pretty well flat-lined, too. It seems to me there
should be some serious thought given to these data by the International
Reading Association and the Reading Hall of Fame. Hundreds of billions of
special intervention funding has been and will be spent trying to raise the
reading scores of the lowest reading groups, regardless of their ethnicity
or family background. Why these funds have not made an impact across the
board up to now seems to me to warrant serious consideration.

Tom Sticht
tsticht at aznet.net

Quoting DickaUFL at aol.com:

> The important factor that is missing in Tom's analysis is the substantial
> gains made by every subgroup in reading since 1971. Every subgroup has
> gained
> more than the average score has risen. Black and Hispanic students
> reading scores
> are up by 20-30 points since 1971 (though most of that gain occurred
> prior to
> REA and NCLB).
>
> Gerry Bracey finally helped me figure this out and he wrote about it in
> his
> Kappan column. The issue is a substantially changed population. Black and
> Hispanic kids are now twice as numerous as they were in 1971. Even though
> their
> scores have risen they have not risen to the level of Anglo kids. So with
> twice
> as many lower scoring minoritiy kids in the NAEP testing pool, the
> progress of
> all subgroups is vanished.
>
> Dick Allington
> New email:rallingt at utk.edu
>