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

[Yetta Goodman]

Is the purpose of reading education "to raise the reading scores of the 
lowest reading groups"
If there are no changes in the scores even for "adults graduated from 
high school" or
"went on to post-secondary education"

Let's consider that tests themselves do not measure the litreacy of a 
complex and diverse population of people.

For me the purpose of reading education is to provide people with the 
way to enjoy and access knowledge; to be flexible in their reading and
writing; to have real purposes to read and write; and to know how to use 
literacy for many purposes but especially to make the world a better 
place in which to live.

I'm not sure we know how to "test"  such purposes for reading 
education.  But we do see in many ways that literacy has increased in
its uses and "teaching for tests" do not help any people to extend and 
expand on their uses of literacy.

tsticht at znet.com wrote:

>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
>>
>>    
>>
>
>
>
>
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>
>
>  
>

-- 
Yetta M. Goodman
Regents Professor Emerita
University of Arizona, College of Education
Language Reading and Culture - Room 532
Tucson, AZ 85721
Home Address
7914 S. Galileo Lane
Tucson, AZ 85747-9609

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