[Reading-hall-of-fame] Re: Choice review
Ken Goodman
kgoodman at u.arizona.edu
Tue Aug 19 06:49:23 BST 2014
Tom , you should know that some wonderful things are happenng in Tucson
with all the adult literacy groups getting together. Literacy volunteers
are reading my book On Reading and using retrospective miscue analysis to
help adults revalue themselves as readers. Interestingly a number of us
started at different places - you and I and David Berliner for example but
because we looked at real reading in the real world we moved to see that
reducing reading to something that can be scaled and tested then results
in reifiying the scaled tests as reading. I just heard a lovely item on npr
with marvelous teachers who were running their schools by consensus and the
conclusion was yes but they need to be trained first before they can
permitted to decide what their kids need.
You're not a pariah Tom. You're a breaker of icons. This is the era I
describe as the pedagogy of the absurd. The public policies on literacy
become increasingly absurd while in the real world little kids all over the
world are texting on cell phones while they're being labeled non readers
in school using Early Grade Reading assessment ( a derivative of DIBELS) In
Senegal EGRA shows few third graders can read nonsense in French or their
native languages but a study shows 81% of the people have cell phones and
75% are texting on them.( Many in languages they were never taught to read
and write.) And Egra is being supported by theWorld Bank snd USAID and
Hewlett for millions of bucks as the quick cure to world literacy.
My own view which is becoming stronger all the time is that the human need
for and ability to learn language is so strong that each of learns the
literacy we need to connect with others and our world in spite of rather
than because of instruction
The aussies say its the tall poppies that get cut down and you are one tall
poppy Tom Sticht.
Ken Goodman
7814 South Galileo Lane
Tucson, Az 85747
520-745-6895[image: Description: Description: Description: Description:
Description: Description: Description: cid:image001.jpg at 01CEA8B7.CB8A40C0]
https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/0/?ui=2&ik=961873547c&view=att&th=141ebf9ba7435815&attid=0.0.1&disp=emb&zw&atsh=1
<http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415820332/>
Learning is not a Response to Instruction
Effective Iinstruction is a Response to Learning
As Don Graves said "Orthodoxies make us tell old stories about children at
the expense of the new stories that children are telling us."
Use Google to see :
Ken Goodman's Morning post
On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 4:39 PM, <tsticht at znet.com> wrote:
> Judith, Ken, and All: Following is a note I wrote earlier this year about
> the dangers of thinking critically about literacy assessment in adult
> education. Might be relevant to Ken et al re whose knowledge counts in
> education policy and practice.
>
> Tom Sticht
>
> 7/9/2014
>
> On the Danger of Thinking Critically in Adult Education
>
> Tom Sticht, International Consultant in Adult Education
>
> Definition: pariah (pəˈraiə) noun; a person driven out of a
> group or
> community; an outcast. Example: Because of his political beliefs
> he became a pariah in the
> district.
>
>
> Because of my beliefs about the shortcomings of standardized tests and
> their
> interpretations used in the national and international adult literacy
> assessments since the mid-1990s, I became a pariah in the field of adult
> literacy education. I was left out of professional consultant groups by the
> federal government and its contractors because I did not agree with what
> was
> being done with standardized tests both for assessing the skills of adults
> and as accountability measures for the Adult Education and Literacy System
> (AELS).
>
>
> When the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) first report came out in
> 1993
> I was struck by the arbitrary nature of the scale development which
> required
> that someone have an 80 percent probability of being able to perform a
> certain task to be considered competent at that level of task difficulty. I
> wrote a number of Research Notes drawing attention to the problems of the
> NALS scaling and interpretation. However, my criticisms of the 80 percent
> response probability were soundly criticized by the test developers and
> ignored by others who were using the data for advocating for more money for
> adult literacy education.
>
> Another aspect of the NALS (and the International Adult Literacy Survey
> (IALS) and its spinoffs that I criticized was the repeated pronouncement
> that of the set of literacy levels ranging from a low of 1 to a high of 5
> adults needed to be at level 3 to be able to successfully compete in our
> contemporary high-skill economy. I argued that there were no data to
> support this claim. Still, I was criticized by the test developers and
> ignored by government policymakers.
>
> However, things changed based on a Research Note that I posted on the NLA
> listserv July 10, 2001. I sent a copy to Jay Mathews, education columnist
> for the Washington Post and the Post published his article Tuesday, July
> 17, 2001 entitled "Adult Illiteracy, Rewritten" in which the former
> director of the National Adult Literacy Survey reported that the NALS used
> "the wrong "response probability" even after other federal researchers had
> concluded that that would greatly exaggerate the severity of [adult
> literacy] problems."
>
>
> Following the Washington Post article, the adult literacy discussion lists
> were filled with test developers from ETS, Statistics Canada, and adult
> advocacy groups denouncing the Washington Post article and, at times,
> directly criticizing me for exposing the problems the NALS to the general
> public. However, several years later, a National Academies of Science,
> National Research Council report on assessing adult literacy was published
> which argued that, as I had very early pointed out, the 80 percent
> probability was too stringent and the report called for the use of a 67
> percent response probability. And as I had also argued, the NRC report also
> made the point that the use of the level 3 as a criterion level of adult
> literacy in order for adults to be able to succeed in our knowledge
> economies was not warranted. Following this, the 2013 Programme for the
> International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) adopted the .67
> response probability for its literacy scales and announced that no level
> for competency would be designated as the criterion for being successful
> because there was no basis for making such a criterion designation.
>
> Though I feel somewhat vindicated by the changes made to the national and
> international adult literacy surveys based to a large degree on what I
> thought early on about the assessments, I have become a pariah in adult
> literacy education in federal government circles and in testing contractor
> circles. To deepen my status as a pariah, I have also consistently thought
> critically about and wrote about the National Reporting System (NRS) and
> its misuse of standardized tests! Today, you will not see my name in any of
> the lists of distinguished scholars contributing to government funded
> reports.
>
> But to me, the real disappointment is that none of the various adult
> literacy assessments nor the NRS seem to have benefited adult learners very
> much, if at all. In 1993, the AELS had over 3.8 million enrollments and
> now,
> 20 years later, after a series of national and international adult literacy
> assessments, and the implementation of the NRS, enrollments have dropped to
> a little over 1.7 million. For the last decade, federal state grant
> funding
> for the AELS has remained stagnant in the vicinity of $575 million, or
> about
> $300 per enrollment.
>
> Take it from the pariah, critical thinking can be dangerous!
>
> tsticht at aznet.net
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Quoting Judith Green <judithlgreen at me.com>:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I thought that this conceptual argument is one that might be a good
> > dialogues here.
> >
> > J
> > On Aug 18, 2014, at 2:37 PM, Ken Goodman <kgoodman at u.arizona.edu> wrote:
> >
> > > For your information
> > > Ken Goodman
> > > Ken Goodman
> > > 7814 South Galileo Lane
> > > Tucson, Az 85747
> > > 520-745-6895
> > > Learning is not a Response to Instruction
> > > Effective Iinstruction is a Response to Learning
> > > As Don Graves said "Orthodoxies make us tell old stories about
> > children at the expense of the new stories that children are telling us."
> > >
> > > Use Google to see :
> > > Ken Goodman's Morning post
> > >
> > >
> > > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > > From: Silverman, Naomi <Naomi.Silverman at taylorandfrancis.com>
> > > Date: Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 12:43 PM
> > > Subject: Choice review
> > > To: "Goodman, Yetta M - (ygoodman) (ygoodman at email.arizona.edu)"
> > <ygoodman at email.arizona.edu>, "Goodman, Kenneth S - (kgoodman)
> > (kgoodman at email.arizona.edu)" <kgoodman at email.arizona.edu>, "Bob Calfee
> > (robert.calfee at ucr.edu)" <robert.calfee at ucr.edu>
> > >
> > >
> > > Hi Yetta, Ken, and Bob,
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > A good recommendation in CHOICE!
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Best,
> > >
> > > Naomi
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > The following review appeared in the August 2014 issue of CHOICE:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > 51-6878 LC149
> > 2013-9875 CIP
> > > Whose knowledge counts in government literacy policies?: why expertise
> > matters, ed. by Kenneth S. Goodman, Robert
> > >
> > > C. Calfee, and Yetta M. Goodman. Routledge, 2014. 217p bibl index ISBN
> > 9780415858007, $140.00; ISBN 9780415858014 pbk, $41.95; ISBN
> > 9780203796849 e-book, contact publisher for price
> > >
> > >
> > > Curriculum and policy are informed by assumptions about what counts as
> > knowledge, grounded in notions of human nature, and affected by
> > determinations about whose knowledge counts in the construction and
> > delivery of knowledge in formal educational settings. Whose Knowledge
> > Counts in Government Literacy Policies? is an edited volume consisting of
> > essays on literacy policies, current research in literacy development and
> > practice, and the impact of policy on practice. The book is organized in
> > two sections. The first section examines the larger question of "whose
> > knowledge counts?" This question is contemplated through six essays that
> > examine literacy policies throughout the US and Europe. The second
> > section of the book contains essays that focus on a variety of topics,
> > such as the role of literary texts within standardized tests, diversity
> > in children's literature, writing instruction, the common core state
> > standards in literacy instruction, and literature and literary reasoning.
> > The diversity of ideas offered within the book affords the reader a rich
> > opportunity to consider foundational issues of policy and practice.
> > Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels. -- J A. Helfer, Illinois
> > State Board of Education
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Il,
> > >
> > > f
> > >
> > > I
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
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> >
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