[Reading-hall-of-fame] Re: Toward Improving Reading by Age 17

Fri Nov 19 16:25:12 GMT 2021

Hi Tom
It's always a pleasure to get your bulletins, and this one is a
special case.
Just yesterday I sent off a review of a proposed journal article in which I
referred to '[The intervention reviewed's] intention [being] evidently to
circumvent the notorious difficulty in persuading practitioners to modify
their pedagogy even when presented with firm experimental evidence of the
need to do so.'
Many years ago an analysis of projects of the (England and Wales) Schools
Council (1964-84 - see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schools_Council#:~:text=The%20Schools%20Council%20was%20from,and%20the%20Curriculum%20Study%20Group
)
identified two factors in successful projects: ownership (those tasked with
implementing the innovation should feel they had a genuine role in
developing it) and endorsement (those with the authority to mandate it
should do so, having judged it appropriate).
Does this fit with your and others' experience and knowledge?
Best

On Thu, 18 Nov 2021 at 16:48, Thomas Sticht <tgsticht at gmail.com> wrote:

> 11/18/2021
>
> Can We Improve Reading By Age 17?
>
> Tom Sticht, International Consultant in Adult Literacy (Ret.)
>
> In 1984, following a six year gestation period, the first Handbook of
> Reading Research appeared.  Edited by P. David Pearson and others and
> printed by Longman’s the 891 page tome came in the wake of what Preface
> writer Robert Dykstra estimated as some 1000 pieces of published reading
> research arriving each year.
>
> That same year of 1984, the National Assessment of Educational Progress
> (NAEP) reported that the average reading score for 17 year old's was 289,
> up four points from when the first NAEP score of 285 was recorded for 17
> year old's 13 years earlier 1n 1971.
>
> In 1991, the second Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. 2, now at over 1100
> pages, was published by Longman’s with Rebecca Barr and others as editors.
> This time the preface observed that, “Reading research, we found, moves at
> such a frenetic pace that between the moments  of conceptualization and
> publication, particular fields of inquiry had risen to a level which
> justified a separate chapter. …There are fields that did not seem
> appropriate as separate chapters then, but they do now.”
>
> In 1992, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reported
> that the average reading score for 17 year old's was 290, up five points
> from when the first NAEP score of 285 was recorded for this age group 21
> years earlier in 1971.
>
> In 2000, the third Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. 3, with some 1024
> pages, was published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates with Michael Kamil and
> others as editors. The Preface notes that this third volume has two major
> themes: (1) broadening the definition of reading, and (2) broadening the
> reading research agenda.
>
> Just a year earlier, in 1999, the National Assessment of Educational
> Progress (NAEP) reported that the average reading score for 17 year old's
> was 288, down two points from 1992 but still up three points from when the
> first NAEP score of 285 was reported for 17 year old's in 1971.
>
> In 2010, the fourth Handbook of Reading Research, Vol.4, with some 800
> pages, was published by Routledge with Michael Kamil and others as editors.
> The Preface discusses efforts by the federal government to try to improve
> instruction in reading and reports,  “The National Reading Panel (NRP)
> reported that there were over 100,000 research studies produced between
> 1966 and 2000, with some 15,000 prior to that time. These numbers
> illustrate the exponential growth in the research base stimulated by both
> research funding and urgent concern for improving reading instruction.”
>
>  In 2012, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reported
> that the average reading score for 17 year old's was 287, down one point
> from 1999 but still up two points from when the first NAEP score of 285 was
> recorded for this age group 41 years earlier in 1971.
>
> In 2019, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reported
> that the average reading score for 17 year old's was back down to 285, the
> same as it was when the first NAEP test results were recorded for this age
> group 48 years earlier in 1971. The Nations Report Card in Reading for 2019
> reported, “The average reading score for twelfth-grade students was lower
> in 2019 compared to the last assessment in 2015. The nearly 30-year trend
> line shows that the 2019 average reading score for twelfth-graders was
> lower than it was approximately a decade ago in 2009, not significantly
> different from 2002, and lower than the first assessment year in 1992.”
>                              (
> https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/reading/2019/g12/).
>
>  In 2020, the fifth Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. 5, with 540 pages,
> was published by Routledge with Elizabeth Birr Moje
> <https://www.routledge.com/search?author=Elizabeth%20Birr%20Moje> and
> others as editors. The Preface discusses gaps between what researchers do
> and know and what practitioners (e.g., teachers, administrators)  need to
> know and do and asks, “Why do the findings of research so rarely find their
> way into practice in any sustained or scaled way?”
>
> This is a good, if somewhat belated, question given the over 115,000 and
> more research studies before 2000 and hundreds if not thousands of research
> studies since 2000, five volumes of Handbooks of Reading Research, a
> National Reading Panel report, federal investments of hundreds of millions
> of dollars in research and guidance in reading instructional practices, and
> decades of NAEP testing showing some modest gains in 4th and 8th grade
> reading scores but which seemingly disappear and result in an essentially
> flat line in reading performance of 17 year old's over the last half
> century.
>
> If the NAEP assessments are valid indicators of how well these 17 year
> old, nearing adulthood teens can read, and if there has not been any
> improvement in their average reading abilities in half a century, given the
> tremendous amounts of money that has been spent on trying to improve the
> teaching and learning of reading, we need to know why. The present revival
> of the so-called “reading wars” and “science of reading” indicates that
> issues surrounding the teaching and learning of reading are still with us,
> and whether the findings of research rarely find their way into practice,
> or whether the research findings are not up to the task of improving
> practice is yet to be discovered.
>
> Resources:
>
> Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. 5
> https://www.google.com/books/edition/Handbook_of_Reading_Research_Volume_V/CgPpDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
>
> Reading Wars:
> https://hechingerreport.org/four-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-new-reading-wars/
>
>
>
>
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