Snow adolescent literact
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Transcript of Snow adolescent literact
Adolescent Literacy: The Crisis and the Solutions
Catherine E. Snow Harvard Graduate School of Education
Ohio Summit on Literacy in Secondary Schools26 March 2007
The state of reading, writ large
• Its importance heavily emphasized in policy • Considerable attention from the federal
government to the details of practice• Lots of funding, relatively speaking• Focus on assessments/accountability• But the scores that count are not improving• While demands for improved literacy outputs
are rising
What’s the crisis?
• Academic achievement depends on better literacy skills
• But the data are alarming– International comparisons of 15 year olds’ literacy:
PISA (A. Schleicher)– NAEP scores– Dropout rates– Postsecondary remediation
Average performanceof 15-year-olds in reading literacy
High reading performance
Low reading performance441434420400382375403Serbia
Greece
Russian Federation
Liechtenstein
Korea
Hong Kong- China
Finland
Netherlands
Canada
Macao- China Switzerland
New Zealand
Belgium
J apan
Australia
Iceland
Czech Republic
Sweden
France
Denmark
I reland
Germany Austria
Slovak Republic
Luxembourg
Poland
Hungary
Norway
Spain
United StatesLatvia
PortugalI taly
440
460
480
500
520
540
61626
NAEP 12th grade Reading Assessment results
– 37% at Basic level & 23% at Below Basic level
– Fewer than half of twelfth graders perform at or above the level expected by NAEP standards
Source: National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, NAEP 1998 Report Cards, 1999
Drop-out Rates
Almost half of African-American and Latino students fail to graduate from high school in 5 years (Greene & Forster, 2003; Orfield, Losen, Wald, & Swanson, 2004)
High school drop-out rates among 16 to 24 year-olds in 2000:
• 10.9% overall• 13.1% among African-Americans• 27.8% among Hispanics
– 44.2% among immigrants born outside the U.S.
– 15.9% among second (or greater) generation immigrants
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, October 2000
Post-secondary Remediation
• Only 30% of high school students graduate as proficient readers who are college-ready (Greene & Forster, 2003)
• 35 - 40% of high school graduates do not have the sophisticated reading and writing skills that employers seek (Achieve, Inc., 2005; Kaestle et al., 2001; National Commission on Writing, 2004)
• Half of all high school graduates or GED recipients exhibit the lowest levels of literacy (Kaestle et al., 2001)
Two adolescent literacy challenges1. Dealing with the struggling readers
1. Wide array of skills present in the post-primary classroom
2. Some students need intensive re-teaching3. Some need serious remediation 4. All strugglers need help to make up for missed
learning opportunities
2. Teaching the normally developing readers new skills
1. New vocabulary and academic language2. Content-specific literacy skills3. New purposes for reading
The price of success: Reading Excellence and Reading First
• Inoculation has become the default model —focusing efforts exclusively on the early grades
• “Research-based practice” can mean we are like the drunk looking under the streetlamp for his keys – E.g., we interpret adolescent literacy problems as
primary reading problems postponed– E.g., we implement PA interventions rather than
struggling to teach comprehension
What can we learn from reading excellence?
PRD Starting Points• Prevention, not instruction
– primary, secondary, and tertiary
– structural as much as instructional
– implies assessment to guide decisions
• Emergent literacy, not readiness
• Research consensus about
skilled reading
PRD Recommendations: Instruction to promote…
• Language and metalinguistic skills
• Understanding the functions of written language
• Both grasping and mastering the alphabetic system
• Motivation and positive affect around literacy
The accomplishments of Reading Excellence: Agreement that…
• Excellent early reading instruction is part of a solid foundation for on-going achievement
• Investing time in effective teaching and not wasting time on ineffective teaching are key
• We need to coordinate literacy instruction across the preprimary, primary, and later grades
• We can identify and correct weaknesses in early literacy programs
Reading First• Focus on instruction, not prevention• Mandated use of assessments for
accountability • Presumption regarding central role of
teacher/school expectations in influencing student achievement
• Perverse incentives regarding high standards
• Important but tricky disaggregation strategy• Attention to AYP rather than growth
National Reading Panel Report Recommendations about Instruction
1. Phonological awareness (15-18 hrs)
2. Systematic phonics instruction
3. Fluency
4. Vocabulary
5. Comprehension strategies
What’s missing? For primary grades1. Attention to variety
of genres2. Sustained silent
reading3. Comprehension
instruction4. Motivation and
interest5. Establishing a
purpose for reading
For post primary grades
1. Other kinds of comprehension instruction
2. Content-area-specific literacy skills
3. Writing
4. Motivation and interest
5. Establishing a purpose for reading
Reading comprehension
• The goals of primary reading instruction are really high school academic achievement
• There is too little focus on comprehension during primary reading instruction
• And too little reading instruction of any kind after grade 3
RAND Reading Group Study (RRSG) Goals
• Create agenda for R&D programs focused on reading comprehension
• Promote constructive debate about the agenda
• Increase communications among members of reading research and practice communities
• Submit agenda to U.S. Dept. of Education to support appropriations proposals
RRSG’s definition of reading comprehension
The process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language.
A Heuristic for Thinking about Reading Comprehension
RRSG-based conclusions
Comprehension can be taught starting in preschool.
And needs to be taught across all grades.
Building oral language skills is a key component of reading comprehension instruction across the grades.
Too much focus on print skills may decrease attention to comprehension precursors.
Is a focus on comprehension by itself adequate to solve the problem?
Not really, because….
Adolescent readers have to master…
• Word reading accuracy• Word reading fluency• Making inferences from the text• Integrating new text-based knowledge with pre-
existing knowledge• Understanding the language of the texts• Having the background knowledge presupposed
by the texts• Motivation and interest in the text• Establishing a purpose for reading
Successful practitioners with adolescent readers have to…
• Integrate reading instruction with content learning goals
• Manage the distributed structures of middle/high schools
• Find a place to focus on reading– English teachers focus on literature, not reading– Other content area teachers rarely prepared, sometimes
unwilling, to teach reading
• Design practice based on a relatively scanty research base
Reading Next Challenges
• New reading tasks even for children prepared very well at pre-K – Grade 3.
• Aspects of pre-K – Grade 3 instruction key for comprehension still not being adequately implemented
• Thus too many current 4th – 12th graders are struggling
The problem of comprehension in the content areas among grade 4-12 students
• Widespread
• Inevitable if there is a mismatch between reader and text, reader and activity, text and activity
• A problem that should become a focus of instruction
And what do we know from work on early literacy?
• Solid research provides a basis for making progress
• Assessment is a key step in organizing instruction
• Consensus serves the field better than dissensus
• Models of excellent instruction should be studied
• Wisdom of practice has been undervalued
Steps to helping all students read better
Identify student literacy needs, at group and individual levels
Teach all students systematicallyTeach all students reading for learning in
every classGive struggling students extra help
designed to address their needs
http://www.all4ed.org/publications/ReadingNext/ReadingNext.pdf
READING NEXTA VISION FOR ACTION AND RESEARCH INMIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOL LITERACYA Report to Carnegie Corporation of New York
A collaborative effort
• Donald Deshler
• David Francis
• John Guthrie
• Michael Kamil
• James McPartland
• Gina Biancarosa and Catherine Snow (eds.)
• Alliance for Excellent Education
Fifteen key elements: nine instructional improvements
• Direct, explicit comprehension instruction• Effective instruction embedded in content• Motivation and self-directed learning• Text-based collaborative learning• Strategic tutoring• Diverse texts• Intensive writing• A technology component• Ongoing formative assessment of students
Fifteen key elements: six infrastructure improvements
• Extended time for literacy
• Professional development
• Ongoing summative assessment of students and programs
• Teacher teams
• Leadership
• Comprehensive and coordinated literacy program
15 – 3 = 0
Indispensable elements are:
• Professional development
• Ongoing formative assessment of students
• Ongoing summative assessment of students and programs
Getting from here to there
• We need research
• But we can’t wait for the research
• We also need to use the knowledge available from effective practitioners
• And effective leaders
Research: Small scale efforts
• Basic experimental research• Demonstration pilots
Con: Affects Pro: Adds to few students the knowledge base
Research: Large scale efforts
• Program-specific evaluations• Large-scale implementations
Con: Adds little Pro: Affects
to knowledge base numerous students
Research: A middle ground
• Planned variation of program elements • Evaluation of common outcomes across programs
Pro: Adds to the Pro: Affects
knowledge base many students
Research: Planned variation of key program elements
Key program elements Programs
1 2 3 4 5 6
Direct, explicit comprehension instruction ● ● ● ● ● ●
Effective instructional principles embedded in content ● ● ● ●
Motivation and self-direction ● ● ● ● ●
Text-based collaborative learning ● ●
Strategic tutoring ● ● ● ●
Diverse texts ● ● ● ● ●
Writing intensive ●
Technology component ●
Extended time for literacy ● ● ●
Professional development ● ● ● ● ● ●
Summative and formative assessments ● ● ● ● ● ●
Teacher teams ● ● ● ●
Leadership ● ● ● ●
Comprehensive and coordinated literacy program
Getting from here to there
• We need research: collaborations among schools/districts and universities to – Examine new initiatives systematically– Use the data now available in the districts– Upgrade the data available in the districts
• But we can’t wait for the research• So we also need to start by using the knowledge
available from effective practitioners and leaders– To define the problems of greatest urgency– To critique current practices– To suggest effective practices
The Strategic Education Research Partnership
SERP-BPS Middle School Literacy Project• A Research Collaborative coordinated by Boston
Higher Education Partnership • Participants: researchers from Boston College,
Boston University, Harvard, Lesley, MIT, Wheelock, and practitioners including BPS administrators and teachers, Boston Plan for Excellence, and seven Boston middle schools
• Cross-university doctoral course • Ongoing research
The BPS Middle School Literacy Project: SERP Principles
• Accumulating usable knowledge • Embedding research in the challenges of practice• Systematizing the wisdom of practice• Operating simultaneously at three levels: student,
teacher, school• Contributing to collaborative tool-building• Planning ahead so improvements can ‘travel’
The SERP-BPS Middle School Literacy Project: Accomplishments
• Establishment of a mechanism for working together• Solid understanding of the teachers’ and the students’
literacy challenges• Development of a suite of tools
– Surveys focused on literacy and internal accountability
– SERP Reading Inventory and Scholastic Evaluation
– Word Generation, an academic language intervention
• Converting academic researchers• Training doctoral researchers
In conclusion, we need…
• To learn from research and practice
• To launch cross-site, systematic efforts
• To work towards consensus in guiding policy
More information
• www.serpinstitute.org
• www.carnegie.org/literacy
• www.rand.org/achievementforall
• www.gse.harvard.edu/~snow