Tag Archives: reading proficiency

We are what we appear to value.  Reading Proficiency and Censorship.

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Simultaneously the Wisconsin legislature is considering a bill to improve reading instruction for all children and a bill to limit what schools can provide for children to read.  Two bills each with its own perspective on how the state should fulfill its commitment to educating children.  One bill attempts to apply the best practices of the science of reading to ensure all children can be proficient readers.  One bill tells schools to limit what they provide for children to read and see.  Each bill uses the power of the state to transform how schools impact children.  Each bill is an expression of what we value.

What do we know?

Our WI constitution says the state is responsible for establishing and supervising public education.  State statute 118.01(2) outlines the state’s educational goals.  These include instruction in 118.01(2)(a) the basic skills of reading, arithmetic, listening, writing, and speaking, analytical skills to think rationally and solve problems, a body of knowledge in literature, fine arts, and the natural sciences, skills and attitudes for lifelong intellectual activity, and knowledge in computer science including the social impact of computers.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/118

What is being proposed?

Representative Joel Kitchens is spearheading Assembly Bill 321 to improve child literacy by creating an Office of Literacy, focusing teacher prep programs on science-based reading instruction, establishing and funding literacy coaching, and standardizing early literacy screening through grade 3 assessments.  Equally important to the use of phonics-based reading is the ban on schools from using three cueing strategies in teaching children to read.  Every child in 4K-grade 3 will be taught how to decode words and encode sounds – to read and write independently.  Each child will be taught the mechanics of literacy and strategies for building vocabulary.  A child’s ability will no longer be determined by her school’s reading program preferences but by best practice. 

The bill institutes change in teacher education and professional development to ensure that teachers know how to teach phonics-based reading.  Today most teachers do not teach phonics as it was not part of their baccalaureate preparation or their school district’s PD.  Most teachers learned to teach whole language or blended reading strategies dominated reading instruction.  Teachers will learn to teach and be accountable for teaching all children to read using the science of reading concepts and skills.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2023/related/proposals/ab321

State Senators Andre Jacque, Romaine Quinn, and Cory Tomczyk presented a bill that would cause schools to remove books and material that are “deemed harmful or offensive to minors from public schools and libraries” and “enact policies that ensure minors do not view harmful materials on public computers”.

Under the guise of parent rights to supervise what their children learn, the bill requires schools to publish their curricular materials so that parents may object to what they deem harmful and/or remove their child from that class instruction. 

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2023/proposals/sb10

One bill supports our educational goals and the other subverts those goals.

I fully agree with Joel Kitchens when he says “Students will succeed by returning to the way most of us learned to read.  I truly consider this to be the most important thing that I ever worked on in the legislature”.  AB 321 advances the educational goals of our state by improving how we teach all children to read. 

Senate Bill 10 contradicts our educational goals to provide all children with opportunities to consider, think, and become intellectual problem solvers.  It ignores or does not trust the authority of school districts to supervise the materials they provide for children to read and see and experience in school.  Instead, this bill creates a new right for a parent to make that decision not just for that parent’s child but for all children.

SB10 is Wisconsin’s effort to keep up with other conservative-dominated state legislatures with book banning.  If successful, the bill ensures that schoolbooks and materials can be censored by a single parent or small group of parents.  It also places school boards in the bullseye of the issue to ban or not ban books.

https://www.wortfm.org/following-national-trend-wisconsin-lawmakers-introduce-book-ban/

Where is our educational high ground?

As a former school superintendent and school board president, I applaud Assembly Bill 321 and shun Senate Bill 10.  The high ground of public education is to teach children how to think and to resolve issues.  It is low ground to tell children what to think and to insulate them from issues they should, with appropriate instructional support, be able to consider. 

Our state constitution explains the educational goals of a public education in Chapter 118, section 118.01.  118.01(d) says “Each school board shall provide an instructional program designed to give pupils: (8) Knowledge of effective means by which pupils may recognize, avoid, prevent and halt physically or psychologically intrusive or abusive situations which may be harmful to pupils including child abuse and child enticement.  Instruction shall be designed to help pupils develop positive psychological, emotional, and problem-solving responses to such situations and avoid relying on negative, fearful, and solely reactive methods of dealing with such situations.  Instruction shall include information on available school and community prevention and intervention assistance or services and shall be provided to pupils in elementary schools.”

The high ground for our state is to implement the goals of its statutes.  Schools must constantly improve how we teach children while we constantly are vigilant regarding the educational materials we use for that education.  The state constitution gives schools the authority and responsibility to do these, and the role of legislation is to enhance not impede schools.  The constitution commends parents to work with local school boards to understand and advocate for the education of all children.

The high ground for local school boards is to constantly supervise the materials and experiences used to educate its students.   When a challenge arises the board can engage in an appropriate conversation with the conviction that the district has and is meeting its responsibilities for the entirety of our state’s educational goals.  We teach all children to become proficient in basic skills and to consider, think, problem solve and make decisions regarding their school experiences.  We do not teach them what to think or how to value their experiences.

When Labels and Data Contradict

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I invite you to read the WI DPI State Report Card for your local high school and you also may learn two contradictory facts.  I use my local high school’s 2022 school report card for this purpose. 

  • 65% of the students in the high school are proficient in reading and 25% are proficient in math, and
  • the DPI says this school’s achievement significantly exceeds the state’s expectations for high school reading and math.

Based on the DPI labeling Niche claims these achievement scores rank the school 83rd out of 496 high schools in the state and US News and World Report banners on the school walls recognizing this as a school of excellence.

https://apps2.dpi.wi.gov/reportcards/home

https://www.niche.com/k12/d/gibraltar-area-school-district-wi/

https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/wisconsin/districts/gibraltar-area-school-district-103996

What Should We Know

There should be a head scratch arising when we assign excellence to a school where 35% of students are not proficient in reading and 75% of students are not proficient in math, especially the math statistic.  How would we interpret these school results if the headline on the report read “One of every three students lack proficiency in reading and three of every four students lack proficiency in math”?  This is more than seeing our world as a glass half full as compared to a glass half empty.  35% of high school students not proficient in reading and 75% not proficient in math is not good news and is not excellent.  Not!

Perhaps our understanding of schooling excellence is like Billy Bean’s answer to Peter Brand after disconnecting his phone call with another team’s general manager in the movie “Money Ball” – “when you get the answer you want, hang up (the phone)”.  Such thinking tells us “Don’t argue with US News and World Report when they say your school is excellent or with the Department of Public Instruction when they say you significantly exceed Wisconsin’s expectations”.  However, what do we say to the too many students who are not proficient?  Your school did well even if you did not.

Using labels to describe how well schools cause children to learn is political appeasement.  In general, everyone wants to feel good about their local school.  Parents don’t want to think badly of the place they send their children to be cared for and educated.  Secondly, like parents, taxpayers don’t want to think badly about the schools their taxes support.  Sadly, property taxes in support of schools are generally higher in many of our districts where achievement is lowest.  Thirdly, political leaders know they have little power to change educational outcomes at the local school level, so they create labeling that does not rock their political boat.  For these three reasons, we are given inflated words in our annual school report cards that often do not align with statistical truths.

The bar for school excellence is a low bar.  Few want to tear the scab from the historic dilemma faced when school report card data is disaggregated by the socio-economic characteristics of schools in our state.  It is a fact that students in urban schools with neighborhoods of poverty, high numbers of children of color,  and children with significant educational challenges generally fare poorly on academic state report card measures.  As a result, the bar for school excellence in our state is set very low so as to not exclude all such schools and the bar is obfuscated by including measures of annual growth from preceding school report cards.  We applaud upward changes in annual tests even though the measures may never achieve proficiency.

What Needs Doing

As a mentor would tell me years ago when we faced a difficult task, “Let’s pull up our socks and get about doing better”.  When we stop labeling and address the data, the work before us changes immensely.

  • Label the data as if we were grading a student’s daily academic assignment.  Use a generally accepted grading scale.  Why grade schools differently than we grade our children’s schoolwork?  Soft sellers will tell us that there are many other variables to consider when evaluating the success of a school, but do they also use those variables when grading a student’s daily assignments?  No.  So, use a grading scale even children will understand.
A+97 – 100
A93-96
A-90-92
B+87-89
B83-86
B-80-82
C+77-79
C73-76
C-70-72
D+67-69
D65-66
E/FBelow 65

https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/plan-for-college/college-basics/how-to-convert-gpa-4.0-scale#:~:text=Common%20examples%20of%20grade%20conversion,D%2D%20(below%2065).

Using the College Board’s grading scale, our local high school would receive a D grade for reading proficiency and an F grade for math proficiency.

  • Urgency attaches to how we label the quality of our work. The current rating of “exceeds expectations” conveys very little urgency, even though 35% of students are not proficient in reading and 75% are not proficient in math.  From our students’ perspective, there is immense urgency.  And if we graded our work accurately, grades of D in reading and F in math would indeed be urgent.  In fact, there may be hell to pay for such results.  The use of current labeling blinds us to real urgencies.
  • Instructional analysis and change follow how we label our schools.  Analysis is short-lived when a school is labeled as excellent.  The general conclusion is “if we are excellent, little needs to be changed”.  And that is the case in most schools taking comfort in the current DPI labeling.  However, if we base our analysis on a grading of our schools, how we instruct children in reading and math is in for extreme rethinking.  A reading program that results in 35% of students being non-proficient and a math program that results in 75% of students being non-proficient are not acceptable reading and math instructional programs.  Instruction needs to change.

If we continue to teach children in our elementary school the same way we taught our current high school students when they were elementary students, that instruction will cause similar statistical results.  The changes needed are K-12 not in the high school alone.

The requirement for honesty in reporting school data is essential because we use the data as our perception of education in our schools.  Words like “succeeds expectations” and “excellence” cause a warmth of pride followed by complacency.  When schools are told they are good, they smile and relax.  When told they are not good, they frown and are prodded to do better. 

The Big Duh!

What a difference it would make if a school’s banner read “Grade A School:  More than 93% of students are proficient in reading and in math”.  That truly would be a school of excellence that significantly meets expectations.

More importantly, what a difference it would make for the children of the school who would be proficient in reading and in math.

We need to pull up our socks and get about the work of being better.

Improving Reading is like “Trouble With The Curve” – Current Players Are Not Prepared To Do It

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Educators statewide should applaud parents, educators, and legislators in Wisconsin who are advancing AB 446.  The proposed legislation will strongly improve the state mandates for assessment of reading readiness and reading proficiency for all our youngest learners.  The current mandates are weak and ineffective; AB 446 is robust in its requirements.  Proponents of the legislation are impassioned for these changes.  As expected, there is opposition to doing what is right.  Legislators claim the bill to be an unfunded mandate ignoring the current state funding given to districts for this very purpose.  Political opposition for opposition’s sake.

Parallel to AB 446 we need the President of our University of Wisconsin System to acknowledge and remedy the companion problem causing children to fail as proficient readers.  Educator preparation programs in Wisconsin do not teach prospective teachers to teach reading.  I overuse the term “teach” on purpose.  Reading is not a natural skill set; it is learned.  Proficiency in reading is yet more difficult; it must be taught.  Teachers must be taught to teach children to be proficient readers. 

Take note:  A person who can read proficiently is not prepared to teach a child to be a proficient reader.  The set of reading skills we want all children to learn and use is complex and compound.  There is a clear and distinct science underlying proficient reading.  Many children obtain these complex and compound skills through a combination of untargeted instruction and the opportunity to read.  However, more than 50% of children in Wisconsin do not.  Data support this statement.  A majority of children in Wisconsin are not proficient readers and are not prepared to be critical readers for the decades of their future lives.

Why is this?

For lovers of the “the game”, Clint Eastwood’s Trouble With The Curve (2012) highlighted the difficulty of finding baseball players with requisite talent for playing in the big leagues.  A power hitter can feast on fastballs, but throw him a curve and he will walk slowly to the bench.  The game requires talented players who can hit the irregular pitch.

Children need teachers who are prepared to teach all children to be proficient readers because they are trained to hit the curves of children who present challenges in their mastery of reading skills.  Our current teacher preparation programs do not do this.  Our colleges of education must strengthen teacher preparation with requirements in –

  • Phonemic awareness
  • Decoding skills
  • Word sight recognition

combined with

  • Background knowledge
  • Vocabulary development
  • Knowledge and use of language structures
  • Skills of verbal reasoning
  • ELA literacy

Check the transcript of a graduate of a WI-system college of education and look for this preparation.  It is not there.

For AB 446 to be effective, it must be paired with improved teacher skills in the teaching of proficient reading.  As with the legislation, this needed improvement bangs against the status quo and proponents of the status quo oppose changes in our teacher preparation programs.  Such institutional thinking and behavior is arcane and archaic.  This is why the action of the President of the UW-System is required.  He can mandate change. 

If we are to hit the curve of reading proficiency challenges and use the assessment data handed us by AB 446, we need players/teachers who are prepared and do not have trouble with the curve.

“Just Go Do” Goes Nowhere

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Our common mythologies tell us that men will not ask for directions. Men would rather drive and get lost or fail at assembling a new purchase than display the unmanly plight of seeking help. “I can do this” is a real man’s mantra. However, to paraphrase Louis Pasteur, “Fortune favors the prepared mind.” Whether it is man, woman or child, understanding the directions and gaining the skills for how to get from here to there, literally or hypothetically, is the best preparation for success. Without preparation and direction, we tend to go nowhere. Note: the following is not a diatribe about men, but a story concerning all of us.

In recent school discussions of student reading performances over the past five years, we realized that these outcomes were far below our students’ capacity to perform and our school’s expectations for all children. Disaggregation of statewide and local assessment scores showed about 15% of children performing at advanced levels of reading and 30% at proficient levels. These data matched state and national reading trends. Yet, we were chronically looking at the larger pool of 45% of children who were in the basic category reading performance. What kept these children from being proficient readers. We had a problem.

There were other indicators, such as poor spelling and confusion with the structures of grammar and syntax that consistently showed up in the daily work of our basic readers. We observed stumbling with reading fluency, especially with new, technical vocabulary. Our in-house screener showed these children making progress in their reading skills, however they did it make enough progress to become proficient on any assessments. Our assessments led us to questions and direct observation of children led us semi-conclusions. Too many of our children were weak in demonstrating phonological awareness, abilities to decode new words and had limited sight word recognition. Our advanced and proficient readers learned these skills, either from our instruction or parental assistance or through their own intuitive processes. But, for 55% of our children, we were at Point A, an unacceptable level of reading performance. We needed to get these children to Point B, student proficiency in reading built upon stronger student phonological and orthographic understanding and skills.

The Board’s Student Learning Committee, led by a Board member and comprised of teachers, parents, and administrators, began to study the nature of phonology. Parent members were vested in the issue; most were parents of children with reading challenges. Generally, the problem did not arise from a lack of reading interest at home or parental support of school. It did not arise from intellectual disorders. And, it did not arise from ambivalence. Parents and teachers and administrators were concerned with the stalled improvement in reading performance and wanted solutions.

Several of our children of interest displayed characteristics of dyslexia and their instruction was guided by an IEP. By looking at these children intensely, the committee began to understand that our teaching and learning model had several significant gaps. The committee met with representatives of Lindamood-Bell to understand that vendor’s approach to diagnostic and intense, clinical reading instruction. In addition, teachers trained in Orton-Gillingham and Wilson Reading explained how their preparation told them to address the needs of children with dyslexia and coding/decoding problems. A consultant from the International Dyslexia Association explained what reading is like for a child who can’t code and decode. She helped the committee to understand best practices in reading instruction for these children. The committee concluded that improvement in each student’s phonologic and orthographic skills was necessary to cause every student to be a proficient reader.

To get from Point A to Point B, we needed to change and improve our teaching-learning model. We could not say to our K-6 teachers, “just do it” – somehow make the necessary changes in your teaching to cause different results. Pasteur’s model told us that we needed to prepare for success if we wanted to be successful. Our starting point was to discern the current level of teacher preparation for phonics-based reading instruction. We found that our results were consistent with our preparation. Due to no fault of any teacher, most of our faculty had completed only a unit or two of instruction in phonics in a single course as part of their baccalaureate preparation. That was the extent of their academic preparation. Through self-designed continuing education, some had developed their own understanding of phonics-based reading and were achieving some success with some children. As a whole, we were not Pasteur-prepared for success.

It took half his life for Pasteur to be Pasteur. After six months of study, we still are not prepared, but we know how to be prepared. We know what our teaching-learning models lacks and we have a plan to provide each teacher with the directions and skills needed to move our children to Point A to Point B. We also know that our plan for success preparation takes time to achieve. This summer, each K-6 teacher, reading specialist and special education working with K-6 children will receive training in the Orton-Gillingham methodologies for intensive and sequential phonics-based instruction of word formation. These teachers will receive additional training the following summer. We will prepare each teacher to “go do”.

Our new designs says that all children will receive grade level instruction in our core reading program that is embedded with phonological and orthographic training AND each child who demonstrates phonological weakness will receive developmentally-appropriate OG instructional intervention. Our superintendent proposed a strategy of curriculum compacting that will provide more time each day for children needing deeper interventions of clinical and intensive instruction. Through district-provided preparation, all K-6 teachers will be able to teach a stronger phonics-based reading program, diagnose a child’s weaknesses in phonological understanding and skills, and give direct instruction to remediate the weakness. This approach to district-provided professional development is a change for our district. This PD is mandated and required for all current K-6, elementary special ed teachers and reading specialists. It is performance-based. We will be able to associate student achievement in phonics-based reading with a teacher(s) prepared for phonics-based reading instruction. It is prospective – all new-to-the-district K-6 teachers will receive OG training in future years.

Most importantly, this approach to professional development sets the stage for future analysis of student academic performances. When the district identifies a teaching-learning problem in the future and our educational outcomes are adjusted, an immediate question will be “How well are we prepared to ‘go do’?”. We will be Pasteur-like in our preparation for success.

The Key To “What If” Is “Whatever It Takes”

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What if? We all ponder our “what ifs”, those long shot wishes that it would be great to realize, yet we know that long shots are more wish than possibility. Half of pondering is considering “what it would take” to make our long shot happen. And, as with most ponders, the magnitude of what it would take dissolves the dream.

Still, we ponder, so ponder this. What if each and every child entering fourth grade could read and comprehend printed information written at or above the fourth grade level? What if teachers for fourth grade students could begin instruction in September with curricular materials that were at or more complex than fourth grade? As fourth grade marks a shift from learning to read to reading to learn, what if all children entered fourth grade capable of reading to learn? What if?

But, once again, there is a huge span between reality and the above “what if.” The reading comprehension level of children entering fourth grade typically ranges from late first grade to sixth grade. Children with special education needs, children living in poverty, and children who entered Kindergarten unready for schooling too0 often enter fourth grade with reading comprehension and other academic skills well below grade level. Most of their fourth grade instruction will be designed to get their skills past the second and maybe the third grade level and, even though they are exposed to the fourth grade instruction their at-grade-level peers receive, they are very likely leave fourth grade with academic achievement that will make their unready for fifth grade. For almost half the children in every elementary grade level, this describes their academic experience in grades K-5. And, after direct reading instruction ends with their passage to middle school, these children will struggle to read almost all printed material presented to them in grades 6 through 12.

So, again, consider the “what if” that describes all children as being proficient third grade readers ready and able to comprehend fourth grade printed materials. If the reading proficiencies of all children are at grade level, how much academic growth will these children be able to achieve in fourth grade? A lot! With regular fourth grade instruction and learning support, most children would be able to attain fifth grade with at grade level achievements.

This is sounding good. But, what would it take for this to happen, for all children to be at grade level as they complete their elementary education? A lot?

Stop your pondering here. Stop thinking about what all children at grade level would mean both for students and for teachers. Instead, be real and think about what it means today for learning achievement to be scattered across multiple grade levels when they begin fourth grade. Think about what it means to children who know they are still being taught second and third grade curricula. Think about what it means to children who are at or above grade level who know that their teacher must split instruction many times before she can address their grade level or advanced learning needs. Think about what the spread of achievement means for teachers as they plan for multiple grade levels of learning in their class.

When you add up all of these “think abouts,” you should come to a simple and ompelling conclusion. Whatever it takes to cause the reading proficiency of all children to be at beyond the fourth grade entry level is worth its expense.

All children reading at grade level certainly is more than worth all of the resources – time, money, modified instruction, assisted learning – we now plow into helping children in middle school through high school whose reading and comprehension abilities are significantly below grade level. This is not to say that all that we now do to cause children who are below grade level to learn is not worthwhile– far from it. No one advocates abandoning their learning. But, what if they were not below grade level?

Causing all children to achieve grade level reading comprehension when enter fourth grade is worth whatever it takes. Once we determine the scope and depth of the necessary whatevers, the next question we face is “What are we prepared to do?” Too often we know what to do but lack the conviction to do it because the whatevers seem overwhelmingly economically, politically and pedagogically difficult. The subsequent blogs will discuss “whatever it takes.”