Reading Recovery
From our previous examination of data from the latest RR annual monitoring reports, we
concluded that RR has had little or no impact on reducing New Zealand’s relatively large
literacy achievement gap. There are serious shortcomings and much needed improvements in
several aspects of RR, including the theoretical underpinnings of the program, the assessment
battery used in the program, the specific procedures and instructional strategies emphasized
in the program, the manner of programme delivery (one-to-one instruction versus instruction
in pairs), and congruence between classroom curriculum and the RR program. Fundamental
changes in all of these areas would very likely improve the effectiveness of the program, both
in terms of outcomes and cost (Church, 2005; Reynolds & Wheldall, 2007; Tunmer &
Chapman, 2003, 2004).
The most serious shortcoming of RR, however, concerns the differential effectiveness of the
program. As noted previously, the programme is beneficial for some struggling readers but
not others, especially those struggling readers who need help the most. For these children,
more intensive and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness and phonemically-based
decoding skills is likely to be required than what is normally provided in RR lessons (Iversen,
Tunmer, & Chapman, 2005; Tunmer & Greaney, 2008, 2010). Given these considerations,
the Literacy Experts Group (Ministry of Education, 1999a) that advised the Literacy
Taskforce (Ministry of Education, 1999b) described previously included in its report the
following unanimously agreed upon recommendation: “We recommend that Reading
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Recovery places greater emphasis on explicit instruction in phonological awareness and the
use of spelling-to-sound patterns in identifying unfamiliar words in text” (p. 6).
Although the Literacy Taskforce did not adopt this recommendation, it did recommend a
review of the RR programme (p. 23). However, as indicated in an article by Rivers (2001,
February 16), who interviewed the developer of RR, making significant changes to RR based
on the review would be difficult:
If any changes were made to Reading Recovery, they could be made to its
administration only, or they would risk being in breach of the program’s
trademark. Its developer, Marie Clay, said she held a trademark on the name
Reading Recovery to protect the program’s integrity. (p. 1)
The RR programme is currently overseen by the Marie Clay Literacy Trust
(
http://irrto.us/index.php/marie-clay-literacy-trust), which is responsible for the copyright of
all RR materials and the RR trademark. No changes in the materials or procedures of RR can
therefore be made without the approval of the trustees. This makes it virtually impossible for
school systems or countries to make changes to the RR programme based on recent research
or to conduct independent studies investigating ways of modifying the programme to improve
outcomes and/or cost effectiveness.
In a study of the effectiveness of RR, McDowall et al. (2005) found that RR was less
beneficial to Māori and Pasifika students than to other students. Problems associated with the
benefits of RR for Māori and Pasifika were generally attributed to implementation,
resourcing, family/cultural factors, and inappropriate textual materials but not to the
programme itself. McDowall et al. overlooked the fundamental problem with RR, which is
that it is based on the multiple cues theory of reading, a model of reading that was rejected by
the scientific community over three decades ago (e.g., Stanovich, 1980). Church (2005) made
a similar point, stating that RR “was designed in the 1970s prior to most of the modern
research into how children learn to read. Not surprisingly, therefore, it lacks a number of
elements which have been found by research to be essential in teaching low achieving
children how to read” (p. 13). As part of the effort to overcome the failure of New Zealand’s
national literacy strategy, RR needs to be replaced with an intervention programme that is
based on contemporary theory and research on reading intervention and targets children who
are most at risk of failing to learn to read.