New Zealand - Reading Recovery - literacy rates 'flatline'

[debbie]

http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/report- ... me-5542927

Further article about the New Zealand report.

I'd love to inform the 'Ministry' - it takes some time to enrich children with general knowledge and understanding of the world, but it takes very little time to get them up and running with reading, spelling and writing when the teaching is explicit and in sufficient small steps for them to grasp all the information and skills.

The children need 'keep up' and not 'catch up'.

And it is perfectly possible when the teachers know how.

[debbie]

http://pc.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/new-re ... cs-to.html

Further commentary!

[debbie]

Radio New Zealand: Interview with Bill Tumner and ministry spokesperson:

http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/2564788

I am grateful that I was informed about this interview by a thoughtful person via Twitter!

Here is the dilemma - the copyright and methodology of the Reading Recovery programme is out-of-date according to the last 30 years of research on reading.

It is also a very expensive programme that is world-wide - 'established' and 'entrenched' - and is dramatically in need of updating.

[debbie]

http://www.senmagazine.co.uk/articles/536-phonics

Has the House of Commons inquiry Teaching Children to Read (March 2003), leading to Rose’s review, been a waste of time, effort and money? Why has the government provided several free copies of Letters and Sounds for every infant and primary school if the staff are then instructed by the National Strategies team, through local authority advisers, that they should be influenced by their resident Reading Recovery teacher – who is busily teaching the weakest pupils in the school with methods that have been rejected by Rose.

As the synthetic phonics teaching approach positively excludes the use of multi-cueing reading strategies, a school cannot claim to be a ”synthetic phonics school” if it also uses the Reading Recovery type approach for intervention. Teachers and parents need to be alerted to this fact.

Is the government going to be fully accountable for a state of affairs in which the strongest pupils in the strongest schools receive teaching which follows Jim Rose’s recommendations, whilst the weakest pupils in the weakest schools receive the type of multi-cueing reading strategies which research shows us fails the weakest pupils and which Jim Rose rejects? Will this lead to the highest possible standards of literacy for all?

I wrote this article some years ago to illustrate that even in England, where systematic synthetic phonics is heavily promoted, branches of the government simultaneously fund and promote Reading Recovery specifically. This is true to this day - and the government is committed to fund Reading Recovery until 2014 despite the fact that the Science and Technology select committee seriously challenged and criticised the DfE for its promotion and funding of Reading Recovery. There was little publicity to this state of affairs at the time.

This giving teachers totally contradictory messages about the methods they should use to teach children to read is a serious issue indeed.

To this day, this mixed message to the teaching profession, and the government funding and promotion of Reading Recovery, has not been accounted for.

[debbie]

http://www.examiner.com/article/reading ... nyone-else

Reading Recovery: Not for the dyslexic or anyone else

Commentary on features, findings and failings of Reading Recovery in America.

[debbie]

I am so pleased to have heard personally from James Chapman this morning encouraging me to distribute the paper written about the New Zealand literacy results flatlining and the possible role that Reading Recovery played in this state of affairs.

He referred me to this paper, unbeknown perhaps that I had already highlight this same paper at the beginning of this very thread!

http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/fms/Mass ... y-2013.pdf


James contacted me because he was alerted to the developments in England where it is looking like the Reading Recovery leaders now promote RR through the heading of 'International Literacy Centre' based at the Institute of Education in London.

Further, it is looking like people associated with the 'International Literacy Centre' have developed their intervention programmes for older learners and may well be training schools in 'phonics'.

I am really not sure what is the truth of the matter, I am trying to find out.

However, this is an important issue - very important - because we need, and deserve, absolute clarity about the content and methodology of any training programmes associated with the 'International Literacy Centre' and the 'Reading Recovery' programme.

You can soon catch up with the questions raised by looking at this latest thread on the Reading Reform Foundation forum - which also links to a subject-specific thread on my PI forum:



http://rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopi ... 387#p48387

[debbie]

More information about Reading Recovery just flagged up via Twitter:

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~bgrossen/rr.htm

Because of Reading Recovery's increasing popularity, and its expense, more independent evaluators are raising questions and reviewing the research that is cited to support claims regarding its effectiveness. Following is a summary of the findings of these reviews and other studies evaluating the impact of Reading Recovery. These findings should be considered in deciding whether to adopt, expand, or terminate Reading Recovery programs.

I changed the font to red.

I believe this piece is from 1997 - and Reading Recovery is still going strong.

A case for the 'Emperor's New Clothes' then!

[debbie]

Has anyone got any information about termination of Reading Recovery in their school or district?

[debbie]

This thread below is entirely pertinent to New Zealand - it continues the theme as to the accountability of governments that keep funding Reading Recovery.

It provides parliamentary evidence that Reading Recovery in England was rolled-out in an unaccountable fashion and concludes that the government should ensure that Reading Recovery comes in line with the recommendations of reading instruction accepted by government since the Rose Review in 2006:


http://phonicsinternational.com/forum/v ... .php?t=586

[debbie]

More about the New Zealand scenario taken from the Reading Reform Foundation message forum - in particular note the latest posting by Pamela Snow via her excellent blog:


http://rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6028

Please read Pamela's whole post 'Reading Recovery and Cassandra's Curse' where she concludes:

In the case of reading instruction however, we seem to have a terrain that has elements of religious boundary-setting around what teachers (and their educators) can and cannot be challenged over. This is ethically indefensible and if allowed to continue will simply perpetuate the widening gap between the "haves" and "have nots" in the early years classroom and beyond. There is nothing progressive, socially or educationally, about standing by and being complicit in maintaining such an unfair status quo.

Academics who have interrogated the evidence on Reading Recovery and found it to be wanting seem to have been afflicted by Cassandra's Curse - the ability to predict the future alongside the sure knowledge that they will be ignored.

[debbie]

I just heard from a lady in New Zealand enquiring about online training (coming soon by the way) and so this focused me on to New Zealand - but this thread had slipped to page 3 of my debate forum.

So, I'm adding part of the lady's message here and in doing this, it raises the issue of New Zealand's literacy provision again:

She wrote:

NZ is in desperate need of a phonics revival as general literacy is poor. Keep up the good work. I managed to mention your site on talk back radio here in Auckland recently!