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