Draft chapter: Whose knowledge Counts in Government
Literacy Policies (in prep)
This is the lead chapter of a book sponsored by the Reading Hall of Fame with the above title. Do not distribute but comments are invited.
Chapter 1
Ken Goodman Co-Historian Reading Hall of Fame
University of Arizona Emeritus
Editor’s Note:Democracy is vulnerable to those with monery
and power to use the very institutions of democracy for their own selfish ends. Movement Conservatism is at the
base of what seems like a spontaneous distrust of professional educators
everywhere It uses an attack on the teaching of reading as a means of making
universal education a failed goal But
the true goals are hidden behind the stated goals of reform and serving the
needs of those the schools have failed. And absurd, sure to fail methods, materials and evaluations are
offered as alternatives to the knowledge and expertise that could make the schools actually successful.
In 2010 I made a short presentation at the American
Educational Research Association. Robert Calfee heard me. We decided that the
issue of whose knowledge is considered in framing government literacy policies
was an important issue for the Reading Hall of Fame to take up. The Reading
Hall of Fame is composed of leading researchers in literacy. New members are elected
by a vote of the members from nominees with at least 25 years in the field. There is a wide range
of views but the RHF collectively
represents well the expertise in the field of literacy. And many of the
developing scholars in literacy are our students.
In 2011, A series of symposia were sponsored by the Hall
of Fame at IRA in the U.S. , the European reading conference of IRA and the
National Council of Teachers of English. This volume contains some of
the papers presented at these symposia. It is intended to raise the awareness
of the degree to which expertise is being ignored on a world-wide level and
pseudo-science is becoming the basis for literacy policies and laws and to
offer some sane alternatives.
Knowledge and its use
The issue in literacy education is
not what knowledge exists but rather what knowledge is worth paying attention
to. In the time of Galileo and Copernicus the only knowledge worth attending to
was not even in the holy books but the official dogma of the church in
interpreting the Holy Scriptures. Copernicus waited till he was dying to
publish. Galileo published his last work in secret because their science and
its theoretical explanation challenged that dogma. And regardless of its truth,
knowledge which challenged the dogma was heresy.
What is happening in the field of literacy has to be put
in a political context. I live in a state
where the Secretary of State was required by law to see a birth
certificate before putting President Obama on the ballot in 2012,where it’s
legal to carry a gun without a license, and complexion is cause for suspicion
of arrest. In the context of 21st century America, all that we have learned
about literacy through our research and the theory we have built from it are
less valued than the concepts of literacy that serve the political and economic
purposes of those who have the power to control the decision making of federal
state and local politicians. And the reason those concepts are valued has
nothing to do with literacy.
But the law
of the land in American education is No Child Left Behind. It’s six year late
in being reauthorized And nothing I see in the proposals to amend or replace
that law values knowledge. The definitions and mandates enacted as law or
proposed as law are part of the pedagogy of the absurd. Absurdity is legally
framed as scientifically based reading research . Sound research becomes
anti-science by law. Nonsense becomes knowledge and knowledge becomes nonsense .
One of the most important approaches to
curriculum in vogue today is "response to intervention" which
is nothing more than trial and error.
You try an intervention and if it works that's what the learners needed.
But why did work? Who says it worked? And what does work mean?
Diane
Ravitch, once a staunch supporter of NCLB now says, " Under NCLB, the
federal government was dictating ineffectual remedies, which had no track
record of success. Neither Congress nor the U.S. Department of Education knows
how to fix low-performing schools..(Ravitch, 2011 p 101)
In the time of Galileo and Copernicus the only knowledge worth
attending to was not even in the holy books but the official dogma of the
church in interpreting the holy scriptures.
In
the 21st century the only
knowledge worth attending to is that which benefits multinational corporations.
With their money and the brains of amoral think tanks they can subvert the
political process and frame bad as good and good as dangerous. They can use the
institutions of democracy to subvert democracy.
It should not surprise us that the attack
on anything public- including education- in the name of privatization and
deregulation is international. The world’s economy is increasingly
controlled by multinational
corporations. They relentlessly are at work to decrease the power of national
governments and international authorities to regulate their operations and tax
their products.
The pursuit of profit is the driving
force. In their view, every aspect of modern economy that has been considered a
public (governmental) responsibility
should be operated for profit. Thus prisons, mail, roads, bridges, and
education should be operated for profit. Universal compulsory free public
education is expensive and from the
moral perspective of multinational corporations privatizing education
creates both a source of potential profits in privatized schools and
publishing and elimination of the tax burden of supporting
universal public education. After all modern technology has eliminated the need
for large numbers of low or semi-skilled workers.. Modern industry needs highly
skilled technicians but they can be produced them through a system that
educates only an elite few. And
privatizing education gives control of access to business interests.
However unlike the robber barons of the
past, who didn’t hide their greed or refrain from confrontation, today’s power
eltie have working for them neo-con think tanks of very bright people who can
for a few million dollars co-opt the law makers and even the very groups they
seek to control. They can cleverly cast
their campaigns to limit the costs of education as reform and can feed on
the lack of success of poor people in
education to blame those who have the knowledge to solve the problems for the problems they seek to solve. They can in fact get people to vote against
their own best interests.
In the pursuit of their goals they are free to conceal their agenda
framing bad as good, science as nonsense, greed as job-creation, and reaction
as reform. The result is both tragic and absurd at the same time.
The Holocaust was a terrible tragedy but the highly
organized killing of millions of Jews and others was also absurd.
In the Italian movie Life is Beautiful the situation of the death camp is so absurd that a father
convinces his young son that the absurdity
of their suffering can’t be real, that
they are playing a game.
Education decision making in both the
developed and developing parts of the world is in this condition of comic
tragedy I call The Pedagogy of the Absurd. Limiting access
to knowledge and marginalizing those who are producing it becomes a major goal.
There are those who are convinced
that if we could only make those with power understand what we know they would
change their opposition. But it is precisely because they know that knowledge
exists that could equalize access to literacy and success in education that
they frame good ideas as bad and science as the antiscience. They know that
framing the key question in literacy education as which phonics is best is
absurd. In fact considering how smart those who speak for the think tanks are
they have to know that what they are mandating doesn’t work. They want public
education to fail. They know they are promoting absurd solutions, just as they
know that the earth is warming, and regulation could have avoided the housing
meltdown. In this chapter I’ll consider a prime example of absurdity playing a
central role in the campaign : DIBLES
What we know that doesn’t count
In the last half century we have
come to understand much about reading and writing , how they develop and how
teaching can facilitate literacy development. We’ve gained an appreciation of
the universal ability among all humans to think symbolically and to invent
language as it is needed.
Theory and research in literacy
have been supporting each other. While there are still major differences
among researchers, the issues that
should be the ones being debated are not the ones politicians and the press are
highlighting.
Research on the nature of written language has
advanced to the point where we are able to use knowledge from several
disciplines to understand how literacy
works , how written language relates to oral and other language forms
such as American Sign Language and how the explosion of digital forms of
communication are extending the overlap of oral and written language.
In my own
research with my students and colleagues we used miscue analysis in combination
with eye movement research to examine reading as it happens. In Europe research
on the uses and functions of literacy has helped us to put It in the context of
its use rather than seeing literacy as a set of autonomous skills..
There is
broad agreement that comprehension is what literacy education must always be
about – and reading critically and comprehending
are dangerous to those who would
control the democratic processes for profit.
Progress in curriculum
Our
understanding about the importance of comprehension leads to less focus on didactic materials and
more on use of real comprehensible literature of a wide variety in reading
development . In the period of the 1990”s this led to a boom in the publication
and sales of children’s and young adult literature. The simple insight that the more predictable
a book or story is for a particular reader the easier it will be to read led to
a whole new genre of predictable books.
Progress in pedagogy
Some of
the most advanced educational policies can be found in developing nations. As they seek to move beyond the colonial
heritage, they have produced more professional teachers and better materials.
Their problem, however, is the lack of funding for teacher education and staff
development. Pressure from the World Bank has caused many to cut back on their
support of schools and social services.
It is no
coincidence that teaching and teacher education are under attack. In both
developed and developing nations there have been major strides toward the
professionalization of teachers. Professional teachers understand literacy and
its development and know how to support all learners in becoming literate.
Why literacy?
Free universal public education is not an
easy institution to attack. It is seen in America and in fact the world as the
key to economic and political democracy
So the attack has aimed to paint universal public education as a failed
institution: It cannot even teach children how to read. That’s why literacy is
the focal point in attacking universal education. And it is those with the knowledge to make
literacy universal who are the target o the.Movement Conservatism:campaign.
The attack on
universal education is not a conspiracy. In fact most of those involved in the
attack are not aware that they are being used. Rather it is a campaign
carefully planned and tightly coordinated. The system for organizing such a
campaign is called by its advocates
“movement conservatism”. (Kutner,2002) They actually took the term from
the left who called themselves “the movement”
In democracies
public opinion is very important because decisions are made on the basis of
popular voting or the vote of elected representatives who in theory pay close
attention to the views of their constituents. But it is possible that the
processes of democracy can be manipulated by clever people with sufficient
resources. Movement conservatism is designed to take advantage of the very
processes they seek to subvert.
The campaign
seeks to shape the agenda, to shift it away from the real issues- poverty,
health, access- to distrust of of schools and teachers and their unions. A
crisis in literacy is manufactured and those with the best knowledge are blamed
for the crisis. (Berliner 20000 Then simple sounding solutions are promoted
ostensibly as quick cures but in fact to assure failure. The real goal is to assure that decisions are
not made on the basis of the best knowledge available but rather on pseudo
knowledge that serves the interests of those who profit from the
decisions. Those in charge of the
campaign enlist the support of groups who believe in what they are doing but
those running the campaign know better.
The campaign is political
and it has the amorality of modern political campaigns: winning is everything
and truth is irrelevant..
Neo-conservative
think tanks exist in which very bright people are paid well to plan the
campaign strategies over the long term to achieve the goals of multinational
corporations. They are funded by seemingly non-profit foundations- which have
the appearance of the older philanthropic foundations like Carnegie or Ford.
They channel money from the corporations to the think tanks. Within the think
tanks task forces are in charge of the campaign..
With the money
and connections the system provides, a small group can tightly control a very
significant campaign. Their corporate clients control much of the media and
that also adds to the effectiveness of the campaigns.
In the United it
is no coincidence that the same issues, tactics and phrases seemed to pop up in
every state- nor should it surprise us that developments in all parts of the
world have the same refrains and issues – even when they are a poor fit for
local reality. Several chapters in the book document the international reach of
the campaign.
The think tanks
are at the center of the seemingly coincidental eruptions everywhere: They have
perfected a campaign model which is sutiable for a local election or a national
or international campaign. Through this
campaign strategy they can, at modest cost, accomplish major successes for the
profit producers.
In the case
of literacy, a task force is housed at the Manhattan Institute, The
Heritage Foundation, or the American
Enterprise Institute . These think tanks have so insinuated themselves in
American politics that any time any controversial issue is discussed in the
media, the conservative side is always represented by someone from one of the major
think tanks.
The campaign
conducts its operations patiently over a long period . But it can mount massive media efforts to achieve an immediate
goal. An example took place right after Barak Obama was elected President.
There were reports that a prominent and knowledgeable educator Linda Darling
Hammond would be appointed white house education advisor. Immediately news
paper columns, editorials, and media pundits simulateously began describing her
as an extremist in education. The Obama administration was put in the position
that if she were appointed it would appear to be moving strongly to the left in
education. She wasn’t appointed.
The literacy
camapaign has the four aspects known in movement conservatism as the for m’s:
Mission: To
limit access to literacy and education; to control ideology and curriculum on
behalf of multinational corporation with the ultimate goal of privatizing all
aspects of education. That is not the goal they state publically. But it is
what they are actually charged with achieving.
Money: Millions
are available from the neo-con foundations .They pay their talent very well.
They also pay columnists and underwrite the writing and publishing of books..Tthe
campaign also controls use of public funding through state and national laws
and internationally with channels such as USAID , World Bank and IMF.
Management:
That’s the small group housed in one or more neo-conservative right wing think
tanks. Through their connections they
can mobilize demonstrations. And they
can coopt many different groups by appearing to serve their interests. By
setting the agenda in education their influence cuts across political parties
appealing to the elitism of the left and social conservatism of the right.
Marketing: The
campaign keeps up a barrage of information (propaganda) through PR firms, paid
authors and TV commentaors and with
support from the media moguls among the international corporations During th e Second
Bush administration a promininent minority Tv/radio host was being paid to promote No CHild Left Behind among his
listeners. They can relentlessly push their messages while marginalizing those
with real knowledge. The chair of the
Arizona state Senate education committee showed me a three foot stack of paper
– all on reading- that came to him through email, mail, and direct delivery.
The literacy campaign is framed as reform. They manufactured the literacy crisis and
declared the reading wars, which are
framed as two opposing forces at war
over literacy education.. Whole language is a teacher led pedagogy having
success with students who schools
traditionally failed. Its influence was exaggerated (perhaps 20% of U.S.
classrooms were using some version at it’s peak. .And whole language was then
blamed for the crisis in literacy. Its adversary was the one true method of
teaching reading: systematic phonics.
The long campaign paid off. The Us congress rewrote
the Elementary and Secondary Education act- which originated during the civil
rights period to use federal money to equalize educational opportunity. It
became No CHild Lef t Behind with Reading First , a major part of NCLB
explicitly outlawed all aspects of whole language and mandating phonics -code named Scientifically Based
Reading Research.
The campaign had no trouble getting the National
Science Foundation to house a National Reading Panel funded by the National Institutes of Health,
a federal agency. . The panel included prominent academics and researchers who
could be counted on to conclude that phonics
was the sure way to teach reading. When the lengthy report the
handpicked panel produced seemed to be a bit equivocal they brought in a company
who did PR for major publishers to produce a summary which was easier to read
and was not at all equivocal..
Most important , the task of enforcing the literacy
agenda of Reading First was given to a
group centered at the University of Oregon which represented an extreme form of
phonics linked to a primitive form of behaviorism and a methodology of direct
instruction.
They dominated committees that reviewed state
proposals for funding under NCLB. States were
required to use programs
developed by the reviewers and in particular one screening test DIBLES (An
acronym for Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skill.),developed
with federal funding but promoted for the profit of the authors.
DIBLES is on the surface a series of sub tests each of
which takes one minute to administer. In most sub-tests the child has three seconds to respond to each item.
Scoring is always quantitative . In no sub- test is there any judgement of the
quality of the comprehension. The final test is reading of a short text which
his more a chain of events than a story. The score on that is the number of
words read correctly in one minute (Wrong words are not counted.)
One sub- test is
a test of the ability to sound out nonsense digraphs and trigraphs. The premise of this test is that the best
test of phonics is in non words where meaning doesn’t get in the way of the
phonics.
Elsewhere I have done a complete analysis of DIBLES
(The Truth about DIBLES) It is the ultimate absurdity in the campaign There is
widespread agreement among reading authorities and psychometricians that this
is a very bad test.(Goodman 2004)
But it is more than a test . It becomes the whole
curriculum. The test is administered three times a year minimally. Those who
fail are taught the “skills of the test“ and then retested as often as weekly,
until they reach an arbitrary score.
This is not just a timed test: it so focuses on speed
and accuracy that any concern for meaning is totally lost in trying to say as
many words as possible in a minute.
The inspector general of the US department of education
found gross conflict of interest in that the authors of this test were sitting
on the committees judging states applications for NCLB funds and were making
the adoption of DIBLES a condition of the approval of the state’s funding.
When a government report documented that over six years the
phonics based program had spent 6 billion dolllars and produced no significant
changes, Representative George Miller.
Chair of the US House education committee said:
From day one of the
creation of the Reading First program, it has been corrupted 1by the Bush
administration – plagued by severe mismanagement, poor implementation, and
gross conflicts of interest. Despite these serious issues, I had
nevertheless hoped that the program
would produce better results than these. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been
spent administering this program over the years….. Because of the corruption in the Reading First
program, districts and schools were steered towards certain reading programs
and products that may not have provided the most effective instruction for
students. That may explain why we are seeing these results. …. We all share the goal of helping all children
learn to read. But this report, coupled with the scandals revealed last year,
shows that we need to seriously re‑examine this program and figure out how to
make it work better for students. Our nation’s schoolchildren and taxpayers
deserve a program that is both properly managed and successful in boosting the
reading skills of students . .” Rep. Geroge
Miller, Chair of the House education and Labor committee. Responding to IIE
study on reading
comprehension
May 1, 2008
But the campaign had succeeded through NCLB in establishing legal
definitions of reading, reading research and reading assessment turning science
on its head. Truth became fiction.
.Fiction became research based truth.
And American Five year olds became school failures in kindergarten
Legal action was never taken against those
who profited from conflicts of interest. DIBELS is still mandated on several
million American children each year.
Here are the beliefs
on which DIBLES operates in
contradiction to the best knowledge:
} Reading
development is mastering a single, universal sequence of component skills.
} That
belief is implicit in the choices the authors make of what to test in each
sub-test, how the tests are sequenced, and how each component is tested.
} Each
test, therefore, is a necessary prerequisite to the following test and to
competent reading.
} Thus,
failure to achieve an arbitrary benchmark score in a single sub-test is failure
in the whole program.
} A one-minute test score is reified as if it
really tests what the name suggests it does.
So a test that counts words read correctly in one minute is treated as
actually measuring oral reading fluency
How DIBLES Treats Children
} In
DIBLES there is an assumption, that literacy is only developed through direct
instruction of component skills.
} It assumes that all children become literate
in the same way regardless of experience or culture
} It tests what they can’t do- not what they can
do.
} It
requires children to adjust to the school rather than adjusting school to the
learner.
} Ignores
the culture and values of the community.
How DIBLES Treats Teachers
} It
treats teachers as interchangeable cogs in a delivery system.
} It
treats teachers as untrustworthy technicians who cannot make qualitative
judgments.
} It
does not permit teachers to use
professional judgments to adjust to the learners.
} Assumes
that local teachers and administrators have no useful knowledge to contribute.
t demands fidelity to the programiis mandated.
The]use of Timed Tests
} Timed tests are inappropriate for most of
the skills being tested. Floor and ceiling effects are exaggerated. Some
aspects are either/or not scalable. eg:
letter knowledge.
} Timed tests disadvantage learners with
little experience or motivation for such tasks.
} Children 5, 6, or 7 years old have
difficulty responding to items in 3 seconds.
} Children already reading lose time trying
to make sense of nonsense.
}
Children
who learn to play the game of ignoring meaning and responding quickly will be
overrated.
DIBLES is the ultimate absurdity in this campaign. A test which could not have passed inspection in any normal procedure for adoption of tests becomes the arbiter of the fate of millions of young school children. And now comes absurdity built on absurdity.
From DIBLES tp
EGRA
USAID, the US agency responsible for aiding education in
developing nations decided , with the World Bank , to fast track literacy as a
major effort in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
USAID set its goal: improved reading skills for 100
million children in primary grades by 2015. I’ll discuss this from the
perspective of Africa because the
literacy situations in Asia, Latin America and Africa are very different.
Why would
these agencies commit themselves
to such a short goal to solve so pervasive a problem as literacy in the
undeveloped nations of the world? Their reasoning is simple. If children can’t
read it should be easy to teach them and solve that problem. We’ll fund teams
to come in with an effective technology and teach them.
Setting a target date of five years from
the beginning of the program shows how
simple these decision makers think the situation is. .Or perhaps they think it
is necessary because there is a literacy crisis among third world people.
Inevitably setting such a deadline for such a major goal causes those carrying
the initiative out to look for quick cures and short cuts. And only those who
promise such quick cures need apply.
Let’s consider what the best knowledge
suggests about how to bring literacy to African children. Any literacy campaign
has to start with the reality: How is literacy a factor in the lives of the
children who will be the students. What are the facilities available? Who will
do the teaching? What will the students read ? For what purposes in their
current lives?
1.
We need to know what the need for literacy
is in the lives of African children.
a. What
do their parents and other neighbors need literacy for?
b. Will
lliteracy help them to be better members of their community.or will it be seen
as a threat to the culture and community?
c. How
do the elders view literacy for girls as compared to boys?
d. Who
reads and what is there to read in their communities?
2.
What education for literacy is available.
a. Is
there a school?
i. What
is the history of success in the current situation
1. Who
stays in school and who leaves?
2. What
language requirements are there?
Is there literacy instruction in the
home languages?
b. Does
the school have qualified teachers?
c. Are
there literacy resources (books, paper etc.)
3.
How can our program build on the existing literacy needs
of the child, the child’s family or the
community?
a. What
will we ask the child to read or write?
b. How
can we keep the learners in school to continue learning?
c. Can
we make books with the children?
Only after such questions are asked can we
consider the next questions.
What language skills can we build on?
How can we assure professional teachers?
How will we produce the materials for the
students to read?
Where will the children be taught? How can
we use the facilities available?
To
sum: Literacy isn’t an autonymous skill which can be taught outside of its value and use to the learner aand the
community.
But that is what USAid and the World Bank, assumed. They treated
literacy as a skill to be learned which then would be useful to those who
became literate..
USAID awarded a contract to
RTI a research institute that applies
for grants and then hires the staff to do the study. RTI was to develop and
administer a test in these former colonies to use in assessing the reading
abilities of their students. No consideration was given to assessing the need
for or functions of literacy in the villages or towns the children come from.
But why write a new test when there is a test already out there which is easy
to use and which gives definite scores that represent degrees of reading
ability,
So DIBLES becomes EGRA
(early grade reading assessment.). In a record time tests are created in the
major colonial languages: English, French and Spanish and in several of the
native languages. DIBLES shows little linguistic sophistication in its
construction and the rapidly produced versions of EGRA do not show that they
involved input from professional linguists or educators.
Though there are knowledgeable linguists and reading specialists
in many developing nations r dy at work in literacy programs in Africa they were
not consulted. The fact is that there
are many groups with many approaches, some naïve and some quite sophisticated, working
to bring literacy to African people. Some are more successful than others but
no one who knows the complexity of literacy education in this very diverse
continent would ever suggest that literacy for all (or even most) could be
achieved through a technology in five years.
. But when the World Bank comes calling
and seems to offer money and help no African department of education is likely
to say no. So the programs were approved by politicians who assigned civil
servants to work with the EGRA teams. In fact it probably never occurred to the
RTI group that there might be local expertise. James Hoffman in his critique of
the EGRA campaign classes it with many failed aid programs that come in from
the outside with a pre-made program with no preparation or involvement of local
informed educators. (Hoffman 2011)
What is most absurd is that
the net result in virtually every African country of testing with EGRA through
third grade was few to none of the children tested could read at even a minimal
level. Surely that could have been determined- if indeed it is true- by asking
local teachers.
In Senegal, where the home language is French for only 2 % of the
pupils ,they were tested in French. On a test of letter names almost 40% could
name less than 20 letters on a page of letters in a minute. Sixty % could not
sound out more than 9 pseudo words in one minute. But 1/3 read more than 20
words correctly in a 47 word text .
In Gambia where the testing was in English, 80% of first graders
could read no real words and 91% read no pseudo words. For third graders 59%
read no real words and 76 % read no pseudo words. The original DIBELS does not
include a test of real words.
It should surely have suggested something to the testers that real
words were not as difficult to read as non-words. The assumptions that under
lie EGRA-DIBELs are that reading is learned as a sequence of skills from part
to whole yet their own data suggests that the more meaningful units were read
more easily even among beginners in a second language.
Forty-six % of third graders could not read a single word of a
connected text.
The authors of DIBLES/EGRA say their nonsense test is a test of
the understanding of the “alphabetic principle”. Actually it tests the ability
of children to match letters to sounds, either one at a time, or by “saying” a
whole nonsense syllable accurately and rapidly..
Children being taught in a language they don’t speak can, with
practice, achieve scores without actually reading anything.. In our examination
of children’s response to the nonsense we found they were already using a
higher principle: Reading is supposed to make sense. If the “nonsemse” looked
like a real word or was a possible spelling of a real word or was a real word in another language children moved toward that. With three
seconds for each item children with a little knowledge did worse than children
with none. (Goodman 2006)
So DIBLES/EGRA gives children a totally wrong view of what reading
is all about.
Shocking
The Gambia education minister announced that it was shocking that 46% of Third
Grade students could not correctly read a single word of connected
text.
Average third grade reading speed levels were ten words per minute
with virtually no comprehension. These poor results were consistent with the
national assessment tests.
We should ask: If that’s so
what did they need EGRA for?
According to The Gambia Minister
of Education EGRA was useful because:
results created awareness on the scale of the problem: He sees EGRA as
very easy to understand . Teachers can use it for diagnostic, instructional,
monitoring and remedial purposes in their very crowded classrooms. His plan is
to Involve the sector leadership in the Early Grade Reading initiative and
the priority accorded to expedite the positive changes being registered thus
far. With the right mix in the use of
phonics approach in the early grades, student’s reading abilities can be
improved by teaching to the test. So supplementary readers are being developed to ensure sustainable
phonemic awareness .
Improvements in students’ reading
abilities ( as measured by EGRA) have been included as a key performance area
in the Service Level Agreements that have been signed with head teachers So that will put pressure on the head
teachers who will put pressure on the students which will increase what must be
a high drop out rate in the early
grades.
But what is the nature of the
problem of low literacy in Gambia (or anywhere) ? EGRA gives no useful
information about that. The net results of the use of this absurd test is that children will not stay in school. In
Africa as in most developing nations children who are not succeeding dropout or
are kept out of school by their families.
DIBLES/EGRA and the Pedagogy of the Absurd
In their
own words this was the result of the EGRA campaign:
Early grade reading assessments … have been applied in numerous
countries around the world. Between 2005 and March 2011, assessments were completed or are in progress
in 42 countries and 74 languages.
Overwhelmingly these assessments have revealed that alarming
numbers of children do not know how to read a single word in a simple paragraoh
by the end of grade 2 or grade 3. And these zero score percentages … do not
account for the students who scored slightly above zero in oral reading fluency
but for all purposes are functionally illiterate.
It does not seem to occur to the
authors that this is absurd. Could it be that it is the test that is at fault
and not the children? Shouldn’t someone have pointed at the naked emperor and
said where are his clothes?
Aren’t there dedicated local
educators and insightful outsiders who could have suggested much more positive
and practical ways of spending money to improve literacy among the world’s
children.?. How many children could have the food and health care to make them ready
for schooling?
How many books could have been produced? How many teachers could have been
educated.? How many adults could have been helped to acquire functional
literacy to serve the literacy needs of their communities?
And how much useful research could have been produced by those who
have the knowledge needed to do it?
DIBLES/EGRA is an absurd set of
silly little one-minute tests that never get close to measuring making sense of
print.
It is absurd to spend large sums of money to
find out what any local educator knew without the test.
It is absurd to claim that improving scores by
teaching to the test is actually teaching reading.
It is absurd that scores on these
silly little tests are used to judge schools, teachers, and children. It is
absurd for the United States and the World Bank to ignore the best knowledge in
promoting a widely discredited test and technology.
As in the death camps , if it wasn’t so tragic it would be laughable. Using
an inappropriate and misconceived test
to assess literacy to justify spending even more money to teach to the test and
thereby drive children out of school: that is the pedagogy of the absurd.
Building knowledge is what research is
all about. But knowledge cannot make a difference in and of itself. Educational
decision making is political. Ironically
the de facto black list of ideas and those that advocate them has made the
research community realize that we had more in common than we thought. Though
we differed on some minor and major aspects of literacy we were moving toward
some broad agreement on what literacy is, how it is learned and how best to
support learners in becoming literate.
As literacy researchers we have an
obligation to stand up and work for respect for knowledge and truth. If we want
the knowledge we produce to be valued, if we want science to be valued over
nonsense, if we care about what is done to teachers and kids in the name of
science then we have to become political. As individuals and through our
professional organizations, we have to use the political system as our enemies
have used it to coopt and marginalize us. The International Reading Association
cosponsored a conference promoting EGRA.
NCTE is supporting the common core in exchange for a seat at the table. The American Educational
Research Association has taken no stand on how knowledge is being ignored in
government policies. In Europe and the
other English speaking countries unions and professional organizations have
taken stronger stands.
And
there are many courageous professional, informed teachers, teacher educators
and administrators who are not afraid to put the best knowledge to work. They
need our support. I remain an optimist. Over time wisdom prevails over
nonsense, truth over falsehood. Good research drives out bad. Together we can
recognize our responsibility to join the fight to make knowledge count. It is
even possible that this small book will serve as a rallying cry for those who
have been marginalized to fight back.
References
References
Goodman,
Kenneth S. (2006). The Truth About
Dibels What It Is and What It Does, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Kutner,”Philanthropy and movements, The American Prospect
7/15/2002
The Gambia Early Grade
Reading Assessment (EGRA) Results from
1,200 Gambian Primary Students Learning to Read in English—Report for the World
Bank
Pouezevara ,
S.
La lecture au Senegal: Resultats de l'etude EGRA (2009)
Ravitch,
D, (2011) Death and Life of the Great American School
System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. New York ;Basuc Books
p 101
Stern, S. “This Bush Education Reform Really Works “
City: Winter 2007
