P. David Pearson


Nell Duke

Today Reading Today Online inaugurates a new feature for our readers, namely a blog devoted to research-focused commentary, information, and analysis provided, invited, and overseen by members of the IRA Literacy Research Panel (LRP) chaired by the distinguished and internationally recognized scholar, P. David Pearson of the University of California, Berkeley.

Designed by an LRP subcommittee chaired by Nell Duke of the University of Michigan to be a robust source for continual dissemination of research perspectives on a range of contemporary issues of literacy instruction and education policy, the new blog will be launched in a live demonstration this morning at the LRP’s opening research session at IRA San Antonio.

Portal to the Panel’s Resources

The blog will serve as the portal to all of the resources available from the LRP, including the Panel’s policy briefs, integrated units, and a range of blog posts by LRP members and other scholars invited by the panel to contribute. The decision to situate it within Reading Today Online was driven by the fact that Reading Today Online draws tens of thousands of monthly visitors, insuring that this new resource will debut to the widest possible exposure.

Moreover, interactive connections have been built into each component segment of the blog to allow readers to comment on and reply to individual blog posts. The LRP’s goal for the blog is to attract and sustain an active online community of literacy researchers, classroom teachers, administrators, and policy analysts by publishing brief, plain-English research frames on critical issues, including the Common Core State Standards, student engagement, text complexity, assessment, content area literacy, and many other pertinent topics.

Organized in Five Tabs

The LRP blog is organized in five posting types, each of which maintains a distinct perspective with respect to the content offered therein:

• Scintillating Studies

A panel member or invited author will draw attention to a single study on literacy policy or practice through (a) a brief summary of the study, and (b) comments on the importance and implications of the study.

In the first Scintillating Studies post, panel member Peter Afflerbach reflects on a major research contribution of Richard L. Allington.

• Research Roundup

A panel member or invited author draws attention to a review of research or him- or herself presents an annotated list of studies on a topic in literacy policy or practice.

In the inaugural Research Roundup post, panel member Nell Duke provides a detailed link list referencing reports of note from the What Works Clearinghouse.

• Ask a Researcher

A panel member or invited author responds to a question about literacy policy or practice that has been at least partially addressed in research (reader questions are welcome!).

For the initial Ask a Researcher post, panel member Virginia Goatley responds to the question: Does the edTPA (Ed Teacher Performance Assessment) have research behind it?

• Research and Practice/Policy: Our Take

A panel member shares an opinion on a topic in literacy policy or practice, with theory and/or research presented to support the opinion.

In the first Our Take post, panel member John Guthrie argues that attaining the CCSS without a strong focus on engagement is impossible.

• Policy Monitor

A panel member or invited author briefly introduces a significant new research piece, policy, statement, or report and includes a live link to the actual source.

For the opening Policy Monitor post, panel member Nell Duke offers an overview of State Policy in Pre-K and K with links to current sources.

The current plan calls for two new blog postings per week until the end of school and one per week over the summer.

by Richard Long

The National Assessment Governing Board released a new National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) report entitled Mega-States: An Analysis of Student Performance in the Five Most Heavily Populated States in the Nation. This report did not report any new data but rather provided a new look at the data in these five states by looking at trends in reading, mathematics and science going back to the 1990’s.  The five “mega-states” of California, New York, Florida, Texas, and Illinois represent over 1/3rd of the nation’s students. 

Trends in Reading 

The trends indicate a significant improvement in reading in the 4th grade in Florida with a 16 scaled point improvement over twenty years as compared to a 5 point national improvement. 

Demographics and Funding

The report, which contains significant data on these states, shows a significant shift in the demographics of the nation with a high percentage of the shifts being seen in these large states. The report also contains information on as much as a ten percent drop in state funding over the last several years.

A Need for Guidance in Interpretation

While the report provides many points of data analysis, it isn’t clear on several points. One of the points is how changes in student populations should be looked at and then factored into a greater understanding on how the data points should be interpreted. The report also isn’t as clear in how changes in state policies over the twenty years that these data points were collected may have impacted the results.   Additionally, it isn’t clear from the data if the changes that were shown to be statistically significant were more the result of the starting points being lower than other states and as a result easier to attain.

However, while there are areas that the report doesn’t cover, it is a rich statistical trove of information that will be useful for future analysis.   

Richard Long is the director of government relations at the International Reading Association, rlong@reading.org.

TextProject, a non-profit corporation founded in 2010 by Elfrieda H. (Freddy) Hiebert, begins its free Common Core State Standards (CCSS) webinar series today, January 25, at 12:00 noon Pacific Time (3:00 p.m. Eastern Time) with the topic "Research and the Common Core: Can the Romance Survive?" with Dr. P. David Pearson from the University of California, Berkeley. Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now.

As states move into implementation of the CCSS, questions are arising. The answers to these questions are many and often conflicting. Opinions, interpretations, advice, materials, and lessons are being offered by legions of consultants and companies. This series of webinars on the Common Core State Standards offers educators the chance to hear from, and talk with experts who served in advisory roles to the CCSS development team. In their webinars, experts will discuss the knowledge base of the original CCSS report, ancillary documents, reports of foundations and policy groups, current implementation projects, and newly published research. The webinars will give educators the opportunity to focus on the core goals of the CCSS and to chart a course that supports literacy levels needed for the 21st century.

P. David Pearson

Pearson's presentation considers the research foundations of the CCSS, especially as it pertains to comprehension. Professor Pearson begins with the research underlying the Standards themselves and then considers the research evidence underlying content of follow-up documents such as the Publisher's Criteria (produced by CCSS writers). Pearson then describes defensible positions which educators can take in keeping policies and practices grounded in the Standards themselves and not in supplementary recommendations that did not go through the rigorous review of the Standards themselves. Dr. Pearson's presentation slides are available at his Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading website. For more information about Dr. Pearson please visit his faculty website.

Upcoming webinars in the series include:

February 27
CCSS and Education Policy with Dr. Timothy Shanahan, University of Illinois at Chicago

March 26
Quantitative Measurement of Text Complexity with Dr. Elfrieda H. Hiebert, TextProject and University of California, Santa Cruz

April 24
Key Shifts in Assessment and Instruction Related to CCSS-ELA with Dr. Karen K. Wixson, University of Michigan
This presentation will illustrate the shifts in assessment and instruction related to the CCSS in English Language Arts identified by the developers of both the CCSS-ELA and the forthcoming assessments. These shifts include:  1) Regular practice with complex text and its academic language; 2) Reading, writing and speaking grounded in evidence from literary and informational text; and 3) Building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction.

May 30
Informational Text and the CCSS: Pitfalls and Potential with Dr. Nell K. Duke, University of Michigan

For more information on these webinars, visit the TextProject website. 

All of these webinar hosts will also be presenting at the International Reading Association's 58th Annual Convention on April 19-22, 2013, in San Antonio, Texas. Use the iPlanner event search feature to find their programs, and visit the convention website for more information.

International Reading Association Literacy Research Panel Chaired by P. David Pearson

Online CCSS Resources from the International Reading Association

Students in just four countries (Hong Kong, the Russian Federation, Finland and Singapore) achieved significantly higher average scores than students in the United States in the 2011 edition of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), administered to representative samples of Fourth grade students in 48 countries. The recently announced results show that students in Denmark, Croatia, Chinese Taipei, and England performed at about the same level as their counterparts in the US, while students in Canada, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Italy, and Israel were among those that did less well on average.

PIRLS is a paper-and-pen test that assesses comprehension of literary and informational texts. Students in the U.S. performed better on literary texts, and less well on informational texts, than on the test as a whole. Other countries showing this pattern of performance included Canada, Ireland, Sweden, and Germany. Students in Russia and Finland performed at about the same level on both text types. PIRLS also assesses reading comprehension processes. Students in the U.S. performed less well than on the test as a whole on questions involving retrieving and straightforward inferencing, and better on questions involving interpreting, integrating and evaluating. In contrast, students in European countries typically did better on retrieving and straightforward inferencing.

Students in the U.S. did significantly better on overall reading in PIRLS 2011 than their counterparts in PIRLS 2006. Gains were also recorded by students in Chinese Taipei, the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Iran, Poland, and Slovenia, while declines were recorded by students in Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania and Sweden.

In nearly all of the countries that participated in PIRLS 2011, girls outperformed boys.  This pattern is consistent with previous PIRLS and PISA (Program for International Student Assessment). Differences were smaller in the United States than in a number of countries including Australia, New Zealand, the Russian Federation, England, and Finland.

William Brozo

William Brozo, a professor of literacy at George Mason University, and chair of IRA’s PISA-PIRLS Taskforce, expressed satisfaction with the strong and improving overall performance of US students, and added that ‘the relatively small gender difference in the United States (10 points in 2011 versus 18 points in 2001) may reflect an increasing awareness among American teachers of the importance of encouraging both boys and girls to read a broad range of texts. Although these initial PIRLS results do not provide data by ethnicity/race, Brozo continues to express concern about "persistent and significant disparities in reading achievement between White and Asian-American students and Black and Hispanic students" that are found on national and state-level assessments in the U.S. and have been evident on  PIRLS 2001 and 2006.

 
Gerry Shiel

Gerry Shiel, a member of the PISA-PIRLS Taskforce from Ireland, noted that, while students in the United States now perform well above the international average in PIRLS, they perform at about the average for developed countries on PISA reading literacy. This, he says, indicates "a relative drop in reading literacy between 9- and 15 years of age that should be of concern to both policy makers and teachers. Students in other countries with high performance in Grade 4, including Hong Kong and Finland, maintain these high levels at through lower secondary schooling."

In addition to measures of reading performance, PIRLS provides a wealth of background information based on questionnaires administered to school principals, teachers, parents and students. Teachers in the U.S. reported spending more time than their counterparts in other participating countries on teaching reading skills across the curriculum. They also reported strong levels of collaboration with other teachers, and strong efforts to engage students during reading lessons through such activities as relating lessons to students’ lives and using questioning to elicit reasons and explanations. The IRA PISA-PIRLS Task Force, which also includes Renate Valtin and Christine Garbe (Germany), Sari Sulkunen (Finland), and Ambigapathy Pandian (Malaysia), will examine these and other outcomes in the months ahead, and report on their findings at the IRA Annual Convention in San Antonio in April 2013 and the European Conference on Reading in Jönköping, Sweden in August 2013.

For additional information in PIRLS 2011, visit http://timss.bc.edu.

Top-scoring countries in PIRLS 2011: 
1. Hong Kong SAR (571 points)*
2. Russian Federation (568)*
3. Finland (568)*
4. Singapore (567)*
5. N. Ireland (558)**
6. United States (556)
7. Denmark (554)**
8. Croatia (553)**
9. Chinese Taipei (553)**
10. Ireland (552)**
11. England (552)**
12. Canada (548)***
13. Netherlands (546)***
14. Czech Republic (545)***
15. Sweden (542)***

*Significantly higher than US
**Not significantly different from US
***Significantly lower than US

International Reading Association Research Resources

Research Sessions at the IRA Annual Convention

The Institute of Education Sciences' recent study entitled Effects of the Pacific CHILD Professional Development Program examines the impact of the Pacific Communities with High Performance in Literacy Development (Pacific CHILD) professional development program on student achievement in reading comprehension and on teacher pedagogical knowledge and instructional practice in English language arts classes.

Pacific CHILD is a two-year professional development program that trains fourth and fifth grade teachers in research-based reading comprehension strategies and instructional practices for enhancing student reading comprehension. The study used a randomized design and involved 45 elementary schools across three entities in the Pacific region. The study found positive impacts of Pacific CHILD on reading comprehension and on teachers’ instructional practices and knowledge of theories and strategies related to effective reading instruction.

The Pacific region is comprised of American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI); the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM)—Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Yap; Guam; Hawai'i; the Republic of the Marshall Islands; and the Republic of Palau. The prevailing regional needs and challenges include three overarching areas: strengthening teacher effectiveness, engaging families and communities in education, and ensuring career and college readiness. Optimizing data readiness among stakeholders is a dominant need across these three areas.

A PDF of the full report can be downloaded from the IES website.