Dear Tim: Your recent Reading Today columns have people thinking that you are (a) against developing the reading habit (your column on sustained silent reading in the June/July 2006 issue), (b) for limiting teachers’ instructional decision making (your column on scripted instruction in the August/September 2006 issue), and (c) against developing teacher expertise (your February/March 2007 column). As the voice of IRA, you’re the authority on these issues. Your words carry great power with principals and teachers. But kids are being subjected to some things that I don’t think you mean to support. Therefore, I’m asking you to clarify four things.
1. Your point about the lack of data to support SSR is well taken, but are you saying we should no longer try to develop positive reading attitudes? Are you saying we should abandon reading orally to kids, visits to the school library, and promotion of children’s literature? Granted, attitude development is not a sure thing. But, as you said in a recent Newsweek article, kids don’t read much as they get older. Maybe more of them would if we tried to inspire them. So, SSR aside, is it your intention for teachers and principals to abandon efforts to help kids develop a love of reading until we have experimental data supporting it?
2. Scripts, by definition, are designed to limit teachers’ professional judgment, to restrict teacher responsiveness to kids, to impose a “one size fits all” instructional plan, and to eliminate authentic opportunities for reading and writing. I agree that teachers should use teachers’ guides. But “guides” and “scripts” are two vastly different things. Scripts are for un-trained nonprofessionals whom we don’t trust to make decisions; guides are for teachers who should modify prescriptions to fit kids and situations. So is it your intention that teachers should be treated as paraprofessionals?
3. Third, saying teacher expertise is a “fetish” implies that expertise doesn’t count. Is it your intention to tell your constituency around the world that teachers don’t have to be experts who think critically before making decisions? If we are to lower standards, what should we stop teaching in teacher education? And what should the goal be—to just teach teachers to follow technically accurate prescriptions without capitalizing on opportunities to develop critical minds?
4. Finally, most school people think you are saying, “What counts is kids doing well on tests, so focus on those test-like skills above all else.” Just last week my colleagues and I met a group of teachers at cooperating schools who all said they wanted to teach comprehension strategies and authentic reading and writing but couldn’t because they had to put all their effort into drill and practice in order to raise test scores. What do you suggest we tell these school people about what our IRA president believes about emphasizing drill and practice at the expense of comprehension, writing, etc.?
There’s lots of confusion out there, Tim. I hope your answers will clarify these issues.
Gerry Duffy
Professor
University of North Carolina-Greensboro
Greensboro, North Carolina, USA
I appreciate Gerry Duffy’s thoughtful attempt to understand better, and I have tried to reply to each of his major questions as clearly as possible.
1. First, I definitely am NOT against teachers trying to inspire kids to read, but I do think it’s imperative that teachers know what has not worked in the past in that regard. Way too much valuable instructional time has been wasted on motivational practices that simply aren’t motivational. Inspiring kids to read must be up to individual teachers, and it has to allow kids a real choice (I don’t believe kids should have to like, or pretend to like, what we adults tell them to). More power to the teacher who declares his or her personal goal to inspire kids’ love of reading (and to the other adults who are trying to inspire a love for athletics or music or art).
Given the high correlation between reading achievement and the amount of reading kids do, I suspect that the teachers who teach reading best will be the ones who manage to instill the greatest love of reading. (Personally, I’m particularly interested in efforts to get kids to read beyond the school day and school year.)
2. Second, no, I definitely do not think that teachers should be mistreated in any regard. I, for example, believe teachers should have some choice in the programs they use—not unlimited choice, since they must work together and will not always agree. Part of my commitment to teachers is an unwillingness to put them down for making unpopular choices (a program like Success for All is usually only adopted when 80% of the teachers vote for its use). I think it’s shameful to label those teachers as not being professional.
I appreciate the distinction Gerry makes between guides and scripts, which seems to mean most commercial materials are not actually “scripted.” But I disagree with him about the purpose for scripting; I doubt that it is to “limit teacher’s professional judgment” as much as to channel that judgment in good ways. Guides or scripts can help even the best of teachers, but as I stated in the original column on this topic, teachers will still need to make modifications to even the best of programs. The issue for me is: How can teachers make those changes in ways that actually improve student learning?
3. Third, when it comes to teacher expertise, I’m not calling for lowered standards, but, perhaps, for different ones. I think the teacher preparation community has fallen in love with the view of the individual heroic teacher (think Goodbye Mr. Chips, Our Miss Brooks, Dead Poets Society, Music of My Heart, Stanley & Iris, To Sir With Love, Stand and Deliver, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Dangerous Minds, Conrack, The Miracle Worker, etc.), who with incredible sacrifice, love of students, and no assistance, no curriculum, and no textbooks single-handedly saves the day. Those pretty images might be getting in the way of real success.
I drew a lesson from how obstetrics managed to improve, but I don’t think that happened by lowering standards for obstetricians. They did surrender some difficult procedures that few could master (which might look like lowered standards), but they replaced these rarified procedures with those that could be carried out successfully by a larger proportion of obstetricians more successfully (which to me actually sounds like higher standards).
In any event, I do not believe that such an approach, even if wildly successful, would ever do away with the need for teacher expertise. Given our horrifying literacy statistics (e.g., only 8% of African American boys can read proficiently at 8th grade, the lowest NAEP 12th-grade scores in more than 15 years, terrible high school completion rates for Hispanic youth, and the lowest amount of self-selected reading among young adults ever), we shouldn’t be so afraid to challenge the status quo—since what we have been doing clearly isn’t working well for the kids!
4. Finally, learning to read is complex, and there is even a place for a small bit of drill and practice. However, the kind of test preparation madness that Gerry describes is terrible and far too common. When I was director of reading for Chicago, I insisted that there be no such test prep during my watch. We need to use our school days to teach reading; teaching to the test is neither effective practice nor ethical practice.
I hope this helps.
IRA President Timothy Shanahan is a professor of urban education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and director of the UIC Center for Literacy.
Columns have raised questions: A letter to Tim Shanahan and Shanahan responds. (April 2007). Reading Today, 24(5), 19.
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