Teaching Every Child to Read: the Knowns and the Unknowns

Teaching Every Child to Read: the Knowns and the Unknowns Dr. Joseph Torgesen Florida State University and Florida Center for Reading Research NASP Distinguished Lecture, April, 2004

On January 8, 2002, President Bush signed into law the NoChildLeftBehindAct of 2001, reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The act sets a new goal for every elementary school in America: Every child will read at grade level by the end of grade three within 12 years.

How will “grade level” reading be defined? Each state will set their own “grade level” standard State standards are universally measured by some type of reading comprehension test Many states have set very high standards in reading comprehension for their third grade students, other states have set lower standards

What skills, knowledge, and attitudes are required for good reading comprehension?

What we know about the factors that affect reading comprehension Proficient comprehension of text is influenced by: Accurate and fluent word reading skills Oral language skills (vocabulary, linguistic comprehension) Extent of conceptual and factual knowledge Knowledge and skill in use of cognitive strategies to improve comprehension or repair it when it breaks down. Reasoning and inferential skills Motivation to understand and interest in task and materials

Word reading fluency and accuracy X Knowledge and Strategies for Linguistic comprehension X Motivation and interest = Reading Comprehension

How might tests of reading comprehension differ in ways that affect their difficulty Length of passages that must be read before questions are answered How difficult is the vocabulary used in the passages? Sentence structure and syntax? What kind of questions are asked – simple factual recall, complex factual recall, inferential, interpretive, etc.

Do we currently have a national standard for “grade level” performance in reading comprehension in third grade? No, but we have a national standard in 4th grade The NCLB act requires that each state participate in the National Assessment of Educational Performance in 4th and 8th grade States are not required to use the NAEP as a standard, but percent of children meeting standards on the state test is likely to be compared to performance on the NAEP

So, how are we currently doing on the NAEP test in 4th Grade?

27 63 58 60 26 Right now, all over the United States, we are leaving too many children behind in reading And, a large share of those children come from poor and minority homes Percent of Students Performing Below Basic Level - 37% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 White Black Hispanic Poor Non-poor

40 37 Percent of students below grade level on the NAEP vs. the FCAT NAEP 50 FCAT 45 40 35 Percent below grade level 30 25 20 15 10 4th Grade

What is the FCAT and why is it interesting to study? It was specifically created to place high demands on vocabulary and reasoning/inferential skills “FCAT demands an in-depth understanding and application of information that is not typical of most standardized tests.” (Lessons Learned, 2002) Design specifications call for “application of skills in cognitively challenging situations.” Proportion of questions requiring “higher order” thinking skills increases from 30% in grade three to 70% in grade 10

We recently completed a study to understand what factors were most important in explaining individual differences in performance on the FCAT in 3rd Grade Gave 2 hour battery of language, reading, nonverbal reasoning, and memory tests to approximately 200 children at each of grades 3rd graders around the state Language – Wisc Vocab and Similarities Listening comprehension with FCAT passage Reading– Oral reading fluency, TOWRE, Gray Oral Reading Test NV Reasoning – Wisc Matrix Reasoning, Block Design Working Memory– Listening span, Reading Span

55 47 23 17 12 7 2 Fluency 60 Verbal Non Verbal Memory 50 40 3rd Grade Percent of variance accounted for 30 20 10 Individually Unique

Dominance Results Fluency completely dominated Language, Nonverbal Reasoning, and Memory Language completely dominated Nonverbal Reasoning and Memory Nonverbal Reasoning and Memory were equally (un)dominate.

What we know how to do We know how to help almost all children become accurate and fluent readers by third grade

Some facts about reading growth that must be introduced at this point: To be a fluent reader by third grade, a child must acquire strategies (phonics and other strategies) that support accurate reading by the end of 1st grade After children have become accurate readers, they must read a lot in order to learn to recognize many thousands of words “by sight” or “at a single glance” If children can recognize most of the words in third grade text “by sight” they are likely to be fluent readers

We can prevent early problems with reading accuracy in almost all children Percent of children scoring below the 30th percentile Study Amt. of instruction % delayed overall % Foorman 174 hrs.- classroom 35% 6% Felton 340 hrs. - groups of 8 32% 5% Vellutino 35- 65 hrs. 1:1 tutoring 46% 7% Torgesen 88 hrs. 1:1 tutoring 30% 4% Torgesen 80 hrs. 1:3 tutoring 11% 2% Torgesen 91 hrs. 1:3 or 1:5 tutoring 8% 1.6% Mathes 80 hrs. 1:3 tutoring 1% .02%

We do not yet know how to prevent reading difficulties in “all” children Percent of children scoring below the 30th percentile Study Amt. of instruction % delayed overall % Foorman 174 hrs.- classroom 35% 6% Felton 340 hrs. - groups of 8 32% 5% Vellutino 35- 65 hrs. 1:1 tutoring 46% 7% Torgesen 88 hrs. 1:1 tutoring 30% 4% Torgesen 80 hrs. 1:3 tutoring 11% 2% Torgesen 91 hrs. 1:3 or 1:5 tutoring 8% 1.6% Mathes 80 hrs. 1:3 tutoring 1% .02%

70 30 Growth in Word Reading Ability 75th 50th 25th National Percentile October January May

Fourth grade follow-up for students participating in early intervention through second grade Accuracy 100 Rate 40th Percentile 90 Standard Score 80 70

These are likely to be overestimates of our success in preventing reading difficulties in all children 46% of sample had broad vocabulary scores below the 30th percentile At end of second grade, although word level skills stayed strong (1.6% below 30th), estimate 4.1% failure rate for silent reading comprehension Problem with comprehension will become more pronounced as comprehension tests become more complex

Evidence from one school that we can do substantially better than ever before School Characteristics: 70% Free and Reduced Lunch (going up each year) 65% minority (mostly African-American) Elements of Curriculum Change: Movement to a more balanced reading curriculum beginning in 1994-1995 school year (incomplete implementation) for K-2 Improved implementation in 1995-1996 Implementation in Fall of 1996 of screening and more intensive small group instruction for at-risk students

Screening at beginning of first grade, with extra instruction for those in bottom 30-40% 31.8 20.4 10.9 6.7 3.7 Hartsfield Elementary Progress over five years Proportion falling below the 25th percentile in word reading ability at the end of first grade 30 20 10 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 Average Percentile 48.9 55.2 61.4 73.5 81.7 for entire grade (n=105)

31.8 30 Proportion falling below the 25th Percentile 20.4 20 10.9 10 6.7 3.7 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 Average Percentile 48.9 55.2 61.4 73.5 81.7 30 Hartsfield Elementary Progress over five years Proportion falling below the 25th Percentile 20 14.5 9.0 10 5.4 2.4 1996 1997 1998 1999 Average Percentile 58.2 67.1 74.1 81.5

40 35 30 25 20 15 10 FCAT Performance in Spring, 2003 Level 2 Level 1 Hartsfield Elem. State Average

Why the disparity between early word-level outcomes and later comprehension of complex texts? Demands of vocabulary in complex text at third grade and higher place stress on the remaining SES related “vocabulary gap” More complex text demands reading comprehension strategies and higher level thinking and reasoning skills that remain “deficient” in many children

What we haven’t yet demonstrated we know how to do Close the “vocabulary gap” between low SES and higher SES children This gap arises because of massive differences in opportunities to learn “school vocabulary” in the home

Language

Hart and Risley (1995) conducted a longitudinal study of children and families from three groups: • Professional families • Working-class families • Families on welfare

Families Professional Working-Class Welfare Measures ParentChildParentChildParentChild Recorded Vocab. 2,176 1,116 1,498 749 974 525 size Average utterances 487 310 301 223 176 168 per hour Average different 382 297 251 216 167 149 words per hour Measures of Parent and Child Language

Differences in exposure to words over one year Children in Professional Families -- 11 million Children in Working-Class Families -- 6 million Children in Welfare Families -- 3 million

The Effects of Weaknesses in Oral Language on Reading Growth (Hirsch, 1996) 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 High Oral Language in Kindergarten 5.2 years difference Reading Age Level Low Oral Language in Kindergarten 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Chronological Age

Bringing Words to Life Isabel Beck M. McKeown L. Kucan Guilford Press

Big ideas from “Bringing Words to Life” First-grade children from higher SES groups know about twice as many words as lower SES children Poor children, who enter school with vocabulary deficiencies have a particularly difficult time learning words from “context” Research has discovered much more powerful ways of teaching vocabulary than are typically used in classrooms A “robust” approach to vocabulary instruction involves directly explaining the meanings of words along with thought-provoking, playful, interactive follow-up.

An important remaining question If we provide poor children five years of intensive and robust vocabulary instruction (beginning in pre-school), will that be sufficient to provide them the vocabulary required on “high stakes” measures of reading comprehension in third grade?

What we haven’t yet demonstrated we know how to do Effectively train teachers on a massive scale to provide powerful instruction in the “thinking strategies” required on complex measures of reading comprehension (Report of the National Reading Panel)

Language Knowledge Fluency Metacognition • Life Experience • Content Knowledge • Activation of Prior • Knowledge • Knowledge about • Texts • Oral Language Skills • Knowledge of Language • Structures • Vocabulary • Cultural Influences Reading Comprehension • Prosody • Automaticity/Rate • Accuracy • Decoding • Phonemic Awareness • Motivation & • Engagement • Active Reading • Strategies • Monitoring Strategies • Fix-Up Strategies

Some definitions of reading comprehension to make a point about remaining gaps in our knowledge “Acquiring meaning from written text” Gambrell, Block, and Pressley, 2002 “the process of extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language” Sweet and Snow, 2002 “thinking guided by print” Perfetti, 1985

Preparing children to meet grade level standards in reading comprehension by the end of third grade is as much about providing the vocabulary and thinking skills they need as it is about helping them learn to read accurately and fluently This point becomes increasingly important as we move up the grades

51 43 22 10 8 5 2 Fluency 60 Verbal Non Verbal Memory 50 40 7th Grade Percent of variance accounted for 30 20 10 Individually Unique

Dominance Results • Dominance was not established between fluency and verbal knowledge/reasoning, but both completely dominated nonverbal reasoning and memory

52 32 28 15 7 5 2 Fluency 60 Verbal Non Verbal Memory 50 40 10thGrade Percent of variance accounted for 30 20 10 Individually Unique

Dominance Results • Verbal knowledge and reasoning completely dominated fluency and memory. Fluency completely dominated memory.

Conclusions: We know how to prevent problems in reading accuracy and fluency in almost all children– whether we do it or not depends most on “how we feel about the fact we haven’t done it so far” We have not yet demonstrated that we know how to close the “vocabulary gap” for poor children—although we have some promising new techniques to try We do not yet know how to “scale up” effective professional development to train all teachers to provide effective instruction in comprehension strategies

A big idea to keep in mind: Preparing children to meet grade level standards in reading comprehension by the end of third grade and beyond is a job for all teachers, not just “reading teachers.” It’s at least as much about building content knowledge, vocabulary, and thinking skills as it is about helping children learn to read accurately and fluently

One more concluding thought…. There is no question but that “leaving no child behind in reading” is going to be a significant challenge… It will involve professional development for teachers, school reorganization, careful assessments, and a relentless focus on the individual needs of every child… But, its not the most difficult thing we could be faced with…

Teaching Every Child to Read: the Knowns and the Unknowns