[AAACE-NLA] complex relationship between learning toread&learningto learn

[AWilder106@aol.com]

George,  aka "Clanging Cymbal,"

I woke in the middle of the night thinking I might not have the strength or the knowledge or the time to continue on this theme, which has been going strong since last summer.  There are a lot of smart people here.  Sometimes I can only point out the difficulty and hope that others will resolve the problems.

I am 5'7", when  I am older I will probably be 5'6" or 5'5" or shorter.  However,  now I am 5'7".  Numbers have  meaning--and let's not drag Einstein in here or go into the  relativity of numbers. 

If I were a funder I would not fund anything unless the field could come up with some way to measure what it is doing--the development of skilled readers.  If a program looked promising I would focus on pushing it to figure out how to measure its results.

I think there probably isn't an "if"--I would say that in some cases higher scores on some sort of (valid, reliable) test, which indicate degree of mastery, lead to life changing experiences--for some.  

The TABE associates nicely with the GED, according to one list subscriber who knows both well.  And I know that not every literacy student wants to get a GED. But there certainly is generalizability between literacy domains.  Experiences, which are the usual measure of domains, are not cut off at the border.  Nouns in one domain exist in other domains. 

Use of quantity may cover a darker political side, but that is no reason to stop trying to solve the problem.  People who subscribe to the darker side get so irritated when you come up with the solution, I have found.  That can be kind of fun, assuming they don't have knives or guns or  have political power over you--big assumptions in my experience, so one must be careful where one finds fun. 

We could  debate mastery until the cows come home, I'll leave that to you and others. 

I often don't care about the  values, I assume people will find them for themselves, express them themselves.  I assume there is a link between happiness and having survived a tidal wave, and happiness at being fed when one is hungry.  When I'm an educator, my job is to create skilled readers as fast as possible, as quickly as possible.  If an analysis of "rich narratives" will help me do that, fine.  Nancy's method of essentially asking students "What works" is a decent one.

She is able to measure progress using ProLiteracy models and measures.  She needs the money for the  LD testing, and she isn't the only one in this fix, others spoke up on the LD list when I asked the question of "where?"  

As to who lives and who dies, what gets funded and what doesn't, when muddiness in outcomes prevails, then I bet it's programs which are embedded in districts, programs that have lots of  people supporting them, whether they have measurable results or not.  I accept that political reality, it's out there.

However there is a lot of strength in "this works, and I will show you how it works and how we measure it working."  Would I ever like to hear that from more people.  There are a handful  on this list who have said that, and whose experience with "what works" is generalizable.  

A bientot for now,

Andrea