[AAACE-NLA] CASAS or EFF: Faith- or Evidence-Based?

Fri Jan 13 16:12:42 EST 2006

Hi Friends,

I have been reminded by others to ignore some postings because the people
who post on this listserv do not necessarily represent the people who read
the postings, but I could not let this one by...

People who hold onto pedagogy, philosophy or political perspectives without
objectively looking at evidence and others who totally dismiss an
initiative, pedagogy, philosophies, and individuals without acknowledging
there may be some good in it/them are not helping themselves or our field
and its advancement.

Some of the recent postings regarding NCLB and supposed endorsed training
that primarily focus on sight words/high frequency words or this recent
commentary on phonics or decoding demonstrate a lack of understanding.

Frank Smith's "Understanding Reading" (required reading from my graduate
program along with Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"), provides only part
of the complex reading process picture.

I am a trained ESOL/language/reading teacher with nearly 20 years of
professional experience.  I have run programs for native speakers including
those with reading disabilities and non-native speakers of English.  Over
that career, my pedagogy and teaching methods developed as learned more.  I
now promote multi-sensory, sequential alphabetics with native and non-native
speakers of English. I could and can objectively demonstrate (with reliable,
criterion-referenced tests) that the students improved their
reading/language skills.  Equally important evidence was an adult learner
retention rate at 85 percent in a program that met four days a week, two
hours a day. And these were working adults with families! (And I would
consider myself a liberal and a humanist.  Go figure!)  

For those who would like to learn more about this type of reading
instruction, here is one link: http://www.nifl.gov/readingprofiles/ 

Carl Guerriere
Executive Director/Literacy Advocate
Greater Hartford Literacy Council
One Union Place
Hartford, Connecticut   06103

Phone: (860) 522-7323 (READ)
Fax:  (860)722-2486
www.greaterhartfordreads.org

The region's champion and resource for literacy

-----Original Message-----
From: aaace-nla-bounces at lists.literacytent.org
[mailto:aaace-nla-bounces at lists.literacytent.org] On Behalf Of
andresmuro at aol.com
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 12:39 PM
To: aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org
Subject: Re: [AAACE-NLA] CASAS or EFF: Faith- or Evidence-Based?

If you guys want to understand how people learn to read, and how they 
process language, the best text on the subject that I've found is 
called "understanding Reading" by Frank Smith. This text is based on 
studies with children, but, in my opinion, it applies to adults.

In the past, I've found that most people that advocate phonics and 
decosing, don't understand what they are talking about. I got in an 
argument with a guy called Tom (I think that his last name was greek). 
He would post stuff in support of phonics but could not back up any of 
his claims. I posted a message with lots of info on the subject with 
references and everything at the request of David Rossen. I'll try to 
look for it in the archives.

Andres

Please take a look at my artwork: www.geocities.com/andresmuro/art.html

-----Original Message-----
From: Anita Landoll <amlandoll at yahoo.com>
To: National Literacy Advocacy List sponsored by AAACE 
<aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org>
Sent: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 07:35:10 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: [AAACE-NLA] CASAS or EFF: Faith- or Evidence-Based?

  Tom,

You are correct. I am seeing and hearing the same
thing within the schools. Teachers are frustrated.
Some students continue to learn to read, and others
continue to not experience success appropriate to
age-level. Yet we continue to have faith that they
will eventually succeed, using present methods.

I think that we make a mistake when we fail to make
every word  decodable for every student. (I believe
that the natural reader uses the decoding center of
the brain to do just that). Many words do not make
natural sense to the visual-spatial learner. However,
when they are able to make "sound sense" of all words,
they learn to read.

Yet NCLB and Reading First continue to teach the idea
of "sight words", presently renamed as "high-frequency
words." "Of course," they say, "we know that these
words just have to be memorized." And we are being
taught all kinds of cute methods to help students
memorize the words.

Yet many students still are unable to process the
words into the automatic recognition area of the
brain, and reading problems persist. Logical sense
would say that we need to teach those students more
efficiently...

Anita   www.learntoreadnow.com

--- tsticht at znet.com wrote:

> January 12, 2006
>
> Competency- or Standards-Based Education for Adult
> Literacy Education:
> Faith-Based or Evidence-Based?
>
> Tom Sticht
> International Consultant in Adult Education
>
> K-12 standards-based education has been around now
> for the last decade, and
> has been reinforced by President Bush?s No Child
> Left Behind program.
> Unfortunately, data from the National Center for
> Education Statistics
> released this year indicate that from 1971 up to
> 2004, a  graph of average
> scores on the NAEP for 9, 13, or 17 year olds for
> the thirty year period
> from 1971 to 2004, on a scale ranging from 200 to
> around 320 scale scores,
> shows that 9 year olds increased from 208 in 1971 to
> 215 in 1980, then fell
> to 209 in 1990 and then rose again to 219 in 2004.
> This is only 4 scale
> score points higher than in 1980.  This is evidence
> of ups and downs over a
> thirty year period but no real improvement. There is
> a more pronounced lack
> of evidence of any average improvement in reading
> for 13 and 17 year olds
> over this period.
>
> The lack of evidence for gains by 9 year olds is
> made even more apparent,
> and disappointing,  when the data for 9 year olds at
> differing percentiles
> of achievement are examined. In 1971 students at the
> 90th percentile scored
> 260, then rose gradually to 266 in 1990 and then
> fell to 264 in 2004. Nine
> year olds at the 50th percentile scored as indicated
> above. Really poorly
> reading students, those at the 10th percentile
> scored 152 in 1971, then
> rose to 165 in 1980 and then rose again to 169 in
> 2004, though the latter
> was not statistically greater than 25 years ago in
> 1980.
>
> Thirteen year olds  at the 10th percentile scored
> 208 in 1971, rose to 213
> in 1988, and then fell to 210 in 2004. The least
> able 17 year old readers,
> those at the 10th percentile, scored 225 in 1971,
> rose to 241 in 1988, and
> then fell to 227 in 2004.
>
> Though there were some improvements in the scores
> for 9 year old
> African-Americans and Hispanics from 1988, scores
> for 13 year olds were
> flat and they actually dropped for 17 year olds.
> Hence there is little
> evidence for the practical impact of standards-based
> education on the
> reading skills of various ethnic groups in over the
> last decade and a half.
>
> The data for the three decades from 1971 to 2004 do
> not show substantial
> increases in reading achievement for 9, 13, or 17
> year olds at various
> percentile ranks, even for the decade after the
> start of standards-based
> education. The NCES data do show that as children go
> up through primary,
> elementary, and secondary school, they do get better
> at reading across the
> percentile spectrum. But in 2004 the bottom ten
> percent of 17 year olds
> scored below the median for 13 year olds, and were
> just 6 scale score
> points above the median for 9 year olds. These
> poorly scoring students will
> no doubt be those who will later discover the real
> life importance of
> literacy and will enter into adult basic education
> to try to gain skills
> needed to support themselves and their families.
>
> Mathematics
> Regarding mathematics, there were gains for 9 and 13
> year olds across the 30
> year period starting in 1971, but no evidence that
> the implementation of
> standards-based education in the decade of the 1990s
> up to the present made
> any acceleration in the rate of improvement which
> started before the
> standards-based education movement. And for 17 year
> old African-Americans
> there were declines in mathematics from 1990 to 2004
> and declines for
> Hispanics from 1992 to 2004.
>
> Overall, the NCES long term trend data for reading
> and mathematics do not
> support the claim that standards-based education
> over the last decade has
> had a positive effect on student achievement in
> these curricula areas.
>
> Efforts to implement either competency-based or
> standards-based  education
> in adult literacy education over the last quarter
> system have also produced
> no evidence to support these reforms. There has been
> no evaluation of the
> Equipped for the Future (EFF) effort and the
> Comprehensive Adult Student
> Assessment System ( CASAS) with its competency-based
> education (CBE)
> approach has produced no evidence that programs
> implementing CBE are more
> effective than programs that do not implement CBE.
>
> At the present time, then, the movement to implement
> either CBE or EFF
> content standards education in adult literacy
> education is progressing as a
> faith-based rather than an evidence-based movement.
>
> Thomas G. Sticht
> International Consultant in Adult Education
> 2062 Valley View Blvd.
> El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
> Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133
> Email: tsticht at aznet.net
>
>
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