Features: By David Davenport and Jeffrey M. Jones When reading skills become a national issue After decades of debate
inside the educational community, literacy policy has recently moved to the
larger stage of national politics. Prior to 1997 no federal bill had specifically addressed child literacy as
an issue. But in the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush regularly touted his record
on literacy, and he and his wife Laura, a former librarian, speak of
reading as “the new civil right.” Legislators debate literacy
philosophy and methodology — such as phonics versus whole language
— and newspaper headlines track how U.S. kids read in comparison with
the rest of the world. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, which federalizes literacy policy
in important ways, is hotly debated in state legislatures, Congress, and
federal courts.
The transformation of literacy from an educational
concern to a national political issue has been swift and significant. In a
sense, literacy has traveled the same federalization road as educational
policy generally, moving from local school boards and statehouses to our
nation’s capital in less than a decade. Two former governors, Bill
Clinton and George W. Bush, wrestled with literacy and education at the
state level before packing up the problems and bringing them along to the
White House. In fact, the road to federalizing literacy policy moves
largely through Sacramento, California and Austin, Texas on its way to
Washington, D.C.
Playing out literacy on the national political stage
reframes everything — the issues, the vocabulary, and the cast of
characters. Literacy is not merely a problem now; it is a crisis. Improving
literacy is not just an educational or social need; it is essential if the
United States is to compete in the new global economy. Everyone seems ready
to declare war on the enemy — illiteracy — but experts define
and measure the problem differently and propose varied methods of attack.
In fact, the several combatants in the war on illiteracy seem to expend as
much ammunition firing on one another as they do in attacking the problem.
The politicians in Washington, the scholars in their ivory towers, the
vested interests in our communities, and the teachers and students in the
trenches all seem to be warring among themselves at the same time they are
trying to combat the common enemy.
Much was written about literacy when it played on the
academic stage as an educational issue. Now that political attention and
governmental dollars are involved, it is time to assess literacy on the
public policy stage. What can we learn by tracking the politics of
literacy? Will greater political attention and government expenditure
improve literacy? Can illiteracy be overcome in the twenty-first century?
Literacy policy travels eastward
O ne way to track the story of how literacy became a national political issue is to follow its path through two key states on its way to Washington, D.C. The story begins, as new political trends often do, in the Golden State, California. There, an ambitious politician, Superintendent of Education Bill Honig, joined forces with advocates of “whole language” instruction to revise the California reading curriculum. Changes in the educational approach of a major state such as California have a corresponding effect on national textbook publishing and on the policies of other states.
In the late 1980s, Honig decided to launch a major reform of California
education centered on reading. Some say he was simply doing his job as
superintendent of education, but most believe Honig had a larger political
agenda, including a possible run for governor of California. Under his
leadership, the state initiated a program called Reading Recovery that had
been developed by a New Zealand teacher, Mary Clay.
Honig apparently wanted to recast reading instruction
in a “great books” format, encouraging the development of
reading skills in the context of exposing students to rich literature.
Perhaps unwittingly, however, he tied his policies to an
educational/political movement called “whole language.” The
essence of whole language is that, rather than breaking down words into
parts such as syllables and phonetic sounds, children are challenged to
learn through transactions with the world around them — listening,
interpreting, incorporating language in a more natural way. As critics have
pointed out, whole language is more of a philosophy of literacy than it is
a program or methodology.
In 1994 test results appeared that would provide a report card for
Honig’s reforms, and the news was not good. California achievement
tests that year showed a decline in reading scores, with the state’s
students tying for last among the thirty-nine states tested. A year after
the whole language reforms were adopted in San Diego, the percentage of
students scoring above the national median plunged from 51 to 25. Experts have subsequently debated the significance of these
scores, noting that key test scores for California were not available prior
to 1992, making
long-term comparisons difficult. Nevertheless, these low reading scores
galvanized action in the state capital.
In the fall of 1995 the California legislature passed seven bills targeting
literacy, rolling the state’s reading policy back to basics as a
matter of law. Marion Joseph, a grandmother who was concerned that her
grandson could not read well, became a vocal and effective activist on the
issue, persuading not only legislators but also Honig himself that the move
to whole language had been a mistake. Dramatic legislative hearings focused
on phonics versus whole language with Bill Honig, now converted from whole
language, as the leadoff witness. The reading wars in California were
bitter and angry, but the outcome was clear, and reading policy had now
come onto the larger stage of public policy and politics.
Texas. It was not long
before our second-largest state, Texas, began to focus on literacy policy
as well. Once again a key political figure took the lead as Governor George
W. Bush spoke of a literacy crisis that was “obvious in the
numbers.” Citing the failure of one in four Texas schoolchildren on
the state reading test, Governor Bush called for a return to basics in a
major new literacy initiative.
Whereas the main focus of literacy policy in California
had been the philosophy or approach — whole language versus phonics
— the reform effort in Texas primarily emphasized accountability and
testing. Indeed, experts agree that the use of state-mandated testing to
reform and improve schools is most fully implemented in Texas, and its
efforts are often held up as a model to be employed elsewhere. Some refer
to the “Texas miracle,” citing improved student performance.
For example, 91
percent of third grade students passed the state reading test in 2004, compared with 76 percent in 1994. State law requires all third
graders to pass the reading test to be promoted to fourth grade.
The use of testing to improve literacy is not without
its critics. Some argue that testing does not improve education, but only
reveals its uneven quality, especially in poor communities. Others fear
that teachers engage in test preparation — teaching to the test
— rather than providing students a well-rounded education.
If the educational results of the relatively new
testing regime are not yet fully known, the political consequences are more
apparent. Governor Bush was widely credited with taking the initiative on a
policy issue of major importance and fashioning bipartisan support for a
statewide approach to what had previously been a matter of local policy.
Mrs. Bush, who helped initiate clinics and grant programs for preschool
reading and language, joined her husband in making literacy a visible
policy issue.
Washington, D.C. Before
Governor Bush arrived at the White House, another former governor, Bill
Clinton, had already introduced literacy onto the national political stage.
During his second presidential campaign in 1996, and in his State of the Union message of 1997, Clinton advocated the America
Reads Initiative. He championed national standards and assessment in all
subjects and sought federal assistance for literacy efforts. Surprisingly,
this was the first attempt to enact federal legislation aimed specifically
at literacy for children.
Clinton’s approach to the issue was a new twist
for Democrats. Rather than championing education and literacy in the
traditional language of his party — helping those in need and
leveling the social playing field — Clinton urged federal attention
to literacy on economic grounds. Both President Clinton and his secretary
of education, Richard Riley, were described as “neoliberal” for
addressing literacy in functional terms, arguing improvement was needed so
that Americans could complete in the global economy and in the information
age.
Congress did not climb on the neoliberal bandwagon,
however, and Clinton’s literacy legislation was blocked. An unusual
coalition of Republicans — who felt literacy was best handled by the
states — and Democrats — who feared the legislation would
further disadvantage minority students — formed to block passage of
Clinton’s reading and testing agenda. The U.S. Department of
Education did manage to fund some of the president’s literacy
initiatives with discretionary dollars.
President and Mrs. Bush brought even greater activism
on literacy to the White House. The Bushes have emphasized family literacy,
encouraging parents to read to their children. Whereas President
Clinton’s goal was that every child should read by fourth grade,
President Bush accelerated the timetable to the third grade. The Bush
reading initiative would spend some $5 billion over five years.
How did Bush win the support of congressional
Republicans who had previously held that literacy was a state and local
matter, not a federal mandate? That part of the story begins in Texas
where, as governor, Bush had brought in Reid Lyon of the National
Institutes of Health to help design reading and literacy programs. Lyon had
been conducting studies on reading instruction since 1992 and had become persuaded of
the virtues of phonics. He later said he had initially come to Texas
suspicious of Bush but signed on as the governor’s major ally in
reading reform. As President, Bush continued to work with Lyon, who became
known as the “reading czar.”
It was at this conceptual level that President Bush won
over congressional Republicans who also admired phonics and a “back
to basics” approach to remedying America’s literacy problems.
Beginning with a provision in the 1990 Adult Literacy Act, and continuing through the Reading
Excellence Act sponsored by Congressman William Goodling in 1997, definitions of reading and
basic methodologies had become important, just as they had in California.
Together, Bush, Lyon and congressional Republicans
hammered out the historic No Child Left Behind legislation that provides
substantial support to states that are making significant progress on
educational priorities like literacy and testing. This political marriage
brought together those who believe education belongs to the states with
those who support federal standards and funding. Essentially, states are
required to present aggressive programs of testing and literacy improvement
based upon the “back to basics” and phonics approaches that
both congressional Republicans and the White House favor. If state plans do
not sufficiently follow this path, they are sent back for reworking before
funding is released. A policy afterthought less than a decade ago, federal
literacy programs now distribute in excess of $1 billion annually to states and local educational
agencies.
The literacy policy debate
W hile the political debate about literacy has shifted from school districts and state legislatures to Washington, D.C., the underlying policy issues are still hotly contested at all levels. As one commentary observes: “[E]ducation has become a congested area filled with a multitude of organized interests and policymakers, who often have varied concerns about young children, who distinctly define the problems in reading, and who have contrasting beliefs about how the policy process works.” 1 Just as declaring war on poverty or drugs at the national level has not solved those intractable problems, a federal attack on illiteracy will not succeed without understanding and addressing the key underlying policy issues. The fundamental conflicts might best be summarized as disagreements over how best to teach literacy, to test for it, and to reform literacy policy.
How to teach literacy. “The
question of how best to teach beginning reading may be the most politicized
topic in the field of education,” says Marilyn Jager Adams in her 1990 book, Beginning to Read. Legislators
from California to Washington, D.C. have found themselves wrapped up in the
debate over two distinct methodologies for teaching literacy: phonics and
skills versus the meaning approach. Each camp has its own implicit
understanding of the purpose of literacy, and the debates take on political
and cultural goals as well as academic methodologies.
The skills instruction approach is often thought of as
rote repetition of the alphabet. While the emphasis on recognizing and
naming letters is an essential part, the skills approach has evolved to a
whole series of building blocks in which students first acquire basic
skills and systematically add other tasks. The process begins when students
start to identify the connections between sounds and symbols, thereby
breaking the language “code.” More complex skills and texts are
introduced as children improve their ability to read and comprehend
language.
Meaning instruction has also evolved over the years.
Until the late 1960s,
meaning instruction meant the “word” or “look-say”
method “in which children learned individual words separately and in
sentences and stories, and eventually mastered — either intuitively
or explicitly — specific skills for identifying parts of
words.”2 Whole language — using written language as a whole
rather than an aggregation of individual words — added an explicit
emphasis on the content of what children read. As a result, whole language
empowered and even urged a move from meaningless texts to literature that
held meaning to students. Naturally this also opened the door to
politicized content and debates over the appropriate literary canon.
Whole language gained significant traction in the late 1980s and early 1990s as educators responded to
new research that linked pedagogical methods more directly to educational
psychology. But at the same time that many schools were moving from phonics
to whole language, testing began to play a larger role in the evaluation of
learning and curriculum. When state-level tests were more broadly
implemented in 1992,
they showed declines in reading which, as demonstrated in California, led
to political calls to return to basic phonics instruction. The backlash
against whole language and meaning instruction was decisive in many states
and even at the federal level. Nevertheless, some educators have argued
that whole language was not responsible for the lower test results and that
the return to skills and phonics ignores advances in reading research over
the last 30 years.3
One intriguing pragmatic question is whether phonics
and whole language might be compatible. Is it possible to combine the best
aspects of phonetic and meaning instruction, or might each method be
helpful with certain students? At the moment it is impossible to know, as
the two sides are dug in to ideological positions. As Gerald Coles points
out in Reading Lessons, their present incompatibility is evident even in the language
each side uses: “The skills side insists that there is a
‘method,’ while the whole-language side insists theirs is an
‘approach’ or ‘philosophy’” (19-20). But if true progress is
to be made against illiteracy, these pragmatic, student-oriented questions
will need to be asked.
How to test for literacy. Another
contentious policy debate is over whether the U.S. is in the midst of a
literacy crisis at all. Once you begin to quantify a policy matter such as
literacy, as is now done through standardized testing, warring camps line
up with differing interpretations of the data. This has certainly been the
case as literacy has moved onto the political stage, with some arguing that
literacy is now a problem of crisis proportions, whereas others read the
testing data with less alarm.
Further complicating matters, there are now three major
reading assessments of school-aged children: the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (naep), the Program for International Reading Literacy Study (pirls), and the Program for
International Student Assessment (pisa). naep, sometimes called the Nation’s Report Card, has been
administered since 1969, but 2003
marked the first year that all 50 states participated. It examines reading results on both a
national and state basis at different grade levels, providing an
opportunity to examine changes in reading achievement over time. Both pirls, which targets
fourth-graders, and pisa, which looks at 15-year-olds, provide useful comparisons between U.S. students and
their international peers.
One reading of the tests suggests fairly consistent
results. Both naep
and pisa indicate
that only three out of 10 U.S. students are proficient readers — that is, they
competently read and understand texts. A significant number of children
read at a level below basic: 36 percent of fourth-graders, 25 percent of eighth-graders, and 26 percent of twelfth-graders. Unlike mathematics, where scores
have risen, reading achievement has remained virtually stagnant for more
than 30 years,
with no significant increase or decrease in national scores.
Both pirls and naep report serious reading differences based upon race/ethnicity.
Testing confirms the “achievement gap” widely discussed in
education policy circles. Black and Hispanic students at all grade levels
perform well below their white and Asian peers, and they have made little
progress in the last ten years.4 Internationally, pirls and pisa indicate that early on U.S. schoolchildren are near the top
in reading achievement compared with students of other countries. But their
performance slips significantly between fourth grade and high school, and
by age fifteen U.S. students are just average.
From these testing data, a highly influential coalition
of politicians, business leaders and conservative academics argues that the
U.S. is suffering from a debilitating literacy crisis. Pointing to
statistics showing poor overall reading performance, racial disparity, and
declining performance relative to international peers, the group pushes for
major literacy reform, especially greater accountability and school choice.
Otherwise, it argues, the literacy crisis threatens our nation’s
economic vitality, especially with jobs increasingly relying on high-tech
knowledge and literacy skills. The main political agenda of this group is
to mobilize the public about illiteracy and to bring about broad-based
reform of the educational system.
Another camp, largely supportive of the public school
system, believes the rhetoric about a literacy crisis is overblown. Book
titles such as The Literacy Crisis: False
Claims, Real Solutions aptly describe this
political position. Supporters of the present school system examine
literacy data over a longer period of time and find test scores mostly flat
over the last 30
years. Consequently they charge that those who would “attack current
structures and advocate alternative policy, practice or movement as the
solution to our educational ills” have manufactured the language of
crisis for political purposes.5 Advocates of supporting and improving the present
system argue for increased resources and greater investment in teacher
training and development.
The debate over whether there is a literacy crisis is
further complicated by attacks on the tests themselves. One criticism is
that the tests and resulting data are not legitimate because the standard
for proficiency can be manipulated up or down, especially in the state
testing schemes. The fudging is apparent when state test results are
compared to naep
results for the same state.6 Other concerns include whether literacy testing
encourages gamesmanship, teaching to the test, and outright cheating.
Researchers continue to debate the merits of testing, and both Democrats in
Washington and state legislators have expressed reservations about
participating in the No Child Left Behind programs in part because of
concerns about the pervasive testing scheme.
How to improve literacy. As
literacy moved from local and state educational circles onto the national
political scene, several competing reform ideas began to emerge. While not
always in agreement about the extent of the literacy crisis, reformers
shared the conviction that simply maintaining the status quo was not
acceptable. As with most reform efforts, the devil is not only in the
details, but also in the basic approach.
Perhaps the most visible reform effort is the one tied
to the resurgence of phonics instruction, often called “back to
basics.” Although these reforms have culminated during the
administration of President George W. Bush, the seeds were planted 20 years ago under President
Ronald Reagan. In 1983 the National Commission on Excellence in Education published A Nation at Risk, a report
documenting the poor performance of U.S. students, especially in reading.
To stem the “rising tide of mediocrity,” the report recommended
that high school graduates be proficient in “Five New Basics.”
The first of these focused on literacy, calling on graduates of the school
system to be able to do the following:
(a) comprehend, interpret, evaluate and use what they read; (b) write well-organized, effective papers; (c) listen effectively and discuss ideas intelligently; and (d) know our literacy heritage and how it enhances imagination and ethical understanding, and how it relates to customs, ideas and values of today’s life and culture.7
Other national reports followed in the
Reagan years, including Secretary of Education William Bennett’s Becoming a Nation of Readers and First Lessons. The latter report
cemented the term “basics” in the national lexicon of literacy
policy, documenting the advances in our “knowledge about the basic
processes involved in reading, teaching and learning.”8 These
reform-minded reports emphasized phonics-based lessons, the use of basal
readers and workbooks, increased time on reading, and access to good
literature.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, meaning-based instruction also gained a following in the
United States. The meaning-based approach largely ignored the mechanics of
reading as emphasized in phonics instruction. Instead, its proponents
viewed learning to read as a natural process that children acquire as they
are exposed to interesting stories and meaningful texts. Such approaches
were not new, dating back at least to the 1920s, but gained newfound attention in the 1980s with whole language reforms.
Whole language methods were adopted as a formal
education practice throughout the U.S. in the early 90s. The focus on reading comprehension
and text engagement fit well with a political climate that favored
progressive education and a child-centered curriculum. The adoption was
short-lived, however, due to poor reading results and a lack of scientific
and theoretical evidence supporting the effectiveness of whole language,
especially for at-risk children.
In response to the highly politicized era of whole
language versus phonics, educators and politicians sought to overcome bias
by insisting on a scientific basis for literacy reforms. While not as
catchy as the “back to basics” slogan, scientifically
verifiable research on reading is the dominant reform approach today. The
National Academy of Science conducted the first major report stressing the
importance of science in reading. Preventing
Reading Difficulties in Young Children (1998) explored in detail
“how literacy can be fostered from birth through kindergarten and the
primary grades, including evaluation of philosophies, systems, and
materials commonly used to teach reading.” The report captured
considerable attention with its evidentiary-based conclusion that excellent
instruction grounded in phonics was essential for overcoming barriers to
literacy. The Council’s compelling application of the scientific
method to literacy — including public verifiability, testable
theories and systematic empiricism — essentially rewrote the rules
for judging reform.
Two years later, the National Reading Panel sought to
build upon and expand the work of the Academy in its report, Teaching Children to Read. This
report attempted a comprehensive application of scientific methodology to
all aspects of reading, including five major topics: alphabetics, fluency,
comprehension, teacher education, and computer technology. The report found
consensus on a number of key instructional methods, including teaching
children phonemic awareness through systematic phonics; guided, repeated
oral reading; vocabulary development; a mix of reading comprehension
techniques; and the use of computer technology. The report acknowledged,
however, that much remained to be done in developing a science of reading
instruction.
On the policy front, scientifically based reforms
arrived with the launch of “Reading First,” a new national
initiative created by the No Child Left Behind Act. Nearly $5 billion was earmarked for
distribution to states and territories over the next several years. The
Reading First aspect of the act differs from previous national reading
programs by specifying that “teachers’ classroom instruction
decisions must be informed by scientifically based reading research.”
States qualify for funding based upon the number of low-income children
served and then provide grants to districts and schools to improve reading
achievement. Projects selected must systematically and explicitly teach the
five key early reading skills identified in Teaching
Children to Read, though no list of
“sanctioned programs” exists. Even more recently, the president
proposed a $200
million “Striving Readers” initiative. If adopted in 2006, the program would help high
school students who read below grade level to improve their reading skills.
It is too early to evaluate the outcome of such an approach, but the strong
emphasis on science should make the results easier to assess.
In addition to the back-to-basics, whole language, and
scientific reform movements, a fourth approach — variously called
“new literacy studies” and “cultural literacy”
— ventures, as Coles puts it in Reading
Lessons, “beyond the dominant terms of the
debate by pointing to the effects of racism, poverty, politics, and school
funding on learning”(26). This reform movement traces its roots to Brazilian-born educator
Paulo Freire and his book, Pedagogy of the
Oppressed. Freire’s work, published in
English in 1970,
emphasizes the need for people to be aware of their oppression and
encourages reading and writing as a means to engage in political action and
ultimately achieve liberation.
The policy solutions of cultural literacy do not orient
around reading per se but deal with social, cultural, institutional, and
political interventions. One tactic of this approach supports multiple
literacies or different social languages. Supporters of cultural literacy
argue that illiteracy “stands not so much for ignorance as for the
reality of powerlessness and domination.”9 This relativist approach to literacy finds the search
for the best methods of reading instruction to be not only meaningless but
potentially harmful. Happily, most proponents of these new literacy studies
are housed in the ivory towers of American universities and have not had
much impact on the politics or policy of literacy.
A changed political landscape
I f politics is the art of the possible, what is possible for literacy? Is there a literacy agenda that might be pursued within the present political climate that would result in more children learning to read and write at base levels of competency? Any answer to those questions must take into account the two major political changes that affect the politics of literacy: the increasing federalization of literacy policy and the emergence of more centrist and pragmatic neoconservative and neoliberal leadership on educational matters.
The federalization of literacy policy appears now to be
a given, all the more remarkable since this movement has occurred within
the past decade. Indeed, as recently as 1996, the Republican platform still called for the elimination of
the Department of Education. Yet proactive governors such as Bill Clinton
(Arkansas), George W. Bush (Texas), Tom Ridge (Pennsylvania), Richard Riley
(South Carolina), Pete Wilson (California), and others began to focus on
reading and related educational matters at the state level. Education and
literacy became important issues at meetings of governors, and then two
active governors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, carried the issues with
them to Washington, D.C.
Not everyone agrees that federalizing literacy is a
good idea. For example, when President Clinton presented his first federal
literacy initiatives in 1997, Republicans voted against them on the grounds that such matters
belonged at the state and local levels. Even Vermont’s Democratic
governor, Howard Dean, rebelled against some of the broader congressional
testing legislation, arguing that it overstepped the limits of federal
oversight. Dean said the aggressive new approach to education in Washington
amounted to the “federalization of education.”
Nevertheless, education policy generally and literacy
specifically appear to be in Washington to stay. President Bush’s
methodology has been to establish federal standards and look to states for
implementation, an approach that had at least initial support on both sides
of the political aisle in the passage of his No Child Left Behind
legislation. Today, Democrats and Republicans quibble over the specifics of
the act, but there is no movement to remove the literacy matter from the
federal arena.
The second, and related, political change is the
emergence of neoliberal and neoconservative leaders in Washington who
approach the issue in more practical, less ideological terms. The classical
liberal view — that we educate to help people grow and break through
socioeconomic barriers — gave way to President Clinton’s and
Secretary Riley’s neoliberal argument that American children need
stronger literacy skills to compete in the global information economy. By
the same token, conservatives who have been fighting on the other side of
the culture wars, maintaining that literacy is a state and local issue,
have lost the initiative to neoconservatives such as President Bush, who
believe the role of government should be limited but nevertheless
proactive.
In fact, the literacy positions of President George W.
Bush and President Bill Clinton are not substantially different. When you
add in strong support from the business community for testing and
accountability in literacy — key planks of both the Bush and Clinton
approaches — there is clearly an emerging political consensus in
favor of a strong federal hand leading a pragmatic and proactive approach
to literacy. At the moment, there appears to be less enthusiasm for shrill
voices debating the cultural issues of literacy and more support for basic
methodologies coupled with a strong accountability scheme.
A brief agenda
A ssuming that, for the foreseeable future, the action is based in Washington, D.C. and the leaders are neoconservatives and neoliberals who are less ideological and more pragmatic, here is an agenda that the new politics of literacy might be able to advance.
Teach. The challenge here
would be to get beyond the ideological battles and focus on what will help
children read. Washington would do well to declare a cease-fire on the
underlying ideological battles over literacy and continue to focus on what
is scientifically proven to improve children’s ability to read.
Perhaps those committed to the whole language versus phonics battle might
explore possibilities of synthesis rather than extending the culture wars
in this sensitive arena. With less division over ideology, policymakers can
turn their attention to priorities that actually impact reading
development, like providing parents with activities and material for use at
home. If the information economy is driving up the demands for literacy,
insist that the technology industry become part of the solution by helping
to find new methods and solutions for literacy learning.
Test. The debate over
whether test scores indicate a crisis is not terribly useful. Instead, let
us agree that where we now stand — regardless of how it compares
across the years — is unacceptable. Public policy should bring the
communities of interest together to target realistic gains at each level of
proficiency. There is ample evidence that the achievement gap is real and
must be addressed. The testing process itself can be improved by breaking
results down to the state and local levels. The 2002 naep results began to move in this direction for the first
time, but even more localized data are needed for parents to know whether
their schools are succeeding and to hold schools accountable for improved
results. Additionally, test results should be packaged so they can give
teachers useful information for addressing areas of need.
Reform. Reform should
continue along the lines of what scientific research shows best teaches
children to read. Much work remains before we can say we have a science of
reading development and comprehension, let alone evidence to counter
charges and countercharges of political bias. If a teacher’s
classroom must be based on scientific research, then we must fund the
research and train the teachers in what the research shows. As new teaching
techniques, curricula, and educational structures are developed, they will
help challenge and improve existing methods. After a decent interval, we
must test the effectiveness of new federal initiatives such as Reading
First in the No Child Left Behind Act.
New possibilities
O nly a few years ago, an examination of “the politics of literacy” would have made no sense. Literacy was an educational issue, not a matter of public policy, and any politics that attended the discussion would have been inside the academy. Now both Democrats and Republicans alike have indicated a willingness to federalize literacy policy, with all the politics thereto appertaining. An unusual coalition of neoliberals and neoconservatives has become comfortable setting literacy policy in Washington, D.C. and testing its impact on a state-by-state basis.
Like the war on poverty and the war on drugs, declaring
a federal war on illiteracy is likely to meet with mixed success.
Nevertheless, if politics is the art of the possible, the changed political
climate creates new possibilities for literacy. Literacy is of fundamental
importance, and it seems important to take advantage this opportunity for
some consensus on literacy policy and renewed efforts to improve the
ability of our children to read.
1 Julie E. McDaniel, Celia H. Sims, and Cecil G. Miskel, The National Reading Policy Arena: Policy Actors and Perceived Influence (University of Michigan, 2000), 15. 2 Gerald Coles, Reading Lessons: The Debate Over Literacy (Hill and Wang, 1998), 12. 3 See P.D. Pearson, The Politics of Reading Research and Practice (Michigan State University, 1999), 5. 4 See The Nation’s Report Card: Reading Highlights 2002 (National Center for Education Statistics 2002), 13. 5 Pearson, Politics, 3. 6 Jennifer Sloan McCombs, [et. al], Achieving State and National Literacy Goals, a Long Uphill Road (Rand Corporation, 2004). 7 A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983), 70. 8 William J. Bennett, First Lessons (U.S. Department of Education, 1987). 9 Michael Holzman, “Observations on Literacy: Gender, Race, and Class,” in The Politics of Writing Instruction: Postsecondary, Richard H. Bullock, John Trimbur, and Charles I. Schuster, eds. (Boyton/Cook, 1991), 298. |
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