Why Children Can't Read: Reading Instruction, Grade Retention, Skill Remediation, Response-to-Intervention, and Chronic Absences

Why Effective Practice Needs to Dictate Good Policy (Rather than the Other Way Around)

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  There are times in education where we get so focused on the individual trees in our forest, that we are unable to get out of the forest itself. 

  That is, we sometimes get so singularly focused on a topic, area, or academic discipline that we miss the related issues that are concurrently in play.

  And so, it was heartening to read my local newspaper a few weeks ago about a report published by two advocacy groups analyzing our state’s recent data on school attendance (or, more accurately, chronic absenteeism) and its relationship to literacy and student achievement.

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  Focusing on kindergarten through Grade 3 students across the state (Arkansas) during the 2014-2015 school year, the report’s major findings included:

  * Chronic absence is a significant problem:  More than 12% of kindergarten through 3rd graders missed 18 or more days of school (10% of the school year)

  * Chronic absence starts early:  Kindergarteners were significantly more likely to be chronically absent than students in third grade (16% vs. 10%).

  * Chronic absence is worse among certain schools:  25% of the state’s chronically absent students were attending just 52 (10%) of the state’s schools.

  * Chronic absence is worse among third graders who are economically disadvantaged or have special needs:  These combined groups accounted for more than 30% of the state’s chronically absent 3rd graders.

  * Hispanic students are the least likely to be chronically absent: Only 9% of the state’s chronically absent 3rd graders were Hispanic, compared to 12% of white and 14% of African-American 3rd graders.

  * Chronically absent 3rd graders are less likely to read on grade level:  Only 20% of 3rd graders who were chronically absent were reading on grade level.

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Relating these Results to Recent National Reports

  The results from this state-specific report summarized above are comparable to similar national reports. But some additional processes need to be considered when discussing students’ reading success, and why so many of our students are not learning how to read. 

  These processes include:

  Reading Instruction, Retention Decisions, Remedial Practices, Response-to-Intervention, and Chronic Absences.

  Critically, these processes have been investigated in a number of recent national reports. These reports are referenced below. They are completely analyzed in the full Blog message [CLICK HERE].

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  Report 1: Reading Instruction. In May 2015, the International Literacy Association released its Preliminary Report on Teacher Preparation for Literacy Instruction.

  Gathering information on the literacy requirements for teacher certification or licensure by state departments of education across the country, the Report concluded that many newly-certified elementary teachers are unprepared to teach reading.

  Indeed, the Report noted that (a) up to 34 states have no specific professional teaching standards in reading for elementary teachers; (b) up to 24 states have no literacy or reading course requirements; (c) many states have no practicum or internship requirements for literacy practice and supervision; and (d) many states do not require a test to assess competency in reading instruction for teacher-licensure candidates.

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  Report 2: Retention Research, Results, and Unintended Effects. Unfortunately, the educational process of teaching students to read has become confounded by potentially harmful policies that require (by state law) or recommend (by at least one national “advocacy” group) that students be retained at the end of 3rd grade if they are not reading “at grade level.”

  This is problematic because of:

  * The absence of any empirical research validating the importance of 3rd grade as the “pivotal year” for reading mastery or grade-level retention

  * The research on the effectiveness—and the unintended consequences—of grade retention

  * The absence of diagnostic assessment and strategic intervention before and during most retention years

  * The inappropriate use of retention as an “intervention” in and of itself

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  Relative to unintended effects, a recent Duke study (February, 2014) documented an interdependent “ripple effect” where the middle schools in North Carolina that had more students who had previously been retained had more students who were suspended, had substance abuse problems, and engaged in more fights and classroom disruptions. 

  Involving more than 79,000 students in these NC middle schools, this study looked not only at the students who had been retained, but how their presence in a school influenced their classmates.

  The Duke study particularly noted North Carolina’s Read to Achieve policy whereby 3rd grade students not reading at grade level by the end of third grade are retained if interventions and summer reading camp experiences have not brought them up to a 4th grade readiness level. 

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  Report 3: Remedial Practices and Response-to-Intervention. Two additional areas that are directly related to students’ literacy proficiency involve what schools do when they are not learning and mastering.  Effectively addressing these areas (remedial practices and response-to-intervention) is critical—especially given an important report that suggests that current practices need to be rethought.

  In November 2015, a report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education and completed by the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Evaluation of Response to Intervention Practices for Elementary School Reading, was published.

  This Report described the largest federal investigation of its kind—a differential evaluation of the effects of response-to-intervention approaches on the literacy progress of approximately 24,000 first through third grade students in 13 states. Critically, the study statistically compared 146 schools, that had been implementing key elements from the U.S. Department of Education’s Response-to-Intervention (RtI) framework in literacy for at least three years, with 100 randomly-selected comparison schools that were not implementing RtI in the same 13 states.

  Comparing the literacy progress of 1st through 3rd grade students during the 2011 to 2012 school year primarily using individually-administered norm-referenced tests and their state’s high-stakes proficiency test, some of the results indicated (see additional results in the full Blog message) that: 

  * The 1st graders receiving Tier II interventions performed 11% lower on the reading assessments than the comparison students who barely missed qualifying for the Tier II intervention approaches.

  * The 2nd and 3rd graders receiving Tier II interventions experienced no significant reading benefits- - although they did not lose ground.

  * Students already receiving special education services or who were “old for grade” (probably due to delayed entrances or retentions) had particularly poor results when they received Tier II interventions.

  * For all students, the reading results did not significantly differ for students from different income levels, racial groups, or native languages.

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  Report 4: Chronic Absenteeism—Coming Full Circle. On June 7th of this year, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights released a report, A First Look: Key Highlights on Equity and Opportunity Gaps in Our Nation’s Public Schools.

  This Report, which provides a national context for the state data discussed at the beginning of this Blog, summarizes the 2013-2014 school-year survey results from virtually every school district in the country (involving over 50 million students)—reporting on a host of issues: school discipline, restraints and seclusions, early learning, college and career readiness, education in juvenile justice facilities, teacher and staffing equity, and . . . chronic student absences.

  In the latter area, the First Look report defined a chronically absent student as one missing 15 or more school days during the school year. The Report cited the following national data from the 2013-2014 school year:

  * Nationwide, more than 6.5 million students – or 13% of all students – were chronically absent. 19% of all high school students, 12% of middle school students, and 10% of elementary school students were chronically absent.

  * In nearly 500 school districts, at least 30% of their students missed at least three weeks of school.

  * More than 3 million high school students – or 18% of all high school students – were chronically absent.

  * 20% or more of American Indian or Alaska Native (26%), Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander (25%), black (22%), multiracial (21%), and Latino (20%) high school students were chronically absent.

  * High school students with disabilities served by IDEA were 1.3 times as likely to be chronically absent as high school students without disabilities.

  * 20% of all English learner high school students were chronically absent.

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Summary

  While this discussion began (and ended) with the effects of chronic absenteeism on elementary students’ proficiency in literacy, the theme throughout was:

  Students’ literacy success, as well as their literacy gaps or “failures,” occur due to many interdependent direct and indirect in-school and out-of-school variables and circumstances. 

  From a policy perspective, it is short-sighted to focus on an individual variable, or a single circumstance. Instead, we need to look at the many effective multi-tiered services, supports, strategies, and practices that help students to succeed in reading, and craft our policies accordingly.

  In other words, we need more specific, bottom-up approaches here, than global, top-down proclamations. 

  And, among the approaches that we need to focus on are:

  * Getting kids to school (i.e., decreasing chronic and other absences) ready and motivated to learn

  * Preparing and certifying our teachers as effective, scientifically-based reading instructors

  * Tracking and monitoring our students’ skill mastery and reading proficiency

  * Providing instructional or intervention services and supports— based on diagnostic assessments and at needed levels of intensity—to struggling students

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  In doing this, we need to also review, re-evaluate, and reject policies (e.g., retention), procedures (e.g., response-to-intervention), and other practices that are not working—or that are producing unintended negative effects.

  Admittedly, this is all very messy at times. But, it is all very necessary at all times.

  What do you think?

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Dr. Howie Knoff is a national consultant who has spent 30 years working at the school, district, university, and state department of education levels. He has helped thousands of schools in every state across the country implement one or more components of school improvement- - from strategic planning to effective classroom instruction to positive behavioral support systems to multi-tiered strategic and intensive academic and behavioral interventions.

A Past-President of the National Association of School Psychologists, you can connect with Howie on Twitter (@DrHowieKnoff), LinkedIn, or by e-mail ([email protected]).