Perhaps as part of your field research on reading success, you should visit near-by Eshelman Elementary School which is a K-5 elementary school in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Two years ago the Stanford 9 reading scores were in the low 30's. Last year the scores jumped to high 40s and low 50's. LAUSD praised the school and provided discretionary funds. But this is was just the beginning, the Eshelman scores will break into the 60's this year.

Eshelman is a poverty area, Title 1 school. Over 70% of the kids qualify for a free lunch. The ethnic mix of the 750 students is 65% Hispanic, 15% white and 10% black. Turn-over is a major problem as new children arrive and existing children depart every week of this year-round school.

The success of the school has been the result of many factors. Paramount has been the steadfast leadership of the Principal. Every day, every child, in every classroom reads from 8:15 to 10:15. No exceptions. All the teachers use the same phonics based reading curriculum, Reading Mastery. Every teacher has been trained in the use of Reading Mastery, attends regularly scheduled review sessions and receives classroom observation critiques.

Other success factors include an empowered Reading Coordinator, enthusiastic teachers, a large group of dedicated reading volunteers and training funds provided by private foundations.

There are no serious discipline problems at the school. All the children wear blue and white uniforms. English is the only language heard in the classrooms. Routinely, new arrival, non-English speaking children are reading and speaking English in four months.

The kids can read. The children are proud of their reading ability and it shows. Come visit us.

Stan Corbett, Volunteer

Eshelman Avenue Elementary School
25902 Eshelman Avenue
Lomita, CA 90717
(310) 326 - 1576
Ms. Winnie Washington, Principal

Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2001 2:32 PM

Subject: a different "take" on the problem


I read with interest the Rand draft report on reading comprehension. I am here attaching a chapter I have in press that has a different "take" on the problem. It is going to be published by Erlbaum in a book tentatively titled

The Language Learning Disabilities Continuum: edited by Silliman and
Butler.

The basic argument of the chapter is that the language of written text is for many, many children something encountered only in books. Since they rarely, if ever, read, experience the text as incomprehensible (i.e., essentially as a foreign language). Further, in this high tech, high stimulation age, it is naive to think they can be encouraged to read to any significant extent (other than for the "more serious ones" to do their homework). Therefore, they cannot build the skills that reading comprehension requires by requiring them to read. Also by the time that reading (of the sort you are describing) is demanded, the texts are too difficult to comprehend (even were they to make a concerted effort).

Reading under those conditions onlys to confusion and frustration.

A possible answer out of the dilemma is to transform the spoken language of the classroom so that it mirrors the demands of written text, but at the same time is patterned and eased so as to be comprehensible to the students. Essentially the spoken language of the classroom has to be transformed to teach the written language of books. (It will of course be difficult to train teachers to do this since the current classroom discourse actually serves to exaggerate comprehension problems that students have--but that problem is for another day.)
>
If you think this approach is interesting and would like to find out more about it, I have written a book (now out of print but I can provide it to you) called Teaching School Discourse (it had been published by Psychological Corporation). I would also be pleased to speak with you directly about it if you are interested.

Sincerely

Marion Blank, Ph.D.
Columbia University

Rand Reading Report on Comprehension-Response from University
of Michigan Education graduate students and faculty to the current draft 3/08/01

We enjoyed a lively discussion on the current draft of the Rand Reading Report on
Comprehension. About twenty faculty and students discussed a number of issues,
and raised some concerns.

-Prioritization of Research questions-

There was concern about the prioritization of research questions, particularly in the Appendix
of the Report. We understand that the Appendix is not in finished form. We do suggest that this
ranking be given careful consideration by the Rand committee, so that it reflects those areas of most
concern.

There is a specific concern that the sociocultural factor is not given enough priority by the report.
We note, for example, that the sociocultural factor is the background of one of the report's figures,
versus being highlighted as one of the integral aspects of comprehension.

-Developmental Issues of Comprehension-

There were concerns about the lack of detail as regards the different developmental levels of
comprehension. We suggest that the committee elaborate on issues of developmental level,
age, experience and how these factors should be addressed through instruction.

-Policy and Politics-

Our group expressed concerns about the impact that the Rand Report will have on research funding.
We recognize that the committee was formed during the previous administration and that its efficacy
may now be limited due to the change in administration.

-Teacher Education and Practice-

There was general consensus that this was the most pressing need of current comprehension programs
in schools. We recommend that the Rand committee focus on professional development and effective
practices of comprehension. It was generally agreed that current comprehension practice is piecemeal,
fragmented and ineffective. The body of research and knowledge on comprehension and effective practice
is not being taught in teacher education programs. Teachers, schools and districts are not utilizing
comprehensive, integrated or effective comprehension programs. Secondary teacher education programs
focus on content learning versus comprehension within and across disciplines. Elementary teachers feel
compelled to focus on the basic skills that are assessed on current standardized testing, and do not feel
they have the time, resources or training to focus on comprehension. Many teacher education programs
interpret state standards as phonic instruction versus comprehension or an integrated approach. There is
a lack of support for teacher implementation of effective practices, and the teachers often end up feeling
maligned. This is particularly an issue in under resourced and mismanaged schools.

We recommend that the Rand committee address these pressing concerns: what are the actual
comprehension practices that teachers and students are currently enacting? Why aren't there more
integrated activities and strategies used in comprehension practice? Why is there such a glaring disjuncture
between the body of knowledge and its application in current practice?

-Standards and Assessment-

Our group felt that part of this disjuncture between research and practice may be due to the related
arenas of standards and assessment. There was general consensus that neither standards nor assessment
are appropriately reflected in current practice. In addition, there is much disjuncture between standards and
assessment. The concern was voiced that many states do not have adequate standards, and that these
(adequate or inadequate) standards are not reflected in current assessment testing nor in practice or policy.

We recommend that the Rand committee address the issues of standards, assessment and practice vis a vis
comprehension. What are the indicators that a student is comprehending? What should standards for
comprehension look like at each grade level? How should these standards be implemented and assessed?

What is reading?

Like all studies, your ignores the obvious question- what is reading? All
this talk about comprehension would be moot if the panal "experts" could
answer this simple question. For the record, reading is the independent use
of a system of strategies to obatain meaning from print with a word accuracy
of at least 90%. Reading Recovery acknowledges this and they may help explain
why New Zealand has such and enviable literacy rate.
The people who would know the most about the reading process are those who
teach it in the primary grades. Your panal doesn't have a single person that
does this. Will the opinions of those who can't teach reading (your panal)
force those us of who do (I am a Reading Recovery/ESL teacher)to change our
teaching? I fear for the worst.

I'm so pleased that you've gathered such a stellar group, and that you
are seeking and receiving comments on your report. We practitioners
really need better, more coherent research on comprehension!

I am the director of a reading improvement project for vocational
students at College of the Sequoias in Visalia, CA (a community college),
as well as a part-time teacher educator at Chapman University and at
California State University, Fresno. In addition, I am the "educational
liaison" working with secondary students in foster care who are assigned
to the Court Appointed Special Advocates in Tulare County. Both the 7-12
and community college student populations I see have significant
comprehension challenges, yet the focus du jour on "accountability
testing" in California ironically seems to leave little room for well
informed teaching. Almost all area high schools do encourage sustained
silent reading, but they also seem terribly focused on Accelerated
Reader, despite its limitations, as their primary tool for checking
comprehension. One San Joaquin Valley school system I know of adopted
Accelerated Reader's tests as their primary reading criterion for passing
students on to a higher secondary grade. Under pressure from the state
department of ed and politicians to develop criteria for avoiding "social
promotion," and lacking better assessment tools, administrators made a
"quick and dirty" choice that played well with their public.

Clearly, we need good comprehension research, coupled with better teacher
education and professional development to disseminate research findings.
In addition, though, we need a concentrated effort to educate national
leaders, state legislators, state boards of education and other policy
makers who fuel the atmosphere in which assessment decisions are made.
Perhaps then we could avoid, in comprehension research, the
corporate/political collusion documented in Denny Taylor's 1998 book,
BEGINNING TO READ AND THE SPIN DOCTORS OF SCIENCE: THE POLITICAL CAMPAIGN
TO CHANGE AMERICA'S MIND ABOUT HOW CHILDREN LEARN TO READ.

I would be most interested in formally linking the work I'm doing with
community college students and foster kids with researchers so that I
could help test comprehension assessment materials under development. In
Tulare County CASA, we are seeking grant funds to do educational therapy
work with the 300+ students we deal with in a given year. At the
community college, we are about to submit a proposal to renew our reading
improvement grant and extend it to our entire student population. Since
neither organization has been satisfied so far with the "diagnostic"
tools we've reviewed, we'd be most interested in other approaches that
would help us know better just exactly what aspects of language
processing we need to tackle when our students don't comprehend. (And,
by the way, I'm also interested in what others would recommend as the
best comprehension assessment tools currently available.)

I already use the work of Paliscar and Brown on comprehension and
reciprocal teaching--as well as many of the other "knowns" on your 9 item
list--in conducting workshops for community college instructors, training
tutors to assist students, and in directly teaching students in
developmental English classes, as well as in working one-on-one with
foster kids or their CASA advocates. Now I'm eager to see what will
result from your project.


Jan B. Loveless, Ph.D.


Jan B. Loveless, Ph.D.
2305 N. Teddy St.
Visalia, CA 93291-9074
559-739-0537 phone
559-739-1529 fax
e-mail: jan@loveless.net

The title should read "Toward." "Towards" is not correct. More later. Thanks.

Hello I am a reading specialist, consultant in literacy, and former contributor to the CONSORTIUM ON READING EXCELLENCE
materials in California. Please note I am sending this from an e-mail address other than my own. Mine is at the bottom here.

The recent report does not surprise me, as I have found such gaps myself when perusing the research on comprehension strategies. There is not a lot of conclusive evidence. What irritates me is that the basals are still not teaching the LANGUAGING required for specific skills and strategies, such as Visualizing, Summarizing, Inferencing, Questioning, Synthesizing, Connecting, etc. Instead they have broad - language in the teacher manuals, like, " What do you picture?" or " How can you say this in your own words?" Kids need so much more explicit language to help them enter those strategies. I am very active on the listserv sponsored by the READING TEACHER journal, and of those 900 participants I have often been shocked at how limited their knowledge is of the need for explicitness in comprehension instruction. These are reading teachers, and they disagree with the NRA report in many ways. Too bad the reading wars just won't dissolve. I digress. I have found that in my Title I reading classroom I must break down the comprehension skills in micro steps, and the piece that seems to be the most in need of teaching is Visualizing. Our culture is so ready to bombard children with visual stimulus that the part of their brain that creates their own pictures form the author's words is "lazy" or undeveloped. I am working on synthesizing all the visualizing research I can come across, mostly in the LD field, so I can write a book someday. In the meantime I would like to be kept up to date or even consulted while this team from the RAND Corporation conducts its further research.

Kendra Wagner
Literacy Consultant
Reading Specialist
Seattle, Washington
kendra9@mindspring.com

I am an instructor at a Technical Institute in Canada with a reading specialty and, currently, teaching English at the Grade 12 level to adults, as well as conducting psychoeducational and reading assessments. I have only had the opportunity to "read for the gist" of the report; however, I am encouraged by the tone and content of the document. Reading comprehension is a significant barrier to the students in the technical programs. While most programs require an academic grade 12 to admit a student, experience has taught us that the comprehension levels of graduates varies markedly. The interesting point here is that most of the students in such programs are highly motivated to comprehend, as they are learning material for a "skilful" practice. The dimension of motivation, as mentioned in your report, is relatively high. The actual performance is frequently low. It is not unusual, for instance, that a nursing student will read and reread sections of a textbook to ensure adequate comprehension. Such redundancy is time consuming and, often, counterproductive. While re-reading is a taught method for increased comprehension, it seems to be the only strategy that students know or feel is effective. I have developed a modified SQ3R specifically aimed at reading textbooks for comprehension. While I don't follow its effectiveness through research, it does seem to offer alternatives to re-reading. I have added another "R" in this model - reflection.

In reading your draft report, I was intrigued by the comments and how many of your comments were reflective.
It seems that comprehension can be enhanced through deliberate, taught reflection-on-reading, reflection-in-reading and reflection-about-reading.

I believe that your draft report needs to be set into a framework that students themselves can become familiar with the
"rules of the game." As citizens, we are constantly seeking information of a self-help nature. Such research is highly motivated and often results in an intimate understanding of self and others. If your study were to be written, such that
the students could become aware of the processes of comprehension, as defined in your report by your eminent panel,
they would have personal tools to construct and reconstruct personal reading strategies.

In conclusion, I have spent much of my adult life struggling with understanding understanding and one aspect of understanding is comprehension from written material. I am encouraged that this report is not another example of
"blame the teacher", "blame the student", "blame society", "blame etc." for the falling off of reading comprehension.
I believe that demand for reading comprehension has increased exponentially since the proliferation of the "Information Age." Reading strategies of the past are inadequate to provide a broad-based literacy for coming to know all that needs to be known. Cultural capital is rooted in reflective comprehension and becomes a commodity with economic value. Such value
is going to determine the relative positions of the haves and have-nots in society. Our work, as teachers, is to include students in democracy, such that they are able to comprehend the fundamental discourse of a free society and add value
to their personal cultural capital.

Dan Danforth
Learning Disability Specialist
Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology
Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

RAND READING

Two successful published approaches to 4th grade slump

Dear Reserachers at Rand,

I consider this a very important project and am glad you are undertaking
it. I am a former elementary school teacher and am currently a
curriculum writer.

I know of two approaches to reading comprehension in the middle grades
that seem to work. They are both non-traditional. But as you indicate,
the traditional approaches do not have good results statistically.

The first of these approaches is called HOTS. I'm not terribly familiar
with it, but there are several articles published about it on the
website www.hots.org. It was originally designed for disadvantaged and
Learning Disabled kids in Grades 4-8. The author of the program, Dr.
Pogrow wanted to do something about the very 4th grade slump in reading
progress that you are concerned about. This program has been used in
over 2,000 schools. The basic precept of HOTS seems to be that kids need
to be engaged to learn. Going through the motions and trying to parrot
back their "education" is insufficient. Obvious, but nevertheless basic
enough to create breakthroughs. You don't get breakthroughs by
addressing minor issues.

The second of these approaches is one that I'm very familiar with as
I've taught and tutored with it for about a decade and use it myself
whenever I study a new area of endeavor. Hold onto your hats, because
you are going to think, Oh No! That Kookie stuff! Maybe kookie, but it's
been in successful use for 35 years, every year with more people
successfully learning to study (meaning, comprehend and apply what they
learn). I know from the elementary school that I taught in, children do
not experience 4th grade slump when they use this methodology, but, in
contrast really take off in 3rd or 4th grade because they are being
taught how to read to learn.

The methodology I'm speaking of is the Study Techonology of L. Ron
Hubbard, a secular study technology in use in a secular network of
schools called "Applied Scholastics." This set of study techniques is
described in a book available from Amazon.com called "The Basic Study
Manual" and in a children's version called "Learning How to Learn." It
is in successful use in hundreds of schools and tutoring centers
internationally and is approved as supplementary curriculum for use in
public schools in California. Using these study techniques, which
address basic barriors to comprehension and application, I have greatly
increased my own reading comprehension and my ability to apply.

I wish you well in your endeavor and hope that you will be open to
approaches that are nontraditional given that traditional approaches
have not made the grade. Perhaps thinking outside the box is in order.

Sincerely,
Alexandra Hopkins

RAND READING

The RAND READING STUDY GROUP REPORT is a masterful, though quite academic,
preface to a possibly renewed period of research and development in comprehension and Content Area
Reading/Literacy. I would urge the following additional/elaborated considerations from an
admittedly "educationist" perspective: Seek to develop unified theories of the teaching/learning of comprehension
more so than of comprehension processes per seÞ Address substantive collateral issues that have recently and/or
historically blocked the metabolization and absorption of previously developed content area remedies;
e.g., the slow uptake of these methods into the texts and courses of the discipline specific
methods courses - most professors of science, math, and business education don't know these, so
they are not part of what they teach, test for, or note in content teacher observations in field
courses or in portfolios. Related to the above, "Leadership Education" - formerly known as
"administration" assiduously, almost contemptuously, avoid content - i.e., curricula and instructional
issues, hence principals are largely clueless as to what needs to be done. Ergo, the chasm between
C&I and "Leadership" training grows while those trained/certified to be "leaders," but are not
firmly grounded in issues of instruction, continue to be catapult to control of school
programming, while those who are most knowledgeable are de facto excluded by anachronistic credential
requirements. (The new Bush administration could change this in a hurry if G.W. does to the US what
he did in Texas where he held principals responsible for student progress, firing thirty-nine who
didn't believe him, and rapidly piquing the interest of those remaining in this "teaching stuff"
for which the knighted leaders and macro-management delegators previously had been
immunized.) There is much, too that needs to be clarified about what and how Remedial
Reading (and Differential Diagnosis) should be rejuvenated. This could require unbundling
several "holy cows" - legislation that supports LD while abandoning RR; misguided conclusions
about RR being de facto segregation; total mis-representation that RR "doesn't work;" and, fuller
realization that comprehension is very trainable despite its very high correlation to "IQ"
which is not as immutable as once thought, but also is not a non-factor - an important, if
sensitive point where public policy is concerned. A means needs to be devised for categorizing, cross-referencing and
accessing and adding to the literature on comprehension; it's pretty messy and misleading at the
moment.(This could be converted into an internet-based "open-architecture" in which anyone and
everyone can collaborate.) A series of university-based "courts" ought to be convened around the
country to hear evidentiary and persuasive testimony on proposed "best practices." Research needs to be
undertaken on a variety of possible comprehension improvement solutions that were in the chute before the last funding expired and turned rather exclusively to early reading; e.g., embedded aids to readers which now are more feasible with
electronic text; reader-writer exchange systems that provide an internet-based, 24/7
assistance with literature and content reading. Creation of a cadre of Volunteer Digital Tutors to assist teachers in
assisting students with early efforts to write. Development and efficacy testing of "concurrent" teaching methods
designed to further fuse CAR methods, that are quite advanced, to simultaneous efforts to fold in other
human/societal needs into lesson activities, such as personal-social adjustment (and hence, safe
schools), inquiry skills and dispositions, critical classroom management issues, and multi-cultural outlook.
24/7 Accessibility to (Concurrent) Content Reading Methods - with accompanying audio and visual
representations- for any teacher anywhere, any time that they had a felt need - teachable moment.)
The integration of much of the above into business-partnership arrangements that treat these
developments as bio-medical technology is treated, and therefore opening the way for responsible
entrepreneurial convergence and fiscal support for such work going forward. Creation of systems to
monitor school progress on a daily, formative basis more so than after the train has jumped the track (largely through sub-sampling students' on-line work, and possibly through structured observational webcasts from selected classrooms)
It is essential, too, that this next round of research enter some pioneering areas, such as better understanding of
what our "best students" look like in real terms (our research along these lines is suggesting that even our most proficient readers have several inadequacies that require fixing - such as mechanistic thinking - that have important implications for
future functioning); and, need for the addition of another "multiple literacy" from which to learn and earn,
Entrepreneurial Literacy - or preparation to make as well as take jobs, especially in an environment that is moving toward many of us becoming contract-workers in a labor market that is globally competitive and project based.

Overall, it seems that this next effort ought to build more on what we have accomplished - it is considerable- be more problem-based, leveraged by collaborations among schools, business, publishing and media, and with funding
considered more as venture capital to attract strategic partnerships that contain some market-driven elements of dissemination and sustainablity.

Anthony Manzo,
Professor Education, Director,
Center for Studies in Higher-Order Literacy.
University of Missouri-KC

Response to the RAND Report

I appreciate the efforts of the research community to develop a coherent
plan on comprehension. Clearly, we now have a greater understanding of
early literacy development which has not necessarily translated to
higher level thinking, or critical comprehension skills in the later
years. However, I'm troubled by a number of issues throughout the
document, which I believe must be addressed in our continuing
conversation:

1. Simple as it might be, I find the lack of citations makes it
difficult to discern the veracity of some of the statements throughout
the document. As the reading panel report clearly indicated, some
research frankly is better than others; some research addresses specific
issues more clearly than others. Yet, I find as I read the document, I
question a number of the statements, which might be clarified with
appropriate citations.

2. The report purports to describe a model. However, a model should
reflect some type of causal inferencing. I see no evidence of this
throughout the report. Rather, it seems like a laundry list of factors
and questions that do not relate to one another. Given the wide net
that the committee set, I am concerned that these questions will be
independently addressed, rather than create a coherent research agenda.
This could lead to many small-scale studies all addressing one issue,
yet never developing a theory of comprehension. Thus, although there
was much discussion at NRC about the word 'components' right now
unfortunately, the term seems appropriate.

3. I would like to see more evidence of the strides we have already
made in comprehension Although a footnote describes the significant
contributions of the Center for the Study of Reading, I see little
reference to where we've been and where we need to go. Rather, the
report appears to have an 'ahistorical' focus thus far.

4. We need to understand the development of comprehension over time.
It is not simply a skill that is developed in the upper grades. But
there does not appear to be a sensitivity to development in this report.

Susan Neuman, Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement

My comments are not linked to sections, so I am posting them here at the beginning. This report is an encouraging move forward in the attempt to put research into significant educational problems on a strong intellectual and research footing. There can be no question that if the U.S. is serious about improving the educational opportunities and accomplishments of all students, we need a stronger and better targeted research infrastructure.

Sharing that goal with the Rand Study Group, I would offer a number of concerns and refocusings based on the draft report.

First and foremost, I believe that in attempting to ground recommendations in past work, the Study Group became trapped in past frameworks, rather than capturing either the most policy relevant or the most theoretically productive new directions for work in the field. This is most evident in the way in which the Study Group interpreted its focus on ‹reading comprehension’ý a primary and essential goal of American education, yet one that the field over the past 20 years has recontextualized within a broader and better conceptualized ‹literacy’ agenda that recognizes the symbiotic relationship between reading, writing, and oral language, and that understands the profound ways in which reading, writing, and oral language are all shaped (linguistically and cognitively) by the social contexts in which they are embedded (whether social context is defined in terms of academic disciplines, school subjects, community practices, or occupational expectations). This broader agenda in fact surfaces occasionally in the draft RAND report, but the implications of thinking about reading comprehension as part of a more general development of broad based literacy skills are never confronted, particularly in the model of reading comprehension that dominates the first part of the report. By focusing exclusively on reading comprehension, at least the first part of the Study Group«s report ends up offering a convenient summary of the factors that have emerged from early work, without really incorporating the social and contextual factors that are acknowledged but not really incorporated into the discussion until the late sections of the report (on curriculum and instruction). The problem with this ‹front loading’ in the report language is that it implicitly biases the research agenda toward research on comprehension processes relatively detached from the real world problems that the Study Group also acknowledges later.

A related problem has to do with the status of the synthesis of nine comprehension factors that the Study Group proposes. To me, they read as a reasonable, pragmatic framework for summarizing previous work, but this framework is not theoretically grounded. The particular distinctions among components are an arbitrary but not definitive attempt to make sense of the field and, most importantly, do not provide a theoretically grounded basis for further research or development. There is no (and should be no, given the debates within the field) attempt to offer a comprehensive theory of language or of reading. This only becomes problematic if the nine factors take on a life of their own in defining research or practice, as when the Study Group suggests that new assessments need to be developed around the "theoretically grounded model of reading comprehension presented here"; we do need new assessments, with strong theoretical groundings, but part of the research agenda should be the interaction between alternative theoretical framings of the issue, and the assessments that result. Framing new assessments around the Study Group report itself would be atheoretical, not theoretically well grounded.

Another unintentional problem in the report is the minimization of intra- and inter-individual differences. These get dealt with, relatively well, late in the report, but only after a long presentation of a model of reading comprehension that seems to posit reading as having two versions: what most people do, and what bilingual and/or ESL readers do. This is problematic on many levels, not the least of which is the rather superficial conceptualization of the complexities of multilingual language situations, and the concurrent ignoring of the many other cultural variations in uses of language that affect students« developing literacy achievements.

If I were to rewrite the Study Group report, I would invert its emphases in two ways ý to me, the central issues at the moment for research in this area have to do with the nature of effective instruction, in particular, with instruction that fosters development of literacy within culturally important domains of knowledge. The draft Study Group report, on the other hand, could be read as focused on how to help students understand the reading materials with which they are currently presented in their various subject area studies. But there is a significant body of research, alluded to in passing by the Study Group, that suggests that a major part of the ‹comprehension’ problem in subjects such as science and history has as much to do with badly written and uninteresting textbooks as it does with poor ‹reading comprehension’ skills of students. That is, do we really want to focus a long term research agenda on teaching students how to ‹read’ poorly written textbooks that emphasize an incoherent assembly of unrelated information?

The other part of my ‹inversion’ of the Study Group report would have to do with the concerns with inter- and intra-individual differences that emerge in the later sections. These, again, seem to be most characteristic of the ‹cutting edge’ issues that have direct relevance to closing achievement gaps and insuring the success of all students. Comprehension is a complex notioný very poorly represented by the image of taking the gist or main ideas from a passage, and much more related to the social context and social purposes within which a text is read (or written about). Rather than general comprehension skills, research needs to focus much more on how students even at the earliest reading levels can be taught to take from/ critique/ and move beyond particular texts depending upon the particular subject area task in which they are involved. For example, at the high school level, reading to know how to complete a particular chemical distillation is very different from reading the same text to critique the argument about why that distillation matters.

My last comment has to do with Study Group«s understandable attempt to stay somewhat distanced from current policy debates. They provide a solid rationale for diverse methodologies, which I fully support. However, the Study Group avoids grappling directly with the current policy press for higher achievement for all students, and for the accompanying press for research to contribute to that goal. Much of the agenda proposed here (particularly in the various lists of possible ‹questions’) ends up sounding like business as before, rather than a major revitalization of research in literacy. Much as I care about it, based on the arguments that are ‹fronted’ here in the research sections, I would find it hard to argue loudly for a larger, better funded, and more policy relevant role for OERI. I would rather see the Study Group take a much bolder stance, proposing a perhaps riskier agenda that focuses from the start on what happens in schools.

p.3: 78ff

US 11th graders perform very poorly on reading assessments, while 4th
graders perform very well. This begs the question what happens between the
4th and 11th grade? Is it life-style, is it education? Also, what is the
situation in other countries in the world, e.g. in Europe. Is the level more
constant? Answers to these questions seem particularly important. On page 41
(237-248) the report seems to focus on reading development in (the wider age
range of) grade one to grade six readers, a group that performs well.

The footnote on page 3 seems to suggest an answer to the decrease in
reading performance between 4th and 11th graders (‹The fall in ranking from
4th to 11th grade may reflect the greater inclusiveness of U.S. secondary
education’), but this answer remains vague.

p.4: 113-115
‹Attention to reading comprehension is crucial in a society determined to
minimize achievement gaps [3] between mainstream children and those from
ethnic and racial minority groups, [2] between urban and suburban, [3] as
well as between middle and working class children.’ The relation between
these three groups has only been marginally addressed in the report, and
might be a key to improving reading comprehension skills.

p.4: 92ff
‹õ students must be cognitively engaged in what they red if comprehension is
to be fostered. One problem is that materials in the classroom are often too
difficult or uninteresting for many students to read.’ Are students not
interested and do they find the materials too difficult because of the
materials, or are the materials too difficult or uninteresting because of
the low levels of reading comprehension skills?

I want to commend the authors of Reading for Understanding for their thoughtful and useful draft. Here, I would like to state a few concerns in the hope they might be considered when drafting the final report. My comments focus on the definition of reading, since it is this conceptualization that ultimately affects concomitants of both a research agenda and program of research.
I find the definition of reading comprehension unnecessarily limited. Across at least the last twenty five years, a large body of research and scholarship has indicated the interconnectedness of writing, reading and language use in the development of comprehension. In a print-based society such as ours, from a child«s earliest years throughout adulthood, flexible use of the three allow learners to gain the skills, knowledge and strategies they need when encountering new texts (e.g., those that might differ in content, genre, language, structure, tone). Although we want to help all students become effective comprehenders, doing this most effectively requires a research agenda that focuses on ‹Literacy for Understanding’ or ‹Reading, Writing and Language for Understanding’ as opposed to merely ‹Reading for Understanding.’ Although I have no doubt the authors of this report assume the connections I am making, the focus in their draft is almost solely on student ability to gain meaning from text as opposed to the ways in which those meanings are developed and informed by knowledge and skills acquired and used in one or more related domains, but critically useful at some time or another in all .
I suspect that bureaucratic divisions in schools and universities have kept related research knowledge across reading, writing and language from making the kinds of major contribution to instructional research and educational reform that are needed. For example, reading as well as educational psychology departments in universities are often separated from those of language arts and/or writing, and teachers are trained by these different departments to become one or the other kind of specialist in schools. Related knowledge from such fields as anthropology and linguistics is often reliant on faculty knowledge and course availability. Critical knowledge from these fields have not made their way into sustained research agendas nor into the integrated knowledge base of teachers. The scholarship called upon and bodies of knowledge about development, culture, learning, and teaching are often different, leading to a fractionation in the goals of schooling and the educational experiences of students. A report such as this one, at a moment in history when educational research and practice is poised to change, has the potential to contribute to major changes needed. A definition of comprehension as encompassing the related areas of literacy has the promise of recommending a research agenda that would require people across the domains to work together.

From the beginning I wondered why RRSG had decided to limit the OERI agenda to reading comprehension. After reading section 3.0, I determined that RRSG was attempting to make OERI«s agenda complimentary to NICHD«s. I think this is a mistake. Separating research by the components of the reading process will not produce the knowledge that we need. If there is anything we have learned in the last 15-20 years, it is that if you isolate a component of reading and directly teach it to children who don«t have command of it, they will learn it.

This was one of the major weaknesses of the NRP report. It identified many ‹effective practices’ but had nothing to say about how to build effective total reading programs. In fact we know that we can teach children aspects of the reading process and they will most definitely learn the aspects we teach--particularly if testing tasks are similar to the teaching tasks. When treatments are extensive enough, we sometimes get transfer to standardized measures of reading comprehension. We know a lot of strategies and practices that will ‹work’.

What we really don«t know is how to put the components together efficiently so that most children learn to comprehend with basic classroom instruction, some children are able to move forward independently beyond their classmates, and some children can receive the extra instruction and practice they need to learn to readÚie understand messages from the printed page.

It is a mistake at this point in educational research history to study components of reading outside the context of classroom instruction.

In response to p. 15, lines 241-243 on fluency: "Fluency is also an important element in comprehending text. That is, in order to orchestrate the components of comprehension, a reader should be able to do oral reading with reasonable speed, accuracy, and expression."
I am a teacher and a parent. I have a son who is hearing impaired. On EVERY reading assessment he has ever taken, my son ranks extremely high on reading comprehension (above 95th percentile on norm referenced tests, for example). Yet, he cannot do oral reading of texts (he uses sign language). What does this suggest about the relationship of fluency, linguistic knowledge, or discourse knowledge to reading ability? Every high school teacher I know can cite examples of students who have poor fluency, yet relatively high comprehension (and vice versa).
I agree with the concept introduced later in the report of "component-oriented process assessment" for, it would seem, it is not necessary to have all of the suggested components to be a strong reader.

p.26-p.29
Why is instruction not addressed in terms of the three sides of the triangle
(component, learner, outcome)?

p.14: 395-396
‹Successful reading depends on extensive knowledge at all linguistic
levels ý phonology, morphology, and syntax, as well as higher-level
discourse structures.’ This also includes semantics, pragmatics, phonetics?
See also p.29-192.

p.9: 245
Components = cognitive components; learners = readers?

Jon Reyhner
Associate Professor of Bilingual Multicultural Education
Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff, Arizona 86011
Phone 520 523 0580; E-mail Jon.Reyhner@nau.edu


1.4.3 Motivation
I would like to see more attention paid to research questions revolving around what Ogbu (1978, 1983), Deyhle (1992), and others see as the oppositional identity of some minority students in regard to what schools have to offer, including reading. Alan Peshkin«s (1997) Places of Memory: Whiteman«s Schools and Native American Communities tackles this aspect of the question of why the academic achievement of one minority group is below average. Peshkin spent a year observing a New Mexico boarding school serving Pueblo Indians. At the school Peshkin studied, low academic performance is not a case of Jonathan Kozol«s (1991) "savage inequalities" that result from suburban white schools having as much as three times the per student funding as minority schools that enables them to hire better teachers and provide better instructional materials. The school he studied received a combination of Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) funding and various federal grants and was staffed with well educated teachers. The school had the highest percentage of Indian teachers of any high school in New Mexico. In addition, the students« parents valued education, the school met New Mexico accreditation standards, and its goal was to prepare students for college. But success was limited. Students would participate with sustained effort and enthusiasm in basketball, but "regrettably, I saw no academic counterpart to this stellar athletic performance" (p. 5). Peshkin found,

In class, students generally were well-behaved and respectful. They were not rude, loud, or disruptive. More often they were indifferentõ teachers could not get students to work hard consistently, to turn in assignments, to participate in class, or to take seriouslyõ their classroom performance. (p. 5)

To explain why these students did not enthusiastically embrace education, Peshkin enlarges on the cultural discontinuity (two worlds) theory of academic failure (see e.g., Henze & Vanett, 1993) and provides evidence from students, parents, and teachers to support that theory. He argues that the "student malaise" originates from an ambivalent attitude of the Pueblo Indians towards schooling. Based on over 400 years of contact with European colonists, the Pueblos have good reason to be suspicious of anything "white," and schoolsÚeven Indian-controlled ones with Indian administrators and Indian teachersÚare basically alien "white" institutions.
The New Mexican Pueblos, under cultural attack from all the forces of the majority society, are very concerned with cultural survival. Pueblo culture emphasizes fitting into the group and participating in the life of the villageÚ"standing in" versus "standing out" Úin contrast to the individualism found outside the Pueblo. "Schooling is necessary to become competent in the very world that Pueblo people perceive as rejecting them" (p. 107); school is a place of "becoming white" (p. 117). According to Peshkin, "imbued with the ideal of harmony in their community life, Pueblo parents send their children to schools that promote cultural jangle" (p. 117). The sounds in the school are not discordant. The conflict is between what the Pueblo communities teach their young and what the schools teach, and this discordance goes far beyond just the teaching of Pueblo languages in the home and English in schools.
Mick Fedullo (1992) in his book Light of the Feather: Pathways Through Contemporary Indian America illustrates an extreme case of this cultural conflict with a quote from an Apache elder who stated that student«s parents had,

been to school in their day, and what that usually meant was a bad BIA boarding school. And all they remember about school is that there were all these Anglos trying to make them forget they were Apaches; trying to make them turn against their parents, telling them that Indian ways were evil.
Well, a lot of those kids came to believe that their teachers were the evil ones, and so anything that had to do with "education" was also evilÚlike books. Those kids came back to the reservation, got married, and had their own kids. And now they don«t want anything to do with the white man«s education. The only reason they send their kids to school is because it«s the law. But they tell their kids not to take school seriously. So, to them, printed stuff is white-man stuff. (p. 117)

By just looking at effective teaching methods, I don«t think teachers can hope to be successful on a broad scale with Black, Hispanic, American Indian, or other minority students who see education, school success, and reading as a "selling out" of their ethnic heritage.

References
Deyhle, Donna. (1992). Constructing failure and maintaining cultural identity: Navajo and Ute school leavers. Journal of American Indian Education, 31(2), 24-47.
Fedullo, Mick. (1992). Light of the feather: Pathways through contemporary Indian America. New York: William Morrow.
Henze, R. C., & Vanett, L. (1993). To walk in two worldsÚor more? Challenging a common metaphor of Native education. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 24(2), 116-134.
Kozol, Jonathan. (1991). Savage inequalities. New York: Crown.
Ogbu, John. (1983). Minority status and schooling in plural societies. Comparative Education, 27(2), 168-190.
Ogbu, John. (1978). Minority education and caste: The American system in cross-cultural perspective. New York: Academic Press.
Peshkin, Alan. (1997).Places of memory: Whiteman«s schools and Native American communities. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

I was distressed by the lack of citation. This is most unscholarly and the document will be subject to criticisms of shoddy scholarship. I understand why this decision may have been necessary, but it will not serve the field well.

p.17: 509-515
‹Specific operations that reflect gaining knowledge includeõ’ Add Âgaining
linguistic knowledge«?

p.22: 657-663
An additional question would be whether particular components are important
at particular stages in the development.

p.21: 626-632
Perhaps the question goes further: can these reading skills be learned
without these literacy tasks? This brings me to one of the most important
questions with regard to the report: can these reading (comprehension)
skills be acquired without reading? Could they be acquired by conversation?
By listening only? By watching (moving) images?

p.19: 568-574
These questions seem to focus on a reader«s special interest in a genre. The
additional question is how to bring these intra-individual differences in
balance.

p.26: 74-75
‹We see the development of an assessment system for reading comprehension as
having a very high priority.’ What are the current assessment systems, can
the be compared and their strengths and weaknesses be evaluated in order to
further develop a system?

This should be the heart and soul of the research agenda. We need large scale investment in longitudinal studies that follow both children and teachers as they learn. If we want to understand how to improve reading achievement, classroom instruction, "what teachers and children say and do," is the crucial site for learning. Unless we follow instuction very closely over the long term we will continue to identify as the NRP Report did, effective practices. We know many effective practices. What we don't know, is how to combine these practices in instruction that produces thoughtful competent motivated readers.

We know very little about how teacher knowledge influences student knowledge. We have very narrow studies that examine how particular narrow teacher training (as for example in teaching summarizing) influences particular student behaviours (ie summarizing). We have broad correlational studies that indicate more knowledgable teachers' students' reading achievement is higher than students' of less knowledgable teachers (See NRP Report. Studying the relationship between teacher learning and student learning is the core of successful research agenda, and studying it will require long term longitudinal studies of childrean and teachers in classrooms.

This research agenda will be a failure if we continue to settle for small fragmented studies that can be cheaply funded. One of the central issues for OERI is funding. Over the last 25 years OERI has spent approximately 50 million dollars on reading research(personal communication, Anne Sweet). A pittance! When you spend a pittance the results are likely to be pitiful!

http://www.readbygrade3.com/3cue.htm
The Three-Cueing System


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marilyn Jager Adams
Visiting Scholar, Harvard University Graduate School of Education

The meaningfulness of a text depends no more on the knowledge and thought with which it has been written than it does on the knowledge and thought with which it is read. Indeed, readers can interpret and evaluate an author's message from the print on the page only to the extent that they possess and call forth the vocabulary, syntactic, rhetorical, topical, analytic, and social knowledge and sensitivities on which the meaning of the text depends.

Over the last several decades, cognitive scientists have energetically investigated the extent to which such dimensions of background knowledge and responsiveness might explain individual differences in reading proficiency. As expected, children do contrast along such dimensions, both with each other and with the demands of their texts. Also as expected, instructional support of such knowledge and strategies generally does result in increases in the productivity of their reading. Yet, research has also shown that as children's reading experience grows, these sorts of capabilities tend to grow alongside. That is, to the extent that children do read, they generally do learn new words, new meanings, new linguistic structures, and new modes of thought in course (Stanovich, 1993).

The wisdom of the popular dictum, that reading is best learned through reading, follows directly. So, too, however, does the seriousness of its most nettlesome caveat: Where children find reading too difficult, they very often will not do it--or at least not with the sort of engagement that best fosters learning. Fortunately, with respect to the language and meaning of text, finding selections that are within a child's comfort level is rarely a problem. However, the same is not true with respect to the wording of text.
M. J. Adams Three-Cueing System

Until well into the middle grades, children's ability to understand text that is read aloud to them significantly exceeds their ability to understand the same text when reading on their own (Curtis, 1980). The bulk of this difference is traced to their difficulties in reading the words. Moreover, poorly developed word recognition skills are the most pervasive and debilitating source of reading difficulty (Adams, 1990; Perfetti, 1985; Share and Stanovich, 1995).

Words, as it turns out, are the raw data of text. It is the words of a text that evoke the starter set of concepts and relationships from which its meaning must be built. Research has shown that for skillful readers, and regardless of the difficulty of the text, the basic dynamic of reading is line by line, left to-right, and word by word. It is because skillful readers are able to recognize words so quickly that they can take in text at rates of approximately five words per second or nearly a full type-written page per minute. It is because their capacity for word recognition is so over learned and effortless that it proceeds almost sub-attentionally, feeding rather than competing with comprehension processes. Most surprising of all, research has taught us that what enables this remarkably swift and efficient capacity to recognize words is the skillful reader's deep and ready knowledge of their spellings and spelling-speech correspondences. During that fraction of a second while the eyes are paused on any given word of the text, its spelling is registered with complete, letter wise precision even as it is instantly and automatically mapped to the speech patterns it represents.

Although scientists are only beginning to understand the various roles of these spelling-to-speech translations, they are clearly of critical importance to the reading process. To the extent that knowledge of spelling-to-speech correspondences is underdeveloped (as evidenced, for example, by subnormal speed or accuracy in reading nonsense words), it is strongly and reliably associated with specific reading disability (Rack, Snowling & Olson, 1992). Moreover, research affirms that except as children have internalized the spelling-to-speech correspondences of the language, learning to recognize an adequate number of words with the speed and accuracy on which fluent reading depends is essentially impossible.

Useful knowledge of the spelling-to-speech correspondences of English does not come naturally. For all children, it requires a great deal of practice, and for many children, it is not easy. The acquisition of this knowledge depends on developing a reflective appreciation of the phonemic structure of the spoken language; on learning about letter-sound correspondences and spelling conventions of the orthography; and on consolidating and extending this knowledge by using it in the course of one's own reading and writing. Each of these accomplishments depends, in turn, on certain insights and observations that for many if not most children are simply not forthcoming without special instructional guidance and support (for review, see Adams, 1990). As researchers have gained appreciation of the critical importance of able word recognition within the reading complex, they have also uncovered reasons for its difficulty (e.g., Juel, 1994; Liberman & Liberman, 1990; Stanovich, 1986) and a variety of instructional strategies for easing, speeding, and assessing its acquisition (e.g., Ball & Blachman, 1991; Byrne & Fielding-Barnesley, 1989, 1991; Henry, 1989; Lundberg, Frost, & Petersen, 1988; Uhry & Shepard, 1993). Moreover, it is because there is far, far more to literacy development than recognizing the words that these lessons are of such crucial importance to everyone in the business of reading education.

What is the Three-Cueing System

Over the last few years, I have spent much time in schools around the country, working with teachers and administrators. My challenge has been to tell them about these lessons from research and their implications with respect to instruction. At some point during such sessions, I am almost inevitably asked how what I have said relates to the three-cueing system.

The first time I was hit with this question, I naively asked what, specifically, my audience meant by "the three-cueing system." Whose three-cueing system? Although nobody could provide a reference, someone in my audience graciously drew a schematic of the three-cueing system for me (see Figure 1).

I was greatly relieved. I understood this schematic. It looked to be nothing more or less than a Venn diagram. As such, its interpretation was straightforward. The intersection or overlap of the circles of a Venn diagram correspond to a logical AND between the sets its circles respectively represent. In logic, when an outcome depends on any n umber of elements linked by AND, it means that if any of those elements is missing, the outcome will not follow. Thus by depicting the meaning of a text in the intersection of its semantic, syntactic, and gral2hol2honic cues, the Venn diagram succinctly asserts that the meaning of a text depends on all three; all three of these types of information are necessary, all three must be properly processed, and not one of them can be safely ignored or finessed except at the risk of forfeiting or distorting the meaning of the text. Sometimes, as shown in Figure 1, a fourth cueing system, pragmatics, is included to indicate that, in addition, getting to the author's point from what she or he has literally written depends on the application of practical knowledge and good sense.

Not only was the logic of this schematic clear to me, its evident message was thoroughly familiar as well. That the meaning of text is constructed by the reader as jointly determined by its lexical, semantic, and syntactic constraints had been a central theme of the reading literature in the late 1970s and early 1980s (examples include Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Bransford, Barclay & Franks, 1972; Brown, Bransford, Ferrara, and Campione, 1983; Perfetti & Roth, 1977; Rumelhart, 1980; Rumelhart & Ortony, 1977; Sanford & Garrod, 198 1; Smith, 197 1; Stanovich, 1980). It was, as a matter of fact, a literature to which 1, too, had contributed (Adams, 1980, 1982; Adams,
M. J. Adams Three-Cueing System Anderson, & Durkin, 1978; Adams & Bruce, 1982; Adams & Collins; 1979; Huggins & Adams, 1980). 1 was delighted to find that the essence of the researchers' collective effort had so enduringly impressed the practitioners before me.

Feeling thus endorsed, I turned attention to how each of the three "cueing systems" could mislead a reader except as used in coordination with the others. To concretize the point, I presented a number of examples and linguistic surprises; I showed how the system explained a variety of confusions due to developmental difficulties and crosslinguistic differences; and I led my audience to share examples from their own classrooms and discuss their instructional implications. This was happy, familiar territory, and I carried on for nearly an hour. My audience was clearly interested. Yet, they also seemed a bit uncomfortable. It was evident from their faces and posture that what I was saying differed from what they were expecting in some fundamental way. Whatever they saw as the main point of this schematic, I knew I was somehow missing it.

In fact, I understate the dissonance in the room that day. When I asked these people what they meant by the three-cueing system, they looked at me as though I were from Mars. They were at least as embarrassed as 1. For indeed, how could I not know? How could I present myself to them as an expert on early literacy and not know. What was at issue here was clearly not any general notion of the interplay of syntax, semantics, and graphophonenics but, rather, some particular, specific version of this notion-one with which I was frankly unfamiliar.

The Source of the Three-Cueing System

From that day on, it seemed that I encountered the three-cueing system at every turn. Not only was I asked about it again and again, but I also found pictures of or allusions to it in in-service materials across the country and at the center of a surprising number of state and district reading/language arts documents. Though the schematic differed slightly from one source to the next, the common ancestry was apparent. Casually, at first, I began to collect examples (see Appendix 1).

Idle curiosity it might have remained, except that I soon found the three-cueing system getting in the way of my efforts to communicate with practitioners more often than it helped. The problem, to my mind, was not the schematic but some of the interpretations that had become attached to it. Given the widespread familiarity of the schematic in the community of practice, I wanted to correct and clarify its intent. To do so, I needed to find the original. I was confident of the original author's logical leanings and scholarship from the very fact that she or he had chosen a Venn diagram as means of expression.

I began to search in earnest. In addition to tackling the literature, I took to asking audiences everywhere if they had encountered this schematic and if they could give me a source. People gave me copies of the schematic instead, and my collection grew. Still, in not one single instance, did the graphic include a citation of its source.

Turning to the internet, I posted a query to the TAWL (Teachers Applying Whole Language) list serve. A number of people responded, indicating their familiarity with the schematic ("I'm looking at it right now," wrote one). Some had hypotheses as to its original author. Most prominently, these suggestions included Ken and Yetta Goodman, Marie Clay, Don Holdaway, and Brian Cambourne. However, nobody was sure. Notably, Ken Goodman, who is himself a frequent participant on the TAWL list serve, seemed most perplexed of all.

In addition to asking practitioners, I probed my colleagues in educational research, beginning with those whom I have long revered as having near-encyclopedic knowledge of the literature. As it turns out, the schematic was unfamiliar to most of them, as it had been to me. Their best guesses as to its origin were by and large the same as those offered by the TAWL subscribers. A few were certain they had seen it before; they reached back into their minds with that pained look of arduous recall. I became hopeful. But again, to no avail. In every one of these cases, interestingly, what I ultimately got back was a pointer to work by Lois Bloom. Indeed, Bloom did publish such a Venn triplet, twice. In the first case (Bloom, 1970, p. 232), the circles are labeled "Cognitive Perceptual Development ... .. Linguistic Experience," and "Nonlinguistic Experience," and their overlap is labeled "Linguistic Competence." In the second (Bloom & Lahey, 1978, p. 22), the three circles are labeled "Form," "Content," and "Use," and their overlap as "Language." In other words, Bloom's graphic was similar, but her topic was not. Bloom was not the source I was seeking, but her repeated citation did affirm my faith in these people's mental inventory of the literature they had read. Whatever the true source of the three-cueing schematic, I was increasingly convinced that it was not part of the mainstream academic repertoire.

As I continued my search, several people suggested that the schematic's original printing had been in a publication of the New Zealand Ministry of Education. Brian Cutting, now Educational Director of the Wright Group/Sunshine Reading Programme and who has long been centrally involved in reading practice, policy, and research in New Zealand, valiantly volunteered to help me out on this front, but again to no avail.

Among sources of consternation in this quest was the frequency with which the schematic was used and the similarity with which it was described in state and district reading documents. Pushing this angle, I was told by several people that the schematic came from the Frameworks group. This group operates through the Wayne-Finger Lakes Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) in New York with funding from Rigby Education and the Children's Literacy Foundation, a video-disc literacy in-service enterprise started by Ben Brady, founder of Rigby of America. Featuring