Before

Before & After
‘No Child Left Behind’

A review by Ken Harvey of

The 90% Reading Goal

A book written by Lynn Fielding, Nancy Kerr and Paul Rosier

The New Foundation Press

2527 W. Kennewick Ave., PMB 313

Kennewick, WA 99336

Phone/Fax 509-783-5237

http://www.readingfoundation.org

Every so often one encounters new information that creates what scientists call an "aha experience." It changes our conceptual perspective forever. Despite being an aggressive educational reformer for over 30 years, I had such an experience when I read the first 30 pages of the enclosed book, The 90% Reading Goal. This review attempts to share some of that "aha experience" to help prompt each reader to acquire the complete text and become part of the solution to America’s educational ailments.

The 90% Reading Goal was written before President Bush’s "No Child Left Behind" Legislation and reflects those prior conditions. The new Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) should provide motivation and support to change some of the conditions discussed in this book, the battle still must be won school district by school district and, ultimately, school by school. To guarantee that every able child learn to read early and well is vital, but to achieve that goal will not be easy. This book describes the authors' own pioneering efforts, but also shows why federal legislation by itself can never accomplish this goal without heroic efforts in every school district in America.

The 90% Reading Goal helps put a human face to the all-to-often ignored statistics, as described in this text from Chapter 4.

_{The Face of a Child in Trouble

Fourth-graders are 9-going-on-10 years old. They weigh 50 to 70 pounds.
They come in a vast array of colors, sizes, and shapes. Tony is one of them,
and he can’t read. Actually, he can read. He reads on a first grade/sixth
month level but he is staring blankly at his science book. It’s from a
national publisher, carefully written on a fourth-grade level.
"So scientists believe that there never was any water on the moon. The moon
is a dry, airless, and very barren place."
This is what the sentence looks like to adults like you and me with high
school diplomas and college degrees. It’s what the sentence looks like to
Mindy, sitting next to Tony. To Tony, who struggles to decipher: "See the cat"
the sentence looks like:
"So scxxxxxsts bexxxve that there never was any wxxer on the moon. The moon
is a drx, axxxss, and very bxxxn place."
…Tony doesn’t like science. Science is very hard. Math and social studies
are hard, too. Tony knows that he can sit longer and work harder than Mindy,
but he still won’t get it.
Mindy gets it. She just looks at the pages and gets it. Tony doesn’t know
why. He doesn’t know that Mindy’s parents have read to her at least 20 minutes
a day since birth and still do. He doesn’t know that the happy accumulation of
alphabet letters around the crib, pointing out the "S" on STOP signs, daytime
reading, and bedtime stories have banked a solid investment of more than 1,000
hours in Mindy’s literacy skill before she came to kindergarten. She came
ready to learn, and especially ready to learn to read.
…What Tony does know is that he is dumb. Dumb at science. Dumb at math.
Dumb at social studies. He gets the same message every day from every class.
Actually, Tony is a bright kid. He has already figured out that there is
not a lot of correlation between working hard and doing well. When a child
doesn’t read, there is virtually none….

Much Later

…By the time Mindy is graduating from a four-year college, Tony has drifted
in and out of a dozen jobs and a couple of jails. He has a couple of really
cute kids from different relationships. Of course, he does not read to his
children. There are lots of reasons — time, distance, money, and the fact that
Tony himself reads poorly. So these cute kids will go to kindergarten with 40
or 50 hours of pre-literacy experiences. They are not ready to read. At
kindergarten they meet their own Mindys who have 1,000 hours of pre-literacy
experience —and the cycle starts again.}

"There are thousands hacking at the branches … to one who is striking at the roots," noted Thoreau, and that is exactly why educational reform has essentially failed for the past 20 years.

Here is the root of the problem: According to statistics, students who start behind generally stay behind. They come into kindergarten already behind in pre-literacy skills, are still behind in reading at third grade, and then after third grade – when reading itself becomes the foundational skill involved in 85% of all other learning – they fall behind in all subjects: math, science, health, and social studies, as well as in English.

As they fall further behind and begin to feel "stupid" and inferior, they seek new sources of positive feedback. They are most likely to drop out, most likely to get involved with drugs and gangs, most likely to be jailed, most likely to appear on the welfare rolls, and most likely to struggle through life in minimum-wage jobs. They are least likely to go to college. Our ethnic minorities don’t suddenly fall behind in second, third and fourth grades. The data in the top chart, taken from a test administered to local kindergartners, shows that most of our ethnic minorities are behind before they ever set foot in school, and, along with the Caucasian children who start behind, they seldom catch up.

While many of their classmates come to kindergarten with 1,000-2,000 hours of pre-literacy experience, these students have almost none. They start kindergarten recognizing only a few alphabet letters, knowing only a few of their sounds, and with no phonemic awareness. Staying behind for these students (our lowest 25%) means that by third grade they read 3.5 years below grade level (the average) and 6 years behind the top 25%. They may make a year of growth each academic year, but that only guarantees that they will stay behind.

A first-grader at the 25^th percentile would have to make 1½ years of reading growth annually to reach the 50^th percentile by 8^th grade. As the lower chart shows, those in the bottom quartile not only fail to catch up with the other students, they, more importantly, fail to reach acceptable reading standards, measured in Washington State by the WASL test. Hacking away at the branches of poor science and math scores in high school is futile until we fully attack the root of the problem. Children who don’t read early and well fail at nearly everything else they attempt to do.

Some truths are so obvious that they elude recognition for decades. Since knowing how to read is so pivotal after third grade, no child should have to venture beyond that level without knowing how that fundamental skill. The effort to teach children to read should begin at birth, and every available resource should be focused on achieving this goal, that at least 90% of all children will read at grade level by the time they enter fourth grade. Right now, in the average school, only about 55% do so.

If we fail to achieve this goal, the cost in later scholastic intervention, in social welfare costs, in crime and incarceration, and in lost economic production is a thousand times greater. And that ignores the loss of self-esteem, the loss of happiness, and the loss of personal potential in the individual lives of literally millions of children. Currently 26% of adults in this country cannot read well enough to understand a pay stub, let alone technical manuals that would enable them to improve their job status.

The 90% Reading Goal challenges each school district and the entire nation to take on the formidable challenge of essentially eliminating illiteracy. This challenge is state powerfully in Chapter 2.

_{Resolving to Open the Door}
In 1961 a doubting nation listened as President John F. Kennedy announced a bold national goal: The United States would land a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth by the end of the decade.

Standing on the moon was the fantasy of sci-fi movies and comic books, of Greek myths and childhood dreams. Most people thought it was impossible. Yet, with national pride and perhaps survival at stake, the entire country embraced the goal. Great leaders stimulated new solutions and reallocated resources. It was an impossible goal . . . and we did it.

Today the reading goal is an educational "moon shot." It may seem impossible. But with a national effort, it can be done. It must be done if we are going to hold our place in the economic world of the twenty-first century. As visionary and capable leaders champion the goal, as we realign our tremendous human and monetary resources, and as we aim toward the clear, specific target, we will achieve the impossible dream. America’s children will read early and will read well.

Of all the educational issues clamoring for attention, this one evokes nearly universal acceptance and priority because of its immense leverage. With a high degree of assurance, we can teach more children to read at grade level by third grade, at a fraction of the social cost to the child and the economic cost to our society, than by teaching them to read when they are middle school students, high school students, or adults.

Of the children who leave third grade reading below grade level, 74% never catch up.

The 90% Reading Goal notes several reasons in Chapter 2 as to why this goal must be set.

The goal offers immense rewards. It is what every parent and grandparent wants for his or her child and grandchild, what every employer needs in an employee, and what every student needs for a productive life. Can our billion dollar education industry, together with parents and businesses in each community, reach beyond where we have ever reached before? In the challenge to create a world-class educational system, it is the first outpost. It raises education to a whole new level….

The goal is compassionate. The children who are truly at risk in this world are those who cannot read. There is no fairer or more even start than providing public school students with the single basic academic skill necessary to access information for the rest of their lives. The cycles of poverty, crime, and personal pain will continue to recur for those whom we condemn to live surrounded by information they cannot access….

The goal mobilizes a virtual army of educators. As a result of declaring the goal, a powerful shift occurs in our districts’ and our states’ elementary schools. Principals and our most responsive teachers begin refocusing time, curriculum, and structure on what moves their students toward the visible and measurable 90% goal. Most third-grade classrooms will see a 10-15% gain just by increasing the amount of time spent on reading and decreasing time spent elsewhere. Deeper, secondary gains will require curricular and organizational changes—in kindergarten through third grade and through the intentional involvement of parents.

The goal provides early and continual wins. The nation’s moon shot was a one-time, do-or-die proposition. Local districts’ educational moon-shot will provide local focus each September and local wins each May as we tabulate and report district gains. Almost every elementary school will be able to achieve an annual 6-10% growth toward the goal. And if a building or a district makes only half of the 8-12% annual growth necessary to reach the goal in four to seven years, there is still a silver lining. Because of the goal, thousands of additional children will progress across the reading threshold….

The focus on reading-results almost automatically generates the long-sought-for parent/school partnership. Teachers, now accountable, energetically and naturally enlist parents to read with their children at home. … Families will be strengthened. As children snuggle under the arms and into the laps of their parents and other care-givers to read, many toddlers and preschoolers will double or triple the daily amount of positive attention they receive from adults.

Most people are under an illusion, according to The 90% Reading Goal, that most children read at grade level, and that those who are behind are typically only a little ways behind. That’s simply not the case, and Chapter 3 helps dispel this illusion.

In order to dismantle the great illusion around reading, we need to take a look at actual student performance levels. By the beginning of third grade, children read on as many as eight different grade levels….

Most third-grade classrooms in each of our nation’s 15,000 districts have this range in reading ability. … Data from the Northwest Evaluation Association, a national testing and research organization, indicates that the range persists regardless of the overall district averages. The difference within grades is always greater than the difference between grades.

If our district scores between the 40th and 60th percentile on a standardized nationally normed test, it is fairly accurate to visualize about 15% of the third graders reading at each of the eight grade levels, with a slight bulge at the third grade… and a sharper tapering at the sixth, seventh and eighth grades. It is not accurate to visualize most of the third graders in our districts closely clustered around the third-grade level.

Children on the low end of this eight-grade reading span may barely recognize letters. … Because remediation is so ineffective, the reading span persists nationally within each grade through high school.

This differentiated reading ability contributes significantly to — even drives — most educational problems. The range in students’ basic ability to learn from the printed word explains the continued clustering of problems that seem resistant to every other non-reading solution. Low-reading students persist in low academic achievement despite self-esteem building, heterogeneous grouping, and other interventions.

Poor readers will continue to be low academic achievers until they learn to read.

…Our nation’s lowest fourth-graders read 30-100 words a minute with a first- and second-grade vocabulary and comprehension. Our highest fourth-graders read 200-300 words a minute with vocabulary and comprehension typical of the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. During the fourth grade, the top 10% of children in each class read and comprehend 10 times more words than the children in the bottom 10%. In addition, the upper groups typically read much more outside of class, thereby forging ahead even faster. The lower groups spend almost no time reading outside of class, falling even farther behind.

Board members, legislators, parents, and newspaper publishers rarely see this eight-grade reading span in the national standardized test reports. The usual formats for presenting student academic achievement are percentiles, stanines, and quartiles, all of which measure low-performing third-graders against average-performing third-graders…. And we rarely, if ever, see charts converting the percentile rankings to grade-level equivalents….

What happens in our districts when the reading proficiency of the lowest 25% in every group of students tested is … masked by statistical measures?

Parents watching their own child struggle rarely can identify reading as the problem. The test scores, coupled with reassurances that "he’ll catch up" and "kids learn at different rates," mask the truly desperate nature of the problem. After all, "someone has to be in the 20th percentile"….

15,000 local school boards remain immobilized….

Newspaper publishers and legislators never see the eight-year reading span within each grade level and look elsewhere for educational improvement….

When we have bad information, or not all the information, we make serious mistakes. … The primary reason 16 years of school reform has focused almost everywhere except on elementary reading is that decision-makers get information that masks how poorly the lowest 25% of our children read.

The 90% Reading Goal goes on to describe in detail how the school district where the authors reside and play leadership roles has turned things around. In the past year, for example, more than half of its 13 elementary schools have achieved the district’s goal of having 90% of all third-graders reading at their grade level. The successful schools included some with high levels of minority students and low-income students on free or subsidized lunch.

Indeed, the Bush Administration has identified some 5,000 schools across the country that have socio-economic indicators justifying them if their students fail – but they are not. Instead, these 5,000 schools are among the top schools in the nation.

So, can it be done? Can 90% of all students read at grade level? Can they then keep up in other classes that require reading – including math (where most of the contents are WORDS that require reading) and science. Absolutely. Is it easy? Absolutely not!

The authors of The 90% Reading Goal are top educational leaders in their community. Dr. Paul Rosier is superintendent of Kennewick (Wash.) School District. Lynn Fielding is the district’s senior school board member. And Nancy Kerr is a former school board member and current district employee who has also led every school levy and school bond election in the district over the past 15 years.

Part of their efforts in attacking the problem locally was to form a "Reading Foundation" to work hand-in-glove with the school district to direct a three-prong strategy:

Rally an entire community, including the School Board, behind this basic goal that 90% of all children will read at grade level by the end of third grade.

Involve parents from birth in language and pre-literacy activities leading to necessary verbal and reading readiness skills. We’ve shown how this message can become part of the public consciousness in less than one year.

Focus accountability in grades K-3 to ensure that students read on grade level by the end of third grade. The goal and the accountability must be clear. Training must be focused. And curricular priorities must be set. No able child will leave third grade without knowing how to read well.

Once they began to see success in setting up their own working model in Kennewick, they co-authored The 90% Reading Goal to show how other communities throughout the nation could ensure that 90 percent of their students also learn to read early and well. Their success has been further documented in the January 2002 edition of the journal, School Administrator (http://www.aasa.org/publications/sa/). The National Reading Foundation is distributing 175,000 copies of The 90% Reading Goal to educational and community leaders throughout the country. As a result, dozens of community are now replicating the success achieved in this community.

Community Reading Foundations are formed to better link the schools with other organizations in the community and to help create the environment needed for real reform. The Community Reading Foundations open the way for professional educators to apply successfully tested strategies and documentable results, thus expanding the overall research model even further. School districts involving 100,000 students are already involved in this massive effort.

To achieve the 90% reading goal, schools, parents and the community organizations become partners in ensuring the reading success of children. Scores of community events emphasize the importance of reading. Thousands of books and pamphlets are distributed to parents through preschools, hospitals, health districts, pediatricians, libraries, social services, PTAs and other organizations. Parents begin reading with their children every day. And schools – with parents’ support -- begin teaching to higher standards.

The 90% Reading Goal creates a vision that, in turn, begins a domino effect in education reform. The Reading Foundation’s first local efforts in Southeastern Washington have paid off quickly.

Through a variety of promotional campaigns, the Community Reading Foundation achieved 98% slogan recognition by its second year. Essentially all parents in the region now know their important role in raising readers. They recognize the message: "The most important 20 minutes of your day: Read with your Child!" By the Foundation's second year, 99% were aware that it was important to read aloud to infants from birth, and 97% of all parents supported the school district's increased emphasis on reading.

Buoyed by parental and community support, schools began teaching to higher standards and with higher expectations. The test scores in nine out of 13 elementary schools in the Kennewick School District rose dramatically, with five schools reaching or surpassing the target of 90% of their students reading on grade level by the end of third grade. Other schools brought the proportion of successful students up from 50% into the mid-80% range. One school that surpassed 90% literacy success is in a poor neighborhood where over half the students qualify for free lunch. For the hundreds of additional children who attain early literacy skills, the future is dramatically impacted for the better.

The Reading Foundation has set up a parenting class to help teach parents of pre-schoolers what they should be doing to prepare their children to enter kindergarten and have a successful academic career.

And the Foundation has established and is overseeing a Kindergarten Pilot Reading Program to help push reading achievement in more than a dozen kindergartens to levels typically expected of first-graders. The pilot project may be refined and expanded to 100 classrooms next year.

Many school districts, including Seattle, have adopted our 90% reading goal. The states of Utah and Oklahoma have adopted 90% reading legislation. Community Reading Foundations involving about 30 school districts and 100,000 K-12 students are currently operating.

Gov. Gary Locke (D-Wash.) has made it a priority to help the National Foundation establish 10 additional regional foundations throughout Washington, which will reach about 75% of the population. The Washington Reading Foundation has been formed to assist the local efforts.

The Community Reading Foundation began a "Books for Babies" program in conjunction with pediatricians and health agencies to prompt parents of newborns to begin reading to their babies right away. Our statewide Washington Reading Foundation, with the support of Gov. Locke and in conjunction with the new Community Reading Foundations, will distribute 250,000 early learning kits to parents of newborn children statewide over the next three years.

State and Community Reading Foundations are now being set up across the nation, from Hawaii to New York, and from Alaska to Tennessee. Forty school districts have sent teams to the Kennewick (WA) School District to see how to replicate our local success.

All the increased attention and community focus reinforces and reinvigorates the efforts of professional educators wherever Community Reading Foundations are formed so that higher standards can be set and achieved. Mario Moreno, former Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education, told the Tri-City Herald newspaper: "I’ve seen lots of good educational programs across the country, but I’ve never seen one that quite equals the success of The Reading Foundation’s."

The 90% Reading Goal and the foundation’s web site, www.readingfoundation.org provide more extended explanations of their program and its rationale. The impact that these ever-improving programs can have as the National Reading Foundation establishes hundreds of State and Community Reading Foundations across the nation is incalculable. How can anyone calculate the impact of helping another 30-40% of all students achieve at-grade reading skills? The social and economic impacts alone can be valued in the hundreds of billions, as documented in another book, Closing the Literacy Gap in American Business.

The authors raised the comparison to the successful U.S. effort to send astronauts to the moon, but which goal is truly the more important? No matter the cost, no matter the effort required, the 90% reading goal touted by these authors and now adopted by President Bush is one that must be achieved. It is an imperative that cannot be ignored. And it will be an accomplishment that will pay ongoing personal and societal dividends for millennia to come.

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