RATIONALES FOR READING RECOVERY STANDARDS

Questions frequently arise from administrators, from other educators, and even from Reading Recovery teachers about why certain standards have been put in place for Reading Recovery operation. The following lists present partial rationales for certain of these standards, addressing the ones that seem to attract the most questions, according to the perceptions of teacher leaders and site coordinators.

Some Basic Questions About Standards and Guidelines

Why should a school or school system comply with external standards?

• Reading Recovery is much more than a set of teaching procedures; it is a way of teaching based upon a complex theory of how children (all different!) acquire literacy.
 
• A number of factors are responsible for Reading Recovery success. The standards and guidelines represent those factors.


• •Standards represent the conditions under which Reading Recovery can be successful.



• •Implementing Reading Recovery according to standards gives the district the greatest opportunity to profit from program implementation. The standards are a type of warranty.



• •The history of curriculum dissemination is depressing. Reading Recovery is one of the very few educational systems that have been disseminated successfully throughout the world. The standards deserve a high degree of credit for this.

The Dilemma of Standards

On the one hand, we strongly urge compliance with preestablished standards.

• •Would you think of changing the parts of a designed automobile or airplane? Then why would you tinker with an educational system that has been years in formation based upon basic research and extensive field experience?

On the other hand, the responsibility for administering and supporting Reading Recovery's implementation rests with local leadership.

• •Observing standards is not a guarantee of success. Reading Recovery is one part of what must be a comprehensive approach to literacy education.



• •Considerable local problem-solving must be done to implement Reading Recovery and to make it part of a larger scheme for literacy education.

Challenge: What is the difference between standards and guidelines?

• •Items considered critical to Reading Recovery success and which can be validated by means of Reading Recovery data are called Standards.



• •Items considered important to Reading Recovery success that are beyond the power of Reading Recovery people to control (and that are difficult to monitor through Reading Recovery data) are called guidelines.



• •Guidelines may be just as important as standards, but Reading Recovery has limited leverage to influence their compliance.



• •In essence, Reading Recovery cannot enforce compliance with either standards or guidelines; however, the trademark gives Reading Recovery a strong influence on compliance and a legal recourse.

Question: Is there leeway on some standards?

• •Any request to deviate from a standard is followed by explanation and negotiation to establish the best conditions for Reading Recovery that fit what may be unusual contexts.



• •Trainers have agreed to grant exemptions for a few things without bringing these requests to the judgment of a review panel. Examples include:

Training classes smaller than eight or larger than 12

Teaching fewer than four children if the school has full implementation

Highly valid excuses for absence from a professional development session

• •Theoretically exemptions might be granted for any standard, but in practice, exemptions that change the design of Reading Recovery are not sanctioned.
• •

Rational for Serving the Lowest Children First

A frequently heard comment: "By serving the very lowest children our discontinuation rate is low, so it looks as if Reading Recovery is not effective."

• •The purpose of Reading Recovery has one clear goal: "to dramatically reduce the number of learners who have extreme difficulty with literacy learning and the cost of these learners to educational system."
• •The cost saving resulting from Reading Recovery comes from a reduction of numbers of children referred and served in special education and in a reduction of the number of retentions.
• •If the lowest children are not served these children remain a problem for the system, and the goal of Reading Recovery has not been fulfilled.
• •Discontinuation rates are an imperfect reflection of Reading Recovery achieving its goal. The number of children in the first grade cohort who are still in serious learning difficulty has to be considered as well in judging Reading Recovery effectiveness.

Frequently heard response: But many of these children belong in special education, so we are wasting our time serving them.

• •Clay and countless numbers of Reading Recovery teachers have demonstrated that a significant proportion of children entering with very low scores can still learn, accelerate and reach the average band of performance for their age group.
• •Clearly one cannot predict from entering scores who will accelerate and who will not. Prediction is still quite uncertain after ten weeks of service.
• •If Reading Recovery cannot succeed with the lowest achievers, then it's strategy of one-to-one service cannot be justified economically.
• •Many districts, making strong, deliberate efforts to teach the lowest children, are getting success with 60% or 70% or more of their first round children.
• •The goal of every Reading Recovery teacher should be to learn how to be more effective at starting the learning progress of the very lowest children.

Another response heard frequently: "Why don't we take the lowest children during the second round, after they have had a chance to acquire more items of knowledge in the classroom or in small groups."

• •This strategy doesn't work. The extra time for these lowest students is spent essential in failure situations. Many negative learnings occur, and they tend to become passive learners who are now even harder to teach.
• •Clay's theory and research show that the lowest children are the ones who have the greatest difficulty learning in group situations. The issue for these children is to begin to develop ways of learning how to learn literacy, and they seem to need individualized contingent teaching in order to do that.
• •By serving the lowest children for the first 20 weeks os school, the children in the second round will be those who had more strength to begin with. They also may have been able to profit more from group instruction. It is possible to meet the needs of most of them in the 15 weeks at the end of the school year.
• •One school system tried serving the lowest first in literacy groups and then bringing them in during second round. They thought the first round would go faster than ever before. It didn't. They thought the "lowest" kids would be more successful in the second round. They weren't - the second round was a disaster. Not only that, but a lot of children were skipped over and referred to special education without having Reading Recovery.
• •Perhaps the best argument for serving the lowest children is that they can learn. And the argument for serving them first is: the sooner the better. Teachers have to learn how to foster and support primitive learning systems as they emerge, but it seems that the possibility of doing that is high given careful, sensitive and skillful teaching.

Challenge: Reading Recovery serves too few children; why not serve them in groups

Research reveals several things about children with the greatest difficulty in literacy learning

• •Causes of low achievement are highly varied and differ for each individual

Reading Recovery recognizes two types of multiple causation: within the group (of low achievers) any conceivable cause or causal chain may occur, and a particular learner may have difficulty for several different reasons. (Clay, 1998, p. 225).

• •Low achievers (children at risk) cannot learn in group situations for a number of reasons: they have difficulty learning through language directed to them; they have numerous misconceptions; certain cognitive processes need to get underway using special means; prior learning has established cognitive and emotional barriers, etc.



• •What works is one-to-one teaching that is contingent upon what that child knows and is able to do. In order to succeed with such children the teacher must be highly observant base her decisions on the child's beginning awareness of perceptions, relationships, and learned information. Skillful scaffolded support in helping the child read and write texts which are meaningful to him/her is essential.



• •Touching children is not what counts. Just teaching children is not enough. What counts is teaching that produces accelerated learning.



• •Evidence is overwhelming that children who are failing in group situations can begin to learn successfully with skillful, contingent, Reading Recovery teaching.

Rationale for Teaching a Minimum of 4 Children Daily

• •Maintaining a caseload four children daily is important to teacher learning. According to Clay, "Teachers need to teach a variety of children with a variety of different problems in their first year while in training. When they take four at a time, they will probably take eight children into the programme during the year. This is a minimum to ensure that they are facing problems of very challenging and different kinds.
• •"Teachers also need to experience the way in which children can take different routes to the common outcome and how different in type and length their programmes must be..." ^*
• •Beyond the training year, teaching four children still plays an important role in keeping the teacher aware of individual differences and individual learning paths.
• •In order to achieve the goal of reducing reading failure, it is important to make available as much teaching time as possible to serve the needs of the at-risk children in the cohort. Teaching four children per day is considered the minimum "full Reading Recovery load" and is therefore the standard. This does not preclude teaching more than four children, however, teaching more than four children individually per day puts significant strain on a teachers's ability to do the reflective analysis and problem-solving needed to produce accelerated learning for these hard-to-teach children. Decisions on teaching more than four children need to be made with the consent of both the teacher and the teacher leader and in consideration of the teacher's duties the remainder of the day. Teaching Reading Recovery children all day long is not advised.
• •In schools that do have "full implementation" (adequate teaching time available to serve all needy children), teachers may have some flexibility in their teaching load, as long as the twin goals are maintained: (a) keeping individual teachers' skills sharp, and (b) serving all children who need this intervention. A written exemption from the university training center is required.
• •Teaching a minimum of four children daily seems to be a threshold that maintains the quality and integrity of program delivery. If teaching loads fall below four, or if teaching becomes intermittent, effectiveness begins to fall off rather quickly. A formal study of this effect has not been undertaken, but data analysis at many university centers and at many sites verifies this trend.
• •Teaching four children per day builds a commitment to Reading Recovery theory, procedures, and data. A teacher teaching two children often becomes pre-occupied with the responsibilities of her other role and puts less thought and energy into the teaching of Reading Recovery children.

^* Clay, Marie. (1995). Canadian Newsletter, Vol. 1 (2).

Rationale for the Twenty Week Decision Point

There is no standard which says that a full program ends at 20 weeks. The standard is to "Serve a minimum of 8 children per year." However, through the data submission process of Reading Recovery, 20 weeks (or discontinuation prior) is taken as the determiner of a full program. Both on the basis of theory and on the basis of research data, twenty weeks appears to be the optimum point to end the first round, allowing what should be sufficient time for second round children to complete the program.

Question: Why should twenty weeks be considered a full program, and a second round of children brought in at that time?

• •Reading Recovery is not intended to be a long-term program. It's cost effectiveness depends upon the fact that it is a relatively short-term intervention.



• •For cost effectiveness reasons, it is important for each teacher to serve two rounds of children per year - so that she serves a minimum of eight children per year.



• •Acceleration depends upon the child developing a 'self-extending learning system' that allows him/her to continue to learn through reading work. A program longer than 20 weeks tends to develop dependencies which work against self-regulation.

• •Clay's research (Reading Recovery: A Guidebook for Teachers in Training, "The Reading Recovery subgroups study," pp. 86-95) indicates that there is still a significant chance for acceleration and discontinuance even when scores are low after 10 weeks of the intervention.

Question: Why can't we take these children out at week 10 or week 15 and give ourselves more time for children who have a better chance of discontinuing?

• •Clay's research shows that, "...children with the lowest scores (at entry) tended to take longer to meet the criteria for discontinuing. They had more to earn."



• •Evidence from many children shows that many who do not discontinue after 20 weeks are now able to learn in small groups and by the end of the year have reached threshold performance for promotion to the next grade.



• •Those children who are still at very low levels after 20 weeks need to be referred for further evaluation. Reading Recovery has helped identify the small group of children who need such referral. This is considered a positive outcome of Reading Recovery.



• •Remember, the goal of Reading Recovery is not high discontinuing levels or numbers. The goal is to reduce reading failure... A secondary goal is to give as much help to each child served as can be done within the parameters of the program.



• •Children making very slow progress can be referred earlier than 20 weeks. However, they deserve the best, most sincere effort on the part of the Reading Recovery teacher and her colleagues who may help her. It's never a good policy to be seen as denying learning opportunity to children on in inequitable basis.

Question: Can we keep a child longer than 20 weeks if he is close to discontinuance?

• •The twenty-week decision point is not an absolute rule. Yes, it is possible to keep a child longer than 20 weeks. But the decision impacts the group of children needing service at the school, and the decision should not be made by one individual. The decision needs to be made in consideration of the number of children remaining to be served and the time that will be needed to bring these children to a successful discontinuation.

Rationale for Behind the Glass Lessons

Many administrators chafe against the requirement to bring children behind the glass for training session and/or continuing contact sessions. The see this as a hardship and a nuisance that might be by-passed. The Relevant Standards concerning behind-the-glass lessons are these:

for Teachers in Training. IV A. 2. a.

• •Teach a child behind-the-glass at least three times during the training year.

For Trained Teachers. IV B. 3.

• Teach a child behind-the-glass as scheduled.
• Attend a minimum of six continuing contact sessions each year, including a minimum of four behind-the-glass sessions with 2 lessons each session.

Trained Teacher Leaders. V. B. 2.

• Ensure that eighty percent (80%) of class sessions over the academic year (or a mini-mum of 18 sessions, whichever is greater) each include two behind-the-glass lessons.

Frequently heard query: Why must we transport children for lessons behind-the-glass? The rationale be outlined as follows:

• The key ingredient of Reading Recovery is teacher professional development through a designed course receiving graduate college credit. (Pinnell, et. al., 1994)
• The primary means of teacher training within the course is discussion by the class of live lessons taught by their colleagues, under the discussion leadership of the teacher leader.
• Training does not consist of acquiring information. It consists of sharpening one's skills of observation, decision-making during lessons, and problem-solving and analysis of children's learning progress and special difficulties in learning.
• Without behind-the-glass lessons, this training model cannot operate. The essence of Reading Recovery is weakened every time a scheduled BTG lessons cannot occur because of transportation difficulties.
• The glass might be compared to the counter of the teller's cage at the bank (well before modern technology, direct deposit, ATM's, and electronic banking). All transactions had to pass across that counter, and if the counter or the bank were closed, no business could go on. Reading Recovery is the same in relation to that glass window for observing lessons. If there is no lesson, training cannot go on.

Another frequently heard suggestion: Why can't the training be done with video-tapes or through distance-learning technology?

Response: The immediacy of live lessons seems to be important for several reasons:

• Because teachers are watching what they know to be a lesson in real time, teachers must sharpen their observation skills to catch what happens. Also the discussion of on-the-spot decision-making has much more import - all because these lessons cannot be "re-wound" or re-played. This is the same condition the teachers face while teaching, so the on-the-spot practice plays an important role in training them to do that in their own lessons.
• The class becomes a community working collaboratively to learn. The teachers discussion the lesson feel responsibility for their colleagues' learning and progress as much as for their own.
• The responsibility of teaching behind the glass for colleagues sets an unstated benchmark of performance that plays an important role in teachers' goal setting for themselves. They don't want to display a lesson that shows they don't know how to do something or don't understand, so they work hard to learn the program for their own ego-satisfaction as well as to fulfill their responsibilities to the group.

[* Pinnell, G. S., Lyons, C. A., DeFord, D. E. Bryk, A. & Seltzer, M. (1994) Comparing instructional models for the literacy education of high risk first graders. Reading Research Quarterly, 29, 8 - 39.]

Rationale for Consistent, Daily 30-minute Lessons

Standard: III. C. Assure consistent, daily, 30-minute, individual lessons for all Reading Recovery children on all days that school is in session.

• •Reading Recovery children are just beginning to acquire some of the processes they need in order to learn how to read and write. Much of their learning will be cumulative over time as they establish the neural links needed for literacy processes. This learning must occur in rather short, but regular sessions with opportunities between times to engage in literacy activities for meaningful purposes.



• •According to Clay, "If early intervention drags out the treatment and gives unduly elongated 'practice' rather than a series of lessons where change follows change in rapid succession, there may be a danger that teachers are creating processing systems which work not all that well. This is a question about the pace of change, not a call for speed from the teacher." (Clay, 2001, p. 73).



• •When children miss a day of lessons, the memory traces from previous learning are more faint and harder to access. And new ways of responding, which are formative and tentative, may be weakened or lost.



• •When teachers miss a day of lessons, they tend to forget important information about the way the child responded during the previous lesson; her detailed knowledge of that child is weakened, so her ability to teach contingently to what he knows is reduced.



• •Clay researched lesson delivery formats during the development of Reading Recovery and found that daily, 30-minute sessions were most effective.



• •Lessons that go longer than 30 minutes contain more new information than the child can comfortably take in.



• •Given the format of Reading Recovery lessons, lessons longer than 30 minutes are usually a symptom that too much is being taught, too much talk is occurring, or the tasks are too difficult for the child.

Rationale for Consulting with the Teacher Leader

Standard: Consult with the Teacher Leader about Children not Making Satisfactory Progress

• •Clay and countless numbers of Reading Recovery teachers have demonstrated that a significant proportion of children entering with very low scores can still learn, accelerate and reach the average band of performance for their age group.
• •The goal of every Reading Recovery teacher should be to learn how to be more effective at starting the learning progress of the very lowest children.
• •Reading Recovery teaching is a problem-solving, decision-making process similar to action-research. It is not easy to make this the mode of operation for teaching without conversation and consultation with others.
• •Forming hypotheses about how a child is processing print must always be tentative "because teachers as observers are constructing an explanation of something they cannot see... This is one of the many reasons why teachers must be tentative, and questioning, and must consult others in their networks and ask for second opinions." (Clay 2001)
• •Clay goes on to advise, "give those hunches enough thought to open up possibilities for the learners, but remember that any strong conclusions are likely to close out new learning opportunities. Always get a second opinion from your peers and tutors or teacher leaders.

ADDRESSING STANDARDS AND GUIDELINES ISSUES WITH DATA

Essentially there are three ways to argue for adherence to the Standards and Guidelines of RRCNA in program implementation.

• •Explain the reasons (the rationale) for the standard or guideline
• •Present data showing that adherence to the standard produces better results
• •Inform administrators of the trademark and the requirements for its use

Obviously the third method is a last resort. The teacher leader's role is to educate the system by explaining the rationales for standards and by presenting data that demonstrates the influence of the standards in obtaining good results.

Using Data to Develop Understanding of the Specific Standards

1. Complying with standards. Perhaps the best way to develop commitment to the standards is to show how Reading Recovery accomplishes its goals of significantly reducing reading difficulties in the system.

Suggestions. Present three main types of data to the administration.

(A) end-of-year status information on all children served (i.e., discontinuation rate, percent moved, etc.),

(B) show the number of children still reading below a certain threshold level at the end of the year. To find this go to Table 3.2, Percentage scoring at each text reading level at year-end. You will probably see that some of the "recommended action" and "incomplete program" children will be at levels 10 or 12 and higher, which may be an acceptable threshold for promotion to Grade Two. The children below that level are the ones still at risk at year's end.

(C) Present data on the number of children recommended for retention and actually retained and the number referred for testing and actually tested and placed.

1. Teaching children individually versus group instruction

Suggestion. Collect the fall OS scores and the entering level scores of students who spend the first semester in small groups. Compare these to the fall OS scores and entering level scores of students served during the first round. The children served in Reading Recovery will have made greater progress than the children in groups, and these children will have had lower entry scores than those served in groups.

1. Selecting the lowest students. Reluctance to select the lowest stems primarily from a belief that these children cannot accelerate their learning and move their relative standing within their age group.

Suggestion 1. Present a set of entering scores on children who have completed the program, identified only by a number or an alias. Ask the group (administrators, teachers, etc.) to predict which of these students successfully discontinued from the program. After they commit to prediction, show them the results. (It would be best if these names came from teachers' alternative ranking lists, so that you cold show that you didn't 'arrange' the data.)

Suggestion 2. Present a set of entering scores on OS tests 1 through 5 on second round children. Ask the group to predict the entering text level. This can help make the point that learning items is not enough to produce reading progress for many children.

Suggestion 3. Examine entering scores from very low children who entered in first round versus second round. Children might be matched on fall scores if that is possible. Look not only at final outcome, but also at weeks in program and other indicators that indicate difficult progress. (Note: you may or may not find clear evidence that shows that waiting until second round makes these children harder to teach.)

1. Teach at least four first grade children per day...

Suggestion 1. This is a difficult issue to address with data within a single site. The question needs to be addressed using the NDEC data base in order to control for other variables. If there are any teachers in the system who teach fewer than four children per day, you might look at their results compared to teachers who teach four. However, factors that could influence the results include: years of experience, entering scores of children, etc.

1. Teach at least four children daily

Suggestion. Again, this is a difficult issue to address with data within a single site, and needs to be addressed using the NDEC data base in order to control for other variables. If you have local data that addresses the issue, use it if it supports the standard.

1. ... 30-minute daily lessons

Suggestion 1. Look at your ARP and notice the variability in number of lessons per week for teachers. If this is an issue within your site, even for a few teachers, you may want to look into the data dump to find the teachers who had the fewest lessons per week and then put together their data on children's learning progress. Compare that to the results for your site overall.

(Note: This also is an issue that needs to be addressed nationally with data from NDEC. There are several factors that will need to be controlled in order to show that it is lessons per week that makes a difference.)

1. Serve a minimum of eight children per year. (The twenty-week decision-point).

Suggestion. The issue here concerns several questions that can be addressed with the data in your annual results package (ARP). First look at your second round data, specifically, how many children were classified as "incomplete program" and what was their progress? Secondly look at the children who had a complete program and the percentage of those that successfully discontinued. Usually these data give weight to the argument that children should have as much teaching time as possible, and you may find that missed lessons, time spent testing, turn-around time in filling slots, or absences all could be reduced. Consider whether you left some first-round children in the program longer than necessary (discontinued at too high a level). Think about all the reasons your second round children didn't get more time in the program. Then think about the ethics of removing first round children before twenty weeks versus the near certainty that a very few of these children would place into special education.

1. Attend a minimum of six continuing contact sessions... This would be hard to demonstrate with data from the site. However, qualitative comments from your teachers could be helpful. If they comment that new ideas, continued discussion of children, etc., are helpful to them, this could be meaningful to administrators.



2. Teach children behind the glass during training and during continuing contact.

Suggestion. The arguments for this cannot be supported with data from your site. The MacArthur study (Pinnell, et. all, Reading Research Quarterly, 1994) does address this issue, as well as many of the critiques of Reading Recovery which rate its professional develop program as the best known. Perhaps the best way to address this issue is to make sure that administrators attend training class or continuing contact sessions and observe the discussions of lessons in front of the glass. Qualitative data in terms of comments from the teachers is also valuable in addressing this issue.

1. Consult the teacher leader about children making very low progress.

Suggestion. Look at the data before and after you make it a deliberate, strong goal to improve the results for children with the lowest scores. Several measures will need to be put in place to work towards this goal: early monitoring followed by visits, cluster visits or clinical visits for low children, continuing contact sessions examining theory and observing such children, putting in place procedures to contact colleagues and the teacher leader to help with such children, etc.

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