Title I/Reading Recovery teacher Allison Lindsay praises firstgrader Luke Fortner on the sentence he just wrote during their session together Tuesday at Sugar Creek Consolidated Elementary School in West Terre Haute. Joseph C. Garza | Tribune-Star
For 13 years, Allison Lindsay has been a Title 1 Reading Recovery teacher with the Vigo County School Corp.
She’s an advocate of the program, a 12- to 20-week literacy intervention program aimed at helping first graders catch up to their peers in reading.
The Vigo County School Corp. has used Reading Recovery for more than 20 years.
Led by teachers who receive extensive professional development, Reading Recovery is designed for one-on-one, 30-minute daily lessons tailored to meet the student’s individual needs and interests.
Lindsay, who teaches at Sugar Creek Consolidated elementary school, says she’s seen “amazing progress” using Reading Recovery. “It is an effective program and we have had great success,” she said.
She’s sad the program must end “because it’s very beneficial for students and I’ve seen it first-hand.”
Under a new law, HEA 1558, the state of Indiana is mandating instruction and curriculum that aligns with the science of reading; use of Reading Recovery must be phased out by fall of 2024.
Science of reading is a methodology that uses direct, systematic use of five elements in literacy instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.
It is based on research about how brains actually learn to read.
The law says schools may not adopt curriculum based on the “three-cueing” model, which uses context, pictures or syntax clues for literacy instruction.
Teresa Stuckey, VCSC executive director of elementary education, says that Reading Recovery is considered three-cueing under the changes.
“The research is showing (three-cueing) doesn’t fit with the way children’s minds work, the way the brain processes,” she said.
The district has 24 Title 1 reading teachers, or interventionists, who use Reading Recovery part of the day.
They will receive training next month “that puts them in line with the science of reading,” Stuckey said. They will receive five full days of training in Orton Gillingham, a highly structured approach that breaks reading and spelling down into smaller skills involving letters and sounds and then builds on these skills over time.
Orton Gillingham aligns with the science of reading.
Those educators will work that into what they are currently doing in Reading Recovery and be ready for the changes in the fall, Stuckey said.
“We’ll do some additional training of other primary grade teachers through a different grant in the summer,” Stuckey said.
The Tribune-Star reached out to the Indiana Department of Education for comment on the Reading Recovery program and its status in the state.
Molly Williams, IDOE spokeswoman, said the department in engaged in a review process for high-quality curricular materials aligned to the science of reading that will result in advisory lists.
The lists should be out in the next few months.
IDOE will be able to comment further at that time, she said.
INCREASINGLY, READING RECOVERY BEING DISCONTINUED
According to a September Chalkbeat Indiana article, the Reading Recovery intervention program, once hailed as a “phenomenal success” for Indiana’s first graders, may be one of the first phased out from schools as the state pushes to align elementary literacy instruction with the science of reading.
According to Chalkbeat, it has been used to instruct thousands of Indiana students beginning in the 1990s.
In Indiana, Purdue University became a training center for Reading Recovery, and the program reached 24,000 children in 166 of around 400 school districts by 2000, Chalkbeat reported, citing a Purdue News Service article.
Purdue has not been affiliated with Reading Recovery for several years, according to the Chalkbeat report.
Some studies showed that the program improved reading test scores in the short term, but those benefits faded over time, the article states.
In Indiana, one out of every five third-grade students is not proficient in key literacy skills, according to state IREAD test results.
That prompted the new legislation, HEA 1558, which requires school districts to adopt science of reading curriculum.
Among those opposed to Reading Recovery is Karen Betz, Marian University assistant professor of literacy.
What reading science says based on research and brain scans is that teachers “have to take the language children have and we have to help them to put the symbols with those speech sounds, and when we do that, they are then able to decode,” Betz said. “Through systematic and explicit phonics instruction, we can actually wire their brain to be able to put the sounds to the print and read words.”
Reading Recovery does not do that, she said.
She believes schools need to stop using programs such as Reading Recovery that encourage children to guess or memorize whole words. “We have to be able to teach them the sound/symbol relationships in which our language is based on in order to decode words,” she said.
Science of reading is not just about phonics, she said. It’s about all components of reading. But when teaching early, emergent readers, “It’s vital we teach them to crack the code and how to sound out words and not put text in front of them in which they can’t practice doing that,” Betz said.
Science of reading is based on a vast, interdisciplinary body of research gathered over the past 50 years on how the brain learns to read and best practices to support that, she said.
Because of that research, “We know what to do to instruct children … so that those pathways in our brain can learn to read,” Betz said.
Simply stated, the science of reading teaches children to read by linking their oral language to the alphabetic system, Betz said.
IN SUPPORT OF READING RECOVERY
Billy Molasso, executive director of the Reading Recovery Council of North America, argues that Reading Recovery has a proven track record of helping children. “Why limit the toolbox?” he said.
He acknowledged that due to the current focus on science of reading in many states, the number of districts across the country using Reading Recovery has declined.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that Reading Recovery doesn’t teach phonics, he said.
“Reading Recovery teaches phonics embedded in every lesson, but because it is a flexible intervention (not a one-size-fits- all curriculum), we target directly to the needs of the child,” he said.
He also countered that guessing “is not and never has been a part of a solid Reading Recovery intervention. It is, however, a part of the science of reading’s straw man,” or narrative that misrepresents the program.
Molasso says there are sites in Indiana that have had “incredibly successful programs with strong testing outcomes, because they have a strong (multi-tiered support system) in place for their students.”
He believes school districts should be able to continue using Reading Recovery.
“When you choose which tools teachers can use, you are choosing which children to help. Banning tools is tantamount to saying the children who need those tools don’t matter, and shame on the states that have legislated to leave some children behind,” he said.
The Reading Recovery Council of North America is a nonprofit membership organization.
Suzanne Marrs, Vigo County Sugar Creek Consolidated principal, said she’s also seen great success with Reading Recovery.
“All children learn to read differently,” Marrs said. Science of reading and the Orton Gillingham approach are more of a phonics-based approach to reading “and that’s great.”
But Reading Recovery also includes phonics, she said. Teachers including Allison Lindsay “have been teaching those sort of skills the whole time they’ve been reading teachers,” Marrs said.
While Reading Recovery will end, Marrs anticipates some of its allowed strategies will continue as the reading teachers also study and incorporate science of reading.
And reading teachers, who are already doing outstanding things in helping children learn to read, will continue to find what works best for each child, Marrs said.
While the state is mandating changes in how reading is taught, “We are educators. We adapt and adjust and do what’s necessary,” Marrs said.
PENDULUM SWINGS IN EDUCATION
Katelynn Liebermann, VCSC curriculum coordinator for assessment, science and math, said that in education, “Often that pendulum swings from one spectrum to the other and we also see that come full circle throughout our tenure in education.”
According to Liebermann, “Right now we’re seeing this shift in the focus and from the state level, showing here’s what we’re going to do to approach phonics, phonemic awareness, and all of those skill sets needed for our students to become readers.”
At the end of the day, “We want to do what is best for our students and will continue to serve them in that capacity,” Liebermann said. “No matter the program, our teachers will be able to ensure our students learn how to read.”
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