[Header Photo by Renee Kiffin on Unsplash]

Here is a report on reading reform across the US that is very important, but likely not in the ways intended: The Effects of Early Literacy Policies on Student Achievement, John Westall and Amy Cummings.

A key value in this report is the comprehensive data on reading reform in the US, such as these two figures:

Notably, most of the US has early literacy policy, significantly clustered since about 2010. While this is important context, the figures also reveal a key problem with this report—the source being a conservative think tank, ExcelinEd.

ExcelinEd is a Jeb Bush venture and represents the political and ideological connections among third grade retention, reading policy, and political gain.

I want here to focus on that dynamic, specifically how this report provides further evidence of the need for intense and critical re-evaluation of third grade retention.

ExcelinEd is grounded in Florida’s reading reform and high rates of grade retention that have produced exceptionally high NAEP scores in grade 4 reading (an outcome this report confirms across the US), but the largest decrease from grade 4 to grade 8 reading scores.

Let’s here note what Westall and Cummings detail about grade retention:

• Third grade retention (required by 22 states) significantly contributes to increases in early grade high-stakes assessment scores as part of comprehensive early literacy policy.
• Retention does not appear to drive similar increases in low-stakes assessments.
• No direct causal claim is made about the impact of retention since other policy and practices linked to retention may drive the increases.

Here is where this report is important, I think, but, again, not as intended:

Similar to the results for states with comprehensive early literacy policies, states whose policies mandate third-grade retention see significant and persistent increases in high-stakes reading scores in all cohorts. The magnitude of these estimates is similar to that of the “any early literacy policy” estimates described in Section 4.1.1 above, suggesting that states with retention components essentially explain all the average effects of early literacy policies on high-stakes reading scores. By contrast, there is no consistent evidence that high-stakes reading scores increase in states without a retention component.

Grade retention has immediate political appeal since we as a nation primarily discuss and judge schools and students based on high-stakes testing data.

What is lost in that political appeal is that this report clearly notes that we still have significant gaps in understanding the role of retention in raising test scores, evidence that early test score increases fade by middle grade testing, and evidence that retention creates inequity and non-academic harm in students.

Therefore, third grade retention is the Fool’s Gold of reading reform.

What I suspect you will not see emphasized by the most ardent reading reform advocates is the closing concessions in this report:

Although our study sheds light on the potential benefits of early literacy policies, there are some limitations that point to areas for future research. For example, while we provide evidence that comprehensive early literacy policies and retention mandates play an important role in improving state summative assessment scores, we cannot examine the mechanisms by which these policy components improve outcomes. Further research on the implementation of these policy components is therefore vital to understanding how early literacy policies operate. Additionally, we only focus on short-run test-score outcomes. However, prior work has established the importance of early literacy skills in determining non-cognitive outcomes and long-term student success (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997; Fiester & Smith, 2010; Hernandez, 2011; Sparks et al., 2014). To fully understand the benefits of early literacy policies, it is important to enumerate their non-cognitive and long-term impacts. Finally, this study does not examine the costs associated with early literacy policies.

I want here to emphasize the need to critically examine “mechanisms by which these policy components improve outcomes.”

Again, as I have stressed before, we need a more standard and understandable set of terminology and assessments that produce NAEP and state-level high-stakes testing data that can help drive authentic reform (not misleading early gains and then drops in later grades).

Currently, NAEP “proficient” remains misleading and the terminology used in state-level testing is incredibly mixed and difficult for the media, the public, and political leaders to navigate (see the information provided here).

Next, since England has implemented early literacy reform at a comprehensive and national level beginning in 2006, we must heed to lessons found in their outcomes.

In terms of the impact of grade retention on high-stakes testing, the UK implements phonics checks that have shown score increases by age month, suggesting that age-based development could be driving scores instead of any policy or instruction:

And thus, I agree with this argument from the UK:

There is certainly a strong argument for changing primary assessment to take account of age to lessen the risk of singling out summer born pupils as the low achievers. Assessments should be fewer in number, standardised, comparable with one another and generate norm-referenced age-standardised scores. And even then, the phrase ‘below age-related expectations‘ would be a misnomer; pupils with low attainment for their age would be more appropriate. This is not about re-designing the assessment system for Ofsted; this is about creating a more efficient and effective approach that would provide accurate, timely data capable of ironing out the creases caused by differences in age and allow attainment to be tracked over time. Yes, it would allow Inspectors  – and teachers – to identify those in the lowest 20% nationally – for their age! – but it would also have an interesting side-effect: a move to age standardisation would signal the end of expected standards as we know them.

My concern has always been that since NAEP is grade-based, grade retention removes the lowest scoring students from the testing pool and then reintroduces them when they are biologically older than their grade peers. Both of those skew test data by distorting the testing pool.

The NAEP Long-term trend (LTT) data is age-based and often reveals different outcomes that grade-based NAEP.

Finally, we must start with better data but also be more honest about what we know and do not know.

The first thing we know is that high-stakes testing data is causally related to out-of-school factors at 60%+ rate.

And as this report concludes, we do not know how the matrix of policy reforms [1] impact high- and low-stake testing:

This report is incredibly important in that it does suggest that despite that complex list of different policy elements, grade retention may be the single policy that produces the outcomes that are politically attractive (this same dynamic holds in college admission where despite using a matrix of admission criteria, SAT/ACT scores often are the determining data point).

Finally, although this report identifies evidence on grade retention as mixed, the body of research over decades confirms significant negative consequences from retention.

Therefore, until we can answer these questions, we are making political and not educational decisions about early literacy in the US:

• How causally linked is biological age with high-stakes assessment, and thus, how does grade retention distort grade-level testing?
• What are the criteria for assessments that are labeled “reading” and does that criteria impact the ability to increase test scores without improving student achievement?
• Are there policies and practices linked to grade retention that can support student achievement without negative outcomes for those students?
• How do we reform reading in the US by focusing more on equity than high-stakes testing data?

I predict that if we answered these questions we would expose grade retention as Fool’s gold in reading policy.

And unless we change how we are debating and mandating reading policy, those students who need and deserve reform the most will continue to be cheated by education reform as industry.

[1] Note that although most of the current state-level reading policy is identified as conforming to the “science of reading,” many of the mandates support practices not supported by the current body of research (LETRS training, Orton-Gillingham phonics, decodable texts, etc.):

[Header Photo by CDC on Unsplash]

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Let’s always avoid outsized hand wringing about how much worse anything is today than in some idealized past.

If you take a bit of time, you can explore how public education in the US was demonized and attacked in the nineteenth century, primarily by the Catholic Church who saw public education as a threat to their education monopoly:

[P]ublic schools … [are] a “dragon … devouring the hope of the country as well as religion.” Secular public education … [is filled with] “Socialism, Red Republicanism, Universalism, Infidelity, Deism, Atheism, and Pantheism—anything, everything, except religion and patriotism.” (Jacoby, pp. 257-258)

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Yet in 2024, public education is under several waves of assault that, if not unprecedented, is at an intensity that is exceptional.

In literacy education, two waves have targeted schools—censorship and bans as well as the “science of reading” (SOR) movement that has demonized teachers as well as decreased the diversity and quality of texts used to teach students to read.

Although not exclusively but significantly, these attacks on public education and literacy specifically are conservative. And then, beneath those traditional values are deeply harmful beliefs grounded in sexism/misogyny and racism.

The recent Report on the Condition of Education 2024 provides a couple data points to support why attacks on public education and teachers are intensifying, if not increasing:

First, the proportion of white students in US public schools is below 50% and continuing to decrease.

Next, the teacher workforce in the US is over 3/4 women, and among literacy teachers, that number is even higher.

Republican states are again increasing school choice schemes, and at the core of that is another move to allow white flight from public schools, funded by the public. This parallels the rise of private schools and white flight after Brown v. Board (notably across the South).

The nation-wide and often bi-partisan embracing of the SOR movement is grounded in a false but compelling claim that teachers of reading and teacher educators don’t know how to teach reading, a claim made without evidence among journalists and politicians.

That the teacher workforce is almost entirely women drives both the attacks on teachers and why that attack is uncritically embraced.

The result is so-called “structured literacy,” which is a veneer for scripted curriculum.

Scripted curriculum de-professionalizes teaching as a profession and centers instructional authority in commercial programs and not teachers.

Public education and public education teachers deserve better, primarily because they both serve our children and if allowed our democracy.

[Header Photo by Ethan Robertson on Unsplash]

I have had a notably good run lately with entertainment (books, films, series, music, etc.) and pop culture. And nothing makes that more enjoyable than sharing with others.

This covers a good deal of re-reading and re-watching by me, but also some wonderful new works and thinkers/creators that I am really excited about.

Here, then, is a very eclectic list of recommendations for your spring and summer of 2024.

Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore [Just finished re-reading. A wonderful and powerful work by Murkami, many think his best.]

1Q84 [Currently in the midst of re-reading, and my initial venture into Murakami. Brilliant and quite long, which I enjoy.]

Haruki Murakami Manga Stories 1: Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, Where I’m Likely to Find It, Birthday Girl, The Seventh Man [On deck to read.]

Haruki Murakami Manga Stories 2: The Second Bakery Attack; Samsa in Love; Thailand [On deck to read.]

Arthur C. Clarke

Rendezvous with Rama [Just re-read and a gem from my adolescence. Incredibly readable and just wonderful sci-fi.]

Childhood’s End [Another love from my adolescence, and on deck for re-reading.]

Poor Things

Poor Things (2023) [A very graphic and incisive film. Lots of sex and nudity just FYI.]

Poor Things, Alasdair Gray [Really surprised with how wonderful and laugh out loud funny this is. Highly recommend, but an interesting typeset approach with some images.]

Music

Wonderful cover by The National of “Heaven” by Talking Heads

Vampire Weekend [New obsession.]

The Decemberists [New album out soon and “All I Want Is You” is wonderful.]

Series

Outer Range [Currently re-watching because S2 is out. Sci-fi western. Some glorious fun (and a bit of David Lynch vibes) and wonderful acting/writing.]

Fallout [My partner is the gamer and I have no background in this. But the series grew on me so I will be re-watching.]

Ian Cushing

Cushing does excellent scholarship on deficit perspectives of language and the “word gap.” And open-access.

Tiered vocabulary and raciolinguistic discourses of deficit: from academic scholarship to education policy, Ian Cushing

Social in/justice and the deficit foundations of oracy, Ian Cushing

Teachers Challenging Language Discrimination in England’s Schools: A Typology of Resistance, Ian Cushing & Dan Clayton

James Baldwin

“The American institutions are all bankrupt,” explains James Baldwin in “Notes on the House of Bondage.” And he weighs in on voting when “how it happens that in a nation so boastfully autonomous as the United States we are reduced to the present Presidential candidates?”

George Saunders and Lane Smith

The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, Saunders and Smith [A wonderful work and I cannot recommend it enough. I love Smith’s art, and blogged about this here.]

It’s a Book, Smith [One of my favorite picture books, funny and sharp.]

Lego

Haven’t been much into these types of builds but both are really good ones and nice displays.

Rocket & Baby Groot (76282)

Green Goblin Construction Figure (76284)

Daredevil and Black Widow

Daredevil Omnibus v.3 [I am currently drafting a book on Black Widiow, and this is a wonderful collection of the Daredevil/Black Widow era from my adolescence when I became a comic book collector.]

Lou LaBrant

The US in 2024 has become Russia via 1950s

Diversifying the matter (1951)

To Be Read

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982: A Novel, Cho Nam-Joo

Frankenstein in Baghdad: A Novel, Ahmed Saadawi

[Reposted by permission from NEPC]

It’s a term that often gets misused, misinterpreted, and—in the process—maligned.

By the general public, it’s poorly understood.

It’s critical policy research. And it’s the topic of the June 2024 issue of the peer-reviewed journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. A free webinar on the issue will be held from 2:00-3:30 pm Eastern on May 23rd.

Under the name “critical race theory,” this approach to understanding the world was not only denigrated but legally banned by politicians in multiple states, many of whom had a limited understanding of even its definition.

So here’s what critical policy analysis is—and isn’t—according to the introduction to the special issue, written by guest editors Erica O. Turner of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dominique J. Baker of the University of Delaware, and NEPC Fellow Huriya Jabbar of the University of Southern California:

1. Approach to existing policies

Traditional policy research: Typically takes policy at face value, presuming it was created for the reasons stated (e.g., “to increase attendance”) or for technical reasons (e.g., “the former policy needs to be updated because it was created before the introduction of artificial intelligence”).

Critical policy research: Starts by examining why policies develop, how they are framed, who benefits, and who does not. In doing so, critical researchers explore the extent to which there may be connections between a policy that on the surface appears to apply to one narrow area (e.g., educational testing) and broader societal issues such as culture, economics, or gender. Critical researchers attend closely to rhetoric, which can provide clues to the values underlying the policy. For example, the use of the phrase “achievement gap” implies students themselves are responsible for the historically lower test scores found among some groups, whereas the phrase “opportunity gap” highlights the idea that some students have more and better chances to learn and prepare than others for exams.

2.  Policy implementation

Traditional policy analysis: Often equates policy with the rhetoric with which it is surrounded, viewing implementation as dichotomous (either it’s implemented or it’s not implemented).

Critical policy research: Examines the extent to which those charged with implementing policy have the ability to do so and how factors such as environment, power, and ideology play into that equation.

3.  Change

Traditional policy research: May assume that certain societal trends (e.g., changes in technology) are inevitable and immutable.

Critical policy analysis: Examines and questions underlying assumptions about social trends, asking for who benefits from them and who does not. Public policy is viewed as a tool with the potential to shift—rather than simply mirror—phenomena that are sometimes described as natural, common sense, or unchangeable.

Even as critical approaches have been villainized by politicians, they are a robust and growing area of academic research on education. The co-editors of the Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis special issue noted that the call generated nearly 400 submissions—“a clear signal of the excitement and interest in conducting critical education policy research and the real need for more outlets that publish critical policy research in education.”