It is extremely common
for schools to "buy" a reading program to address their reading instruction
needs, and trust that the program will solve their school's literacy issues.
Typically these programs require a great deal of commitment from the school,
both in terms of time and money.
However, while reading programs
can be "useful," no reading program has ever been shown to be truly "successful."
There have been a few programs that have been shown to improve overall
reading scores significantly, but that improvement is still a long way
from what anybody would describe as "success." If 60% of the students
in a school are performing unacceptably on the benchmark reading assessments,
moving that number to 40% is an improvement, but it is still unsatisfactory.
People often ask if there are reading
programs that research has shown to be effective, and the answer is that
there is no reading program that, by itself, will even come close to ensuring
reading success for all children. There are a few programs that,
properly implemented, could help a school to move in the right direction
(Jolly-phonics, Earobics, and Lindamood come immediately to mind, and others
no doubt exist), but nothing could ever take the place of a knowledgeable
and talented teacher.
We have known since Bond and Dykstra
(1967) that the single most important variable in any reading program is
the knowledge and skill of the teacher implementing the program, so why
do we persist in trying to develop "teacher-proof" programs? Some
would argue that it is our over-dependence on such reading programs that
is preventing us from cultivating more knowledgeable and effective teachers.
After all, if you want somebody to become a chef, don't just hand them
a cookbook and tell them to follow a recipe.
The right answer is the hard answer
-- there are no quick fixes. To achieve success for all children,
teachers need to become extremely sophisticated and diagnostic in their
approach to reading instruction. Every child is different, and each
child must be treated differently. A program can not be sensitive
to the varied and rapidly evolving learning needs of individual children,
but a diagnostic, knowledgeable teacher certainly can.
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to 10 Myths of Reading Instruction
