Myth #9 -- Short-term tutoring for
struggling readers can get them caught up with their peers, and the gains
will be sustained
One of the most common programs
used in schools in this country is "Reading Recovery." This program
involves having a highly trained teacher pull students out of the classroom
for short, intensive, one-on-one instruction sessions. After a few
weeks of this intensive intervention, the students are exited from the
program, and they resume normal classroom activities. While Reading
Recovery is a "brand name" that is handy to use as an example, it's prevalence
reflects an underlying belief that this sort of intervention will be effective,
and that the gains that children experience will be sustained when they
return to the normal classroom.
In fact, it is evident that such
gains as are made by children in these programs (and even those gains are
questionable) are not sustained for very long once they are exited from
the program. Studies of these pull-out tutoring programs have shown
that children who are not thriving like their peers in the classroom continue
to fail to thrive when they are placed back in that classroom full time.
This suggests that there is something about the classroom environment that
is not supporting and scaffolding these children as they learn to read.
Studies have shown that the best
hope for these children is to place them with a "strong" reading teacher
full time -- a teacher who has a sophisticated understanding of the process
of learning to read, a tendency to use assessment data to inform individualized
instruction, and a talent for engaging students in focused and interesting
instructional activities.
Once again, we see that the right
answer is the hard answer (see Myth #3); the solution for helping struggling
readers to become successful readers is to cultivate a population of teachers
who are very knowledgeable about how children learn to read, and who are
adept at applying their understanding of reading acquisition to the assessment
and instruction of individual children.
Perhaps instead of having our most
highly trained and knowledgeable reading teachers pulling students out
of class for individual tutoring, a better use of their time would be to
make them responsible for providing on-going professional development and
coaching for the other teachers on staff so that all of the teachers
can develop expertise in reading theory and reading instruction.
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to 10 Myths of Reading Instruction
