The Common Core State Standards have raised the bar
dramatically for what we expect K-12 students to know and be able to do. As with any new initiative, buzzwords emerge,
and on the ELA side, the main Common Core buzzwords have been “complex
text,” the goal of ensuring that students can comprehend the kinds of texts they will encounter in college and/or careers.
While it certainly makes sense that we want students to develop
critical thinking skills, we can’t get them there without basic foundational
reading skills. Although these foundational skills are absolutely included in
the Common Core, I worry that they are getting kicked to the curb as
yesterday’s buzzwords in current Common Core conversations.
There would be a lot less need to worry if these
foundational skills of early reading instruction were already deeply embedded
in teacher preparation and elementary classrooms. But this is sadly not the
case: the 2013 edition of our Teacher
Prep Review found that only
29 percent of the nearly 700 elementary programs we reviewed adequately address
the Big Five essential components of effective early reading instruction.
My fears have only been heightened by an
interview with Louisa Moats I
came across recently. Besides being one of the nation’s leading researchers and
teacher trainers in the field of reading instruction, Dr. Moats is also the
author of the reading foundational skills section of the Common Core. And she’s worried too.
Says Dr. Moats: “I’m listening, but I don’t hear the
words “research based” as often as I did a decade ago — and when
CCSS proponents use the words, they’re usually referring to the research
showing that high school kids who can’t read complex text don’t do as well in
college. Basic findings of reading and literacy research, information about
individual differences in reading and language ability, and explicit teaching
procedures are really being lost in this shuffle.”
“We were making great inroads into beginning reading
assessment and instruction practices between 2000-2008 that now are being cast
aside in favor of “reading aloud from complex text” — which is not
the same as teaching kids how to read on their own, accurately and fluently,” she warns.
We will never ensure that our
kids achieve the lofty expectations of the Common Core if we don’t first and
foremost start them out right in the early elementary grades and ensure that
they are fluent and capable readers. The Common Core Standards do not expect or
demand that teachers abandon explicit and systematic skill-building instruction,
without which too many kids will never become proficient readers.
Please help me generate some buzz for foundational reading
skills.
