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Running Records - What are they and what is wrong with them?
Below is a copy of a letter which Dyslexia SA sent to DECD last year in respect to our views on why Running Records should be abolished and replaced with evidence based measures. Since our Treasurer, Leanne James, appeared in The Advertiser on 4 February 2017, we have received emails from teachers disputing our claims. Obviously the paper did not have the space to print our entire view, backed by research and reading academics. Leanne was telling her story from a parents point of view, not a teacher or literacy expert. Her opinion was that Running Records did not provide her son’s year one teacher with any information as to what aspects of reading her son was struggling with, which did not allow for a potential reading difficulty to be suggested early. Furthermore, readers used were based on the outdated whole language method of reading; Dyslexia SA supports phonics and the big six of reading instruction. Our stance is early identification, early intervention and early prevention for the 1 in 5 students who struggle with reading. Your opinion is your own, but these are our facts.
Our strong view is that Running Records are an inadequate, ineffective and outdated method of assessing student progress in reading. They are not evidence-based because they do not assess the skills that decades of research have shown are fundamental to reading skill acquisition. They are in fact symptomatic of an approach to literacy instruction and remediation that is failing Australian students. As you will see below, this view is shared by Australia’s leading reading researchers.