Dyslexia SA: 'Running Records Must be Abolished in South Australia'

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Dyslexia SA: 'Running Records Must be Abolished in South Australia'

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See Dyslexia SA's position statement on 'Running Records' - the assessment system associated with the Reading Recovery intervention programme and the multi-cueing word-guessing strategies:

http://www.dyslexiasa.org.au/current-is ... hed-in-sa/
Our strong view is that Running Records are an inadequate, ineffective and outdated method of assessing student progress in reading.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.

Unquestionably, continuous assessment of reading progress is crucial for all students who are learning to read. Running Records have been a mainstay of continuous assessment for decades despite being based on the scientifically unsupported “three cueing systems” model of word recognition. According to world renowned reading researcher Dr. Louisa Moats:

“Contextual guessing strategies are supported by the cueing systems model of word recognition which has no basis in reading science. According to this theory, students are said to use grapho- phonic cues, semantic or meaning cues, and syntax or contextual cues to recognize words. In practice, the emphasis is on anything but the links between speech sounds and spelling. Unfortunately, balanced literacy students are learning strategies that poor readers rely on, not what good readers know” (p. 20).

Moats, L. (2007). Whole language high jinks: How to tell when “Scientifically-based reading instruction” isn’t. Available from https://www.ldaustralia.org/client/docu ... hing%20Rea ding%20is%20Rocket%20Science%20-%20Moats.pdf
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Dyslexia SA: 'Running Records Must be Abolished in South Australia'

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And Dr Kerry Hempenstall contributes the following summaries with reference to 'Running Records':
“This article has raised a number of concerns about the use of running records. These concerns include: (1) a lack of clarity in the guidelines about whether running records are appropriate for beginning and fluent readers, (2) problems with the comparability of running records taken on different texts, and the lack of assessment of comprehension, (3) the absence of evidence to support the use of self-corrections as an indicator of effective reading, and (4) erroneous interpretation of the meaning of oral reading errors. … It is time to reappraise the widespread use of running records as the main assessment of children’s reading in the first years at school. There is a need for other assessments that link more directly to what it is that children require for fluent reading. Teachers need to have access to carefully constructed tests of reading accuracy and comprehension, as well as measures of grapheme-phoneme correspondences, phonological awareness, and word recognition. The use of such tests will provide teachers with crucial information about what children currently know and what they still need to learn to become successful independent readers.” (p.16-18)

Blaiklock, K.E. (2003). A critique of running records. Paper presented at the joint AARE?NZARE Conference, Aukland, 2003. Retrieved from https://www.aare.edu.au/publications-da ... ng-records
“Running records have traditionally been viewed as producing accurate assessment results because they provide an approximation of authentic school and home reading. However, reliability data have not been conclusive regarding the use of running records (Ross, 2004). … Running records have traditionally been viewed as producing accurate assessment results because they provide an approximation of authentic school and home reading. However, reliability data have not been conclusive regarding the use of running records (Ross, 2004).” (p.114). … “Hoffman, Roser, and Salas (2001) found that teachers using the Fountas and Pennell leveling structure can reliably level text. However, when texts leveled in that manner assess student reading performance, they produce highly unreliable results. Running record scores that are acquired from a single-leveled text reading would not necessarily represent a student’s true reading level. … Making absolute decisions with a running record requires the teacher to average student scores on at least three passages with at least two raters. Our results indicate that the most limiting factor in rendering students’ running record scores reliable is the number of passages used. That finding supports the contention of Ross (2004) that passage might exhibit a sizable source of error variance when scoring running records. Using a single score obtained from reading a single passage to portray that student’s universe score would be highly questionable.” (p. 123). ... “Teachers should recognize that traditional text-leveling procedures do not fully account for all factors that affect the difficulty of a text. Even when controlling for text level, type, and structure, there are still naturally occurring topical variations between texts that will render one more difficult than another”.(p. 125)

Fawson, P.C., Ludlow, B.C., Reutzel, D.R., Sudweeks, R., & Smith, J.A. (2006). Examining the reliability of running records: Attaining generalizable result. The Journal of Educational Research, 100(2), 113-126. Retrieved from https://llmotivation.wikispaces.com/fil ... ecords.pdf
“In summary, there has long been a significant difference of attitude toward miscue analysis and running records between the (mainly) whole language fraternity and reading researchers. The underlying theory has been thoroughly discredited (Gough, 1993; Perfetti, 1985; Rieben & Perfetti, 1991; Nicholson, 1991; Stanovich, 1986, 2000; Tunmer & Hoover, 1993), and the method of assessing the miscues has been shown to be unreliable (Allington, 1984; Leu, 1982). One would imagine that miscue analysis would have slipped quietly into education’s long history of intuitively derived concepts that proved incorrect when the light of empirical study was played upon them. However, consistent with the long standing disconnect between evidence and practice in education, miscue analysis and running records remain evident in many education settings (Beatty & Care, 2009), no doubt partly due to the continued acceptance among educators of the 3 cueing process.”

Hempenstall, K. (2013). Miscue mischief. April 11, 2013. Retrieved from https://www.nifdi.org/news-latest-2/blo ... e-mischief
“This study revealed that children who were reading at or above grade expectations were more likely to make use of graphic and phonic cues when they approached an unfamiliar word in a text. As has been suggested (e.g. De Lemos, 2002; Adams, 1990) the ability to decode graphic and phonic information is a reliable determinant of higher reading ability. Therefore, these findings suggest that Goodman and colleagues may have underestimated the role of the grapho-phonic cueing system and overestimated the role of the semantic and syntactic cueing systems in relation to differentiating reading ability.”

Beatty, L., & Care, E. (2009). Learning from their miscues: Differences across reading ability and text difficulty. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 32(3), 226-244. Retrieved from http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/artic ... difficulty
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