NSW: Reading Recovery officially axed from 2018

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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NSW: Reading Recovery officially axed from 2018

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

This is such an important piece of news because the intervention programme, Reading Recovery, is so globally entrenched in education departments, universities and schools that any official education department officially removing support for the programme is, hopefully, a sign of the tide turning and officials taking note of the actual outcomes of use of the programme.

http://www.iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewto ... 1812#p1812

IFERI committees members, Professor James Chapman and Professor William Tunmer have been evaluating the outcomes of Reading Recovery for many years. You can read about one of their more recent papers here:

http://www.iferi.org/a-new-paper-by-pro ... -recovery/

Further, Dr Louisa Moats (also an IFERI committee member) visited Australia to give talks on reading instruction:
Despite its widespread use, Reading Recovery - which is also in the US, Canada and Britain - has had its critics and in 2015, influential US literacy academic Louisa Moats told education bureaucrats in Victoria that it was "indefensible" to spend money on the program.

Dr Moats said if she had a child with a learning disability she would refuse to let them take part in a Reading Recovery lesson.

"The instruction is directing their attention away from what they should be paying attention to. It's just not OK, it's harmful."
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: NSW: Reading Recovery officially axed from 2018

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I'm linking this new thread to a past one on worries about Reading Recovery - from the USA:

http://www.iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewto ... ?f=2&t=861
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: NSW: Reading Recovery officially axed from 2018

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Professor Pamela Snow (member of IFERI's Advisory Group) refers to the news about NSW withdrawing funding for Reading Recovery in her New Year's post:
New Year’s Resolutions and our Attachment to Bad Habits
http://pamelasnow.blogspot.co.uk/2017/1 ... l?spref=tw
So it is pleasing (if slightly odd timing on New Year’s Eve) to see this announcement that the New South Wales government is de-funding Reading Recovery in that state. Reading Recovery has long been contested in education circles, coming as it does, out of the (largely discredited) Whole Language stable of reading interventions, and failing to deliver longterm benefits in spite of its resource intensity. News that it has been de-funded will be contentious in some circles, not the least of which because of the special status that has been associated with being “Reading Recovery trained”. I often hear these words uttered in education circles in a way that suggests a certain awe and reverence, and membership of a special, elite “club”.

One of the things that makes giving up old practices and beliefs (whether at New Year or any other time) most difficult is of course our tendency as humans to behave and affiliate in tribal ways. So, if you are a Reading Recovery teacher, chances are you will have affiliated with other Reading Recovery teachers, attending similar professional development, reinforcing / confirming existing biases, and providing mutual comfort in the familiar and the “known”. You probably haven’t been exposed to critical commentary around the shortcomings of the approach and the poor longterm outcomes achieved on a population basis. You see children in front of you apparently improve in the short-term, and so you “just know” it works. This is not much different from the fact that if you are obese, you will tend to have friends and family who are too, and if you smoke, one of the most difficult things about giving up, is sacrificing the contact with networks of peers who also smoke. In both cases, there’s a lot of mutual affirmation of ideas that some psychologists call “ego-syntonic” i.e. beliefs that harmonise with sense of self and do not cause personal unease or self-doubt.

Without unease or self-doubt however, we cannot question our beliefs and practices, let alone change them. Mark Twain famously said of giving up smoking, that it was the easiest thing in the world to do; so much so that he himself had done it hundreds of times. We've seen many false dawns too, in reform of early years reading instruction. For that reason, I am only guardedly pleased to learn that NSW will fund the creation of 50 "Literacy Expert" roles. Maybe I'm missing something, but shouldn't every teacher be a literacy expert?? This is where we need some New Years Resolutions from education academics.
Do read the full post - it's a great start to 2018!
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: NSW: Reading Recovery officially axed from 2018

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Some reaction to the withdrawal of funding for the Reading Recovery programme:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/educatio ... y28zsr6qiq
Primary principals slam axing of Reading Recovery program

Alexandra Smith
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: NSW: Reading Recovery officially axed from 2018

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Dr Kevin Donnelly writes an opinion piece for The Daily Telegraph:

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/ ... 57637b2425
It was time for axed Reading Recovery program to go

Kevin Donnelly, The Daily Telegraph

January 3

There’s nothing surprising about NSW Education Minister Rob Stokes’s decision to end funding for the Reading Recovery early years of literacy program — except that it has taken so long for an Australian education minister to finally realise the program is a fraud.

Originating in New Zealand in the 1970s and designed by Marie Clay, Reading Recovery became the literacy program of choice across New Zealand, Australia, England and America over the past 30 years.

While advocates argue it is the most effective remedial program to help primary school children suffering reading problems, the reality is that state and territory governments have wasted millions of taxpayers’ dollars implementing the program.

And the evidence against Reading Recovery is overwhelming. In 2001 a report by the New Zealand Parliament concluded it “is unclear whether children who have undertaken Reading Recovery achieve the reading level of other children in the classroom and maintain progress at a similar level”.

A 2013 paper by five New Zealand educationalists from Massey University went even further, concluding that the Reading Recovery literacy program “has had little or no impact on reducing New Zealand’s relatively large literacy achievement gap”.

Reading Recovery’s implementation in America has also been criticised for failing to raise standards. In 2002 a group of 31 academics published an open letter to Congress arguing “Reading Recovery is not successful with its targeted student population”. Other criticisms included not being cost effective, not being based on sound research and not being a “productive investment of taxpayers’ money or students’ time”.

Critics in England have also argued Reading Recovery is a failed and costly experiment.

One London-based literacy teacher describes it as an “arcane and hugely expensive” program, while in 2010 the then-Education secretary Michael Gove scrapped the Every Child a Reader school resource as it was based on the Reading Recovery model.

Not surprisingly Reading Recovery also has local critics — even though it is championed by Australia’s increasingly moribund education establishment.

Chris Nugent, a literacy expert involved with the highly successful readers produced by Victoria’s Fitzroy Community School, argues the program has “serious design faults and omissions”.

An evaluation by Meree Reynolds and Kevin Wheldall from Macquarie University, while acknowledging some benefits, concludes that Reading Recovery is not based on sound research, any improvements decline as children move through school and that it is expensive and time-consuming. As to why Reading Recovery is such a failure the evidence is also clear. In the mid to late 1970s teachers were told that the best way to teach reading is to adopt a “whole language” approach as opposed to the more traditional phonics and phonemic awareness model.

The more traditional model teaches beginning readers the relationship between letters and groups of letters and sounds, and children also learn how to break words and sentences into their various parts.

Whole language teaching, on the other hand, is based on the mistaken belief that learning to read is as natural as learning how to talk and that children do not have to be taught in the formal, more structured way.

With whole language, instead of being able to quickly and automatically recognise words, children are told to look and guess or to try to work out the meaning by referring to accompanying pictures and illustrations. As detailed in a research paper by Phillipa Cloras, Reading Recovery involves surrounding children with text based on the assumption that they will “naturally become literate through exposure, using memory and immersion”.

Another weakness with Reading Recovery involves its adoption of what is described as a constructivist approach to teaching and learning.

Whereas the traditional model is based on explicit teaching that is highly structured and sequential, constructivism involves teachers being guides by the side and children being in control.
It should not surprise anyone that numerous reports and evaluations both here and overseas argue that the most effective and beneficial way to teach reading involves phonics and phonemic awareness in opposition to the whole language inspired Reading Recovery program.

To be effective any program must include, in the words of academics Max Coltheart and Margaret Prior, “letter knowledge (the names and sounds of the alphabet), phonological awareness (explicit appreciation of the sounds of language and how words are composed of these sounds) and a grasp of the alphabetic principle”. And there are a range of literacy programs that best embody the above requirements including: the Fitzroy Community School Readers, Macquarie University’s Multilit, Jolly Phonics and the Centre for Independent Studies’ Five from Five program developed by Jennifer Buckingham.

One of the reasons Australia’s ¬literacy results are flatlining or going backwards is because teachers are made to implement programs that are not evidence-based.

The demise of Reading Recovery suggests the situation may finally be changing for the better.

Dr Kevin Donnelly is a senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University and author of Dumbing Down
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Re: NSW: Reading Recovery officially axed from 2018

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John Kenny writes:
We can do better than Reading Recovery

https://johnkennyweb.wordpress.com/2018 ... -recovery/
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Re: NSW: Reading Recovery officially axed from 2018

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In defence of Reading Recovery via the World Socialist Web Site:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/0 ... n-j19.html
Australia: NSW state government axes longstanding reading program from public schools

By Erika Zimmer

19 January 2018
A decision by the New South Wales (NSW) Liberal-National coalition government to abandon a $55 million one-on-one reading program constitutes yet another attack on the most disadvantaged students in the state’s poorest schools. It is aimed at cutting costs and further entrenching regressive teaching methods.
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