Reading Recovery Revisited

School Administrator, Sept, 1997 by Richard Lee Colvin

But Reading Recovery lessons also encourage pupils to use pictures, which in the special books used in the program closely match the text, to help them figure out new words. And pupils are rarely told simply to "sound out" the words.

G. Reid Lyon, who oversees reading research for the federal government's National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, says such lessons represent "a departure from what we know" from dozens of research studies.

The fact between 20 and 30 percent of pupils do not respond to Reading Recovery demonstrates that it does not have all of the elements that are needed for children to learn to read well, Lyon says. "It isn't equally effective for all kids ... because Reading Recovery in its state now does not contain all of the critical elements for a poor read r to learn to read."

"The part of the brain that responds to picture cues is nor the same brain system that responds to [letters]," Lyon says. Encouraging students to "roam around the print to get at the meaning of words they don't know is a dangerous element. They need to go after them phonemically and figure them out."

He acknowledges that Reading Recovery lessons teach letter-sound correspondences in the course of writing and spelling exercises. But he says research has shown that what is learned in that manner does not transfer readily to the act of reading. Lyon's agency is now working on a comprehensive scientific study of Reading Recovery.

Also raising fundamental questions is Marilyn Jager Adams, the noted Boston-based reading researcher. While admiring Reading Recovery's stress on early intervention, she says the program's implementation is inconsistent from one site to the next.

Reading Recovery teachers are trained much as psychologists are, by watching experts work in a clinical setting, Adams says. The result, she contends, is that the quality of reading Recovery programs varies greatly, which may account for the differences of opinion about its effectiveness.

"When I go to some Reading Recovery training sites I'm almost brought to tears by what a wonderful ... and astute program it is," Adams says. "Then there are others that are just appalling ... they are horrible."

A Beachhead Position

All of these issues have surfaced, perhaps most publicly, in California. That is because California's bottom-of-the barrel performance on the 994 National Assessment of Educational Progress has made literacy the top priority in the office of Coy. Pete Wilson and the state legislature as well as in classrooms. As the state crafted its $1.2 billion reading initiative last year--a program that included $1 billion for smaller class sizes--some sought to discredit Reading Recovery as part of the state's problem, rather than a piece of these solution.

Several conservative legislators asked the state to audit the program's cost to find out if California was getting its money's worth for the $80 million or more that was being spent on the program in more than 300 school districts. The narrowly focused report that resulted found that school districts spend about $18,000 to train a teacher leader, over and above the teacher's salary. The leader then goes on to run year-long training programs for other teachers, at a cost of $8,000 apiece, including course materials and a starter set of books.