Teach Effectively!

Bonnie Slade, who writes an advice column about parenting for the Sebastian Sun (Stuart, FL, US), advised the parent of a 9-year old with reading problems to seek tutoring and to fund it via insurance or a McKay Scholarship. I was intrigued by the availability of the scholarships and will have to learn more about them, but I found myself wishing that Ms. Slade had advised the parent to confront the school more directly. Parents are allies in pressing schools to teach effectively. They have the clout to promote teaching effectively.

In the standard arrangement for advice columnist (teehee, do we have “Dear Abby” to thank for this?), the advice column begins:

Dear Dr. Slade:

My 9-year-old son has had part-time learning disabilities help for two years now because he has trouble reading. He is bright. The school tested him and said his IQ is in the top fifth, but he can barely read.

He has an IEP (individualized education plan), but the school program does not seem to get his reading better. I don’t know what to do. We don’t have alot of money for tutoring or private school. What other ideas are there? Signed, Micco Parent

Given that situation, I would probably have different advice. I would suggest that the parent request an IEP meeting immediately and, taking a copy of the Shannon Carter case with her, insist that the boy get powerful remedial reading instruction starting the next school day. Schools must be made aware that there are effective teaching practices they can employ and that just about anyone—even parents—can identify them. I’d recommend that the parent request weekly reports showing her son’s reading performance on simple, direct measures of decoding and comprehension—words read per minute from grade level texts and number of blanks completed in the maze procedure.

Ms. Slade recommends Lindamood Bell tutoring, which is probably better than the average dog, but certainly not the be-all. First, as Batya Elbaum and colleagues (2000, Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 605-619) showed tutoring is not necessarily important, that small-group instruction is just as effective. Second, although the Lindamood-Bell program is better than a lot of the junk that masquerades as remedial reading instruction, it’s probably not the best; the school needs to employ the most effective methods as a standard and then use others as needed.

• Link to the column.
• Wrightslaw’s page providing information about the Shannon Carter case.
• The American Federation of Teachers evaluated research on many remedial programs and produced a report describing five of them; download a PDF of the report here.