Teach Effectively!

Lydia Stanton, an early teen with Down Syndrome, learned to read last summer, according to a news feature by Laura Bruno of the Boonton (NJ, US) Daily Record. Over the summer Wendy Stanton, Lydia’s mother, sent Lydia to an intensive reading program that accomplished what five previous years of schooling had not: Given the Lindamood-Bell training, Lydia progressed to 1st grade reading skills. Ms. Stanton the elder is suing the local education agency to recover the costs of paying for summer and further Lindamood-Bell tutoring.

The legal battle began when Stanton wrote a letter dated June 13, asking the district to provide Lydia with instruction this school year at Lindamood Bell.

In a June 20 letter from the school psychologist, Toni DeCotiis, the request is denied.

“In the opinion of the Child Study Team, the intensive four hour per day phonemic awareness immersion program which you are requesting for Lydia is not appropriate for her learning needs and will not be beneficial to Lydia,” DeCotiis writes.

DeCotiis acknowledges Lydia’s progress is slow, but is consistent with her abilities.

“Although slower than hoped for, Lydia’s progress in reading appears to be consistent with her cognitive abilities, which have been found to be in the first percentile when compared to her age peers,” she writes.

This story reminds me of a talk, entitled “Reading and the Mentally Retarded: Look! Look! See Who Could Be Going to Court!” that I gave in June of 1977 in New Orleans to the national convention of what was then called the American Association for Mental Deficiency. (I also mentioned this in a post last year; there’s more on the legal cases in that post.) In that talk nearly 30 years ago, I noted the evidence from studies showing that children with MR could learn to read when provided with systematic, explicit instruction. I connected that evidence with several cases then pending in the courts in which parents alledged that dyspedagogia was the cause of their children’s reading problems; these parents were suing the schools to force them to use effective teaching practices. I speculated that parents of students with MR could join the suits once they learned that there were methods that would permit their children to learn to read, too. Danged if that something close to that hasn’t come to pass!

Link to Ms. Bruno’s story. There is supposed to be a video of Lydia reading, but I couldn’t get it to download. The link, http://www.dailyrecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061015/VIDEO/61013002/1203/NEWS01, bounces back to the page showing itself; if I could watch the girl read, I’d have a better idea of whether her performance is closer to the level described by the school, closer to a level reflecting real reading, or closer to the “miraculous breakthrough” her mother describes. Flash of the electrons to Liz Ditz for her post alerting me to the story.

If one doesn’t know how to read, one does not have the authority to chose not to read. In his self-named blog Jeremy Gilby has an entry reflecting on the consequences of not being able to read. He reports the following exchange when he was sitting in the waiting room of a dentist’s office.

What I witnessed in the waiting room was a swift kick in the face of my reality, for another patient entered, checked in with the receptionist, and sat down.

When the receptionist asked for her, I was taken aback at what I overheard.

Receptionist: Joyce?
Joyce stood and walked to the desk.
Receptionist: I need you to fill out this form.
Joyce: I’m not gonna fill anything out, cause I can’t read. (This wasn’t said with any noticable embarassment, but rather matter-of-factly)
The Receptionist was as taken aback as I was, and I wasn’t paying attention.
Joyce had to be in her mid-twenties. When the discussion continued, she stated “I’m over 21″ to defend her right to make a decision.
I couldn’t tell how much it hurt Joyce to admit to a waiting room of her disability, but if it did bother her, she didn’t let it show.

Link to Mr. Gilby’s post.

Special Connections is a Web resource, developed by Suzanne Robinson and Sean Smith of Kansas University, that provides recommendations about teaching procedures for students with disabilities. There are modules about instruction, collaboration, assessment, and behavior plans, each describing research-based methods.

     Special Connections is a Project of National Significance (CFDA #84.325N) funded through the federal Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) and coordinated through the University of Kansas. The ultimate goal of the project is to provide educators, both classroom teachers and university faculty, with tools and resources that support students with special needs in general education settings and in accessing the general education curriculum in meaningful ways.

 
     Four main areas of focus include Instruction, Assessment, Behavior Plans, and Collaboration. Best practices are identified within each of these four areas and nationally recognized experts create materials for a module about that topic. Teacher tools for implementing specific practices, case study materials, and references and resources related to each practice are provided in each module. Suggestions on how to develop online collaboration are included along with technical specifications and examples of how online collaboration can improve teacher practices and outcomes for students.

Link to the Special Connections Web site.

Over on Charles Fox’s Special Education Law Blog, Lori Miller Fox has a post about accommodations that’s worth reading for fun. Tres clever.

Flash of the electrons to Becky Evers for alerting me to the post. I scan Special Education Law Blog every now and again, but I’d missed this.

I’ve been reflecting a bit on the way roles of teachers might change as a result of response to intervention (“instruction” or “treatment”; RtI) efforts in the schools. RtI models are basically sifters with screens of different porosity. The screens are periodic checks on pupils’ progress. If a child’s achievement is big, thick, and getting bigger and thicker, she never slips through the first screen (“Tier 1″). If the achievement is not as thick as the size of the holes in the screen at that first level, though, she slips through the screen and gets help at the second level (“Tier 2″). Those who’s achievement is not as big and thick as the holes in the second-level screen slip through the holes and arrive at a more intensive level of services (“Tier 3″). (This is not a perfect analogy, of course.)

There are many questions that arise about the RtI models. What if a child’s achievement is so meager that she really ought to start out getting intensive services? What if the progress-monitoring criteria, the guidelines that say what level of competence is too little, are set too stringently or loosely? Etc.

But, as I mentioned, I’ve been thinking about who’s providing the services at the various levels. The first tier pretty obviously is about primary prevention and should be the responsibility of general education, in my view. The middle tier—the newest level, I think—seems to be one where remedial instruction is required and should be the responsibility of discipline specialists. The third tier is pretty close to special education as it’s usually been practiced.

So, this seems to fit with the graphic representation at the right. We might disagree about the exact percentages I put into that graph, but is the general idea about right?

The What Works Clearinghouse has released additional reviews of reports summarizing the research on various interventions.

What Works Clearinghouse Releases 10 New Reports: Beginning Reading, Early Childhood Education, Character Education, English Language Learning, and Elementary School Mathematics
The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, announces 10 new intervention reports highlighting available research on Beginning Reading, Early Childhood Education, Character Education, English Language Learning, and Elementary School Mathematics. New WWC Reports include:
Beginning Reading:

• DaisyQuest (Beginning Reading)

More information about the Beginning Reading review is available at http://whatworks.ed.gov/Topic.asp?tid=01&ReturnPage=default.asp.
Early Childhood Education:

• DaisyQuest (Early Childhood Education)
• Shared Book Reading

More information about the Early Childhood review is available at http://www.whatworks.ed.gov/Topic.asp?tid=13&ReturnPage=default.asp.
Character Education:

• Lion’s Quest -Skills for Action
• Lion’s Quest – Skills for Adolescence
• Positive Action

More information about the Character Education review is available at http://www.whatworks.ed.gov/Topic.asp?tid=12&ReturnPage=default.asp.
English Language Learning:

• Enhanced Proactive Reading
• Fast ForWord Language
• Reading Mastery

More information regarding the English Language Learning review is available at http://www.whatworks.ed.gov/Topic.asp?tid=10&ReturnPage=default.asp.
Elementary School Mathematics:

• Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley Mathematics

More information regarding the Elementary School Mathematics review is available at http://www.whatworks.ed.gov/Topic.asp?tid=04&ReturnPage=default.asp.
The WWC is releasing an ongoing series of reports over the next few months covering these topics, as well as releasing reports for Dropout Prevention and Middle School Mathematics. Approximately 30 additional reports will be released by the end of the year. Weekly updates will be sent to the WWC subscribers notifying them of the latest available findings.

See earlier posts on Teach Effectively! regarding reports from the W-W-C.

Writing from Everman (TX, US) Rick Lyman reported about the use of corporal punishment in schools. Mr. Lyman, who is a reporter for the New York Times (NY, US), described places where the practice of paddling students continues.

In a handful of districts, like the one here in Everman, there have been recent moves to reinstate it, some successful, more not. In Delaware, a bill to rescind that state?s ban on paddling never got through the legislature. But in Pike County, Ohio, corporal punishment was reinstated last year. And in southeast Mississippi, the Laurel school board voted in August to reinstate a corporal punishment policy, passing one that bars men from paddling women, but does not require parental consent, as many other policies do.

The most recent federal statistics show that during the 2002-3 school year, more than 300,000 American schoolchildren were disciplined with corporal punishment, usually one or more blows with a thick wooden paddle. Sometimes holes were cut in the paddle to make the beating more painful. Of those students, 70 percent were in five Southern states: Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas.

Mr. Lyman describes different viewpoints on the use of corporal punishment, including the opinions by evangelicals advocating it and the evidence offered by others (e.g., the American Academy of Pediatrics) against it. Based almost certainly on anecdotal evidence, some believe “it works,” meaning students no longer misbehave, I guess.

Whether corporal punishment deters misbehavior would an easy question to examine. In studying it, I’d also like to examine the other punitive methods of behavior management. And, quite importantly, I’d like to know what sorts of positive behavior management strategies are employed. In 1993-94, Jim Kauffman and a group of colleagues drafted a document addressing violence among children and how educators might address it; one of the recommendations was to eschew violence as a means of discipline. I’m still in agreement with that view.

Link to Mr. Lyman’s story (free subscription required). Link to the AAP policy statement on “Corporal Punishment in the schools.” Link to the violence statement by Porfessor Kauffman and others.