Transcript Document

Reading Faster, Reading Better:
A Goal Worth Fighting For?
Prepared by
Colette Chabbott
George Washington University
[email protected]
http://www.equip123.net/docs/E1-EGRinEFACountriesDeskStudy.pdf
Presentation purpose
 Place current interest in early
grades reading in the larger
context of EFA and the
Millennium Development Goals
 Highlight a few findings from
Accelerating Early Grades
Reading, a desk review now
available on
www.equip123.net
 Discuss a few of the likely
hurdles to undertaking
international work focused on
early grades reading
Audience
“We”
=
Policy wonks +
The education experts who advise them.
=
People who are in a position to affect both policy and
activities of at least one major funder of education
activities in countries where EFA is yet to be achieved.
Why should USAID care about
early grades reading?
 Americans have consistently played a leading role in promoting EFA.
Whether the Agency’s ultimate goal is meeting basic human needs or
promoting democracy, we find either hard to imagine without literate
citizens.
 Despite dramatic increases in access to basic education in many
countries, the central goal of EFA—a quality basic and education—is
not within reach for most children in many countries
 Systemic approaches to improving the quality of education in these
countries are necessary but they will not a significant difference for
many children in several high priority countries for 5-10 years
 Innovations promising to spur the expansion of high quality basic
education thusfar have proved disappointing.
The problem of current global goals
 The MDG for education we currently have--all children
will complete primary education by 2015--was chosen in a
somewhat ad hoc manner
 Primary school completion is a default in the absence of a
consensus in the education community around a minimum
learning outcome for primary schooling.
 In some high priority countries, such as Bangladesh, the
current MDG has resulted in too many children being
pushed into too few classrooms, with little regard for
learning outcomes.
What would make a better goal?
Former UNICEF Executive Director’s four point criteria for
creating do-able global initiatives:
 Simple interventions with the consensus among a
significant part of the scientific community
 Potential for significant impact and simple indicators to
measure that impact
 Relatively low cost production and delivery systems that
actually reach the grass roots
 Interventions and indicators which are appealing to the
general public and with which political leaders want to be
associated.
Ideal global goal for education
 Something critical to lifelong learning (Significant)
 Something critical to achievement in more than one subject (Significant)
 Something that could be measured in fairly small increments, so that even
countries starting at fairly low levels of performance could show progress.
(Political commitment)
 Something that the minimally educated people available in remote areas of
high priority EFA countries could teach. (Available delivery agents)
 Something that appeals to decision-makers and parents at an intuitive
level. (Political commitment)
 Something that has emerged from technological advances in learning
sciences over the last 20 years (Scientific consensus)
 Something the existing education system could deliver or tolerate. (Lowcost delivery system)
What makes us think early grades reading might
constitute a do-able global goal for education?
 No other single subject appears to have the potential to
have as big an influence on learning achievement.
 Improving reading instruction offers a way to improve
achievement until such time some countries can a complete
overhaul of existing curricula and teacher education.
 It may take rocket science to develop good reading
curricula and reading teacher education, but it doesn’t take
a PhD to deliver it.
What did we learn from
the desk review?
 Most children can learn to read independently in most
languages by the end of Grade 3, the point at which many
children in less-industrialized schools are dropping out.
 A quality early grades reading curricula should be able to
produce “independent readers”, ie, children who .
 read quickly and accurately enough to enable fluid comprehension,
 are able to express themselves and communicate with others using
writing, and
 have developed a range of strategies for addressing new and
complex reading material.
…and more…
 If we want to produce independent learners, we
must teach more than phonics, spelling and the
alphabet.
 There are at least nine dimensions of reading that
children need to learn in the early grades
 More complex reasoning skills and later ability to
decode more complex texts are associated with
oral language and comprehension skills that
should be part of any balanced approach to
teaching reading.
…and more….
 Where disadvantaged children have not had preschool, schools will
have to do more work with oral language in the early grades of
primary school than they currently do.
 Reading skills learned in ECE but not reinforced in primary school are
not likely to be retained.
 Many reading interventions favored in the U.S. and U.K. assume a
school system staffed by professional teachers, functioning at some
minimal level that can make some of its own curricular decisions. This
is not realistic in many high priority EFA countries.
 Simple quantitative targets, such as reading 60 wpm, are not the final
goal of reading instruction, but they can serve as leading indicators of
progress towards the goal of independent reading.
Is that it?
No. For more on EGR see:
Chabbott, C. (2006). Accelerating early grades reading in
high priority EFA countries: a desk review
(USAID/EQUIP1). Washington, DC: American Institutes
for Research. http://www.equip123.net/docs/E1EGRinEFACountriesDeskStudy.pdf
And for lots more, see:
Abadzi, H. (2006). Efficient learning for the poor: insights
from the frontier of cognitive neuroscience (Operations
Evaluation Division). Washington, DC: World Bank.
How does EGR line up with the “doable” criteria for international
development organizations?
 Significant impact that can be simply measured:
Yes
 Appealing to general public and attractive to
political leaders: Yes
 Low cost production & delivery methods: ??
 Scientific consensus: Yes & No
Low-cost delivery systems?

By definition, many unindustrialized countries do not have the means to
deliver minimal human services in remote areas, either through government or
non-government organizations.

Curricula and texbooks in many of these countries do not teach several
components of reading & ministries cannot change them overnight.

Quality education for poor communities has never been self-financing. Funds
outside those communities must be marshaled to establish reading programs
within them.

Similarly, international funds are the only way to achieve any MDGs in some
very poor countries, i.e., international funds must be used to support and build
up the formal education system for a decade or more. Reading interventions
may involve developing alternative, stop-gap delivery systems in the mean
time.
Scientific consensus?
• On a large scale, efforts to use what we know about reading to create
challenging standards for early grades reading in the US and the UK
have tended to reduce balanced, individualized instruction in all
components of reading to drill and practice on phonics, alphabet
knowledge, and spelling.
• Efforts to use reading as a means to improving overall school quality
have, in many cases, led to the development and enforcement of
achievement standards without the development and enforcement of
resource standards.
 Reading experts therefore tend to be leary of the current enthusiasm of
international development policy wonks, of any attempt to “simplify”
or codify reading instruction or to focus on one component or “leading
indicators” rather than a wholistic approach.
So are we ready to change the
education MDG?
Not quite yet.
International development professionals need to:
 Curb their enthusiasm while working the kinks out of some model
early grades reading interventions in several countries.
 Draw local school systems and teachers into the process and focus on
interventions those systems and teachers are capable of implementing
 Support the development of locally appropriate tests of oral reading
fluency and other leading indicators.
 Support comparisons of different reading interventions.
More to do…
 Engage EGR experts in IRA, SIL and
universities in this process
 Fight with development funders and
contractors, not the reading experts, to
ensure reading interventions do not get
reduced to a few components
Current EGR Initiatives
in Bangladesh
Deliverables
BRAC Primary Schools :
Multi-Strategy Learning Programme
Delivery Agents
Delivery Systems
Potential
Reach
<10%
Strong: Addit’l 40 min
language period in G1-G2
covers most dimensions of
EGR learning.
Weak. Limited to practice in
existing exercises in weak
gov’t Bangla textbook.
Village residents trained
as BRAC Primary
School teachers
BRAC Primary
Schools
Village residents trained
as BRAC Pre-Primary
School teachers
BRAC
>50%
BRAC University:
Primary Bangla Learning Packages
Weak. Addit’l exercises
geared to weak govt Bangla
textbook
Govt. teachers
None
>50%
PLAN, Int’l & Dhaka Ahsania
Mission: Shopan
Strong. After school
programme covers most
dimensions of EGR learning.
Adolescents?
NGOs
>50%
BRAC Education Programme:
Tutoring support centres
Sustainable?
No.
100%
supported by
BRAC
Yes.
Families pay
minimal
tuition.
No.
BRAC pays
teachers’
honoraria.
??
Considering
franchising.
For more information on
EQUIP1
Please contact: John Hatch
[email protected]
Jane Benbow
[email protected]