Reading First

Initiative

Impact on CLD Students

Meghan

Minardi

•Part of No Child

Left Behind Act of 2001

•$900 million state grant

program

Reading First

“The purpose of Reading First is to ensure that all children in America learn to read well by

the end of third grade.”

“Reading First provides assistance to states and districts

to establish scientifically based reading programs for students enrolled in kindergarten through grade

three. Funds support increased professional development

to ensure that all teachers have the skills they need to teach these programs effectively. Reading First also

supports the use of screening and diagnostic tools and classroom-based instructional reading

assessments to measure how well students are reading and to monitor their progress.”

students are systematically and explicitly taught the five skills identified by research (NPR) as critical to early reading success.

• Phonemic awareness •

• Phonics •

• Fluency •

• Vocabulary •

•Comprehension •

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While the Reading First initiative, much like the other legislation in Title 1 under No Child Left Behind, reads well on paper, it is not only

detrimental to all students’ reading success in the upper grades, its effectiveness proves to be unbeneficial when teaching CLD students reading skills.

Designed by a panel of 72, that were required to have experience in:

– Training teachers how to teach reading using methods based on scientific research;

– Developing research based curriculum for effective reading instruction;

– Developing research assessments;– Teaching reading in the early grades;– Promoting research based reading programs to policy makers

on the local, state, and national level.

-Teaching English as a Second Language?-Working with English Language Learners?-Developing reading programs for English

Language Learners?

The panel

Scientifically based?

“What they mean is that there's a little vocabulary instruction. There's a little phonics instruction. There's some comprehension

instruction, and so on," explains Michael Kamil, an education professor at Stanford University in California, who was a National

Reading Panel member, it doesn't mean that they've tested this program to see that it works better than other programs"

Publishers use the term to advertise their products even though they have not been technically studied by the NRP

focus on isolated phonics instruction, not meaningful and in context instruction

In the study done by the U.S. Department of Education: initiative encourages

decoding, not comprehension,

“On average, across the 18 participating sites, estimated impacts on student

reading comprehension test scores were not statistically significant”

“examined the components of reading instruction in

isolation, without comparing

it to an integrated, more comprehensive approach”

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• “sound scientific research”

• “at risk students” mentioned, never ELL

• Use of DIBELS, etc.

PROBLEMS

Implications for the

Classroom

English Language Learners and the Five Essential Components of Reading Instruction by Beth Antunez

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