Leadership for Literacy

Research-Based Practice, PreK-3

Joseph F. Murphy

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781483360744
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Methods for Reading

This groundbreaking text compiles 20 years of research to prove the link between effective literacy programs and the crucial role administrators play in developing successful literacy instruction.

PART I

Laying the Foundations for Success

1

Exploring the Foundations of Leadership for Literacy

The knowledge is now available to make worthwhile improvements in reading throughout the United States. If the practices seen in the classrooms of the better teachers in the best schools could be introduced everywhere, the improvements would be dramatic. (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, 1985, p. 3)

We have good evidence that most children can become literate alongside their peers. Not just a majority, but virtually all. Not someday, but along with their peers. (Allington, 1995, p. 2)

Setting the Stage

The knowledge exists to teach all but a handful of severely disabled children to read well. (American Federation of Teachers, 1999, p. 5)

We know much about how to design reading activities that promote a solid and successful start in reading and literacy for every child in America. (Kameenui, Simmons, Baker, Chard, Dickson, Gunn, et al., 1998, p. 47)

In this introductory chapter, I establish the framework for an exploration of literacy leadership. Following some initial comments about the focus of the book, I summarize the four areas that were mined to create it: effective schools, quality instruction, successful reading programs, and leadership in schools in which all students master literacy. I feature a comprehensive design for strengthening literacy at the primary grades. I attend, in particular, to the importance of consistent efforts across all levels of the educational system—from classroom, to school, to district, to state. Some key insights from this nested perspective for successful literacy education are enumerated. In Chapters 2 through 4, I extend this introductory material by framing the concepts of literacy and leadership that are at the heart of this book, by discussing the current state of literacy in the United States, and by reviewing foundational principles of high-quality reading programs.

Focus

We know how to give students a good start and a proper foundation, and we should do it. (Williams, 1991, p. 17)

While I illuminate many facets of the concept of literacy in this volume, the spotlight shines most brightly on the early years of schooling. I focus here because a consensus has emerged over the last twenty years about the critical nature of the primary grades (preK–3) in terms of literacy development (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). As Taylor and her colleagues (1999) remark, “our number one priority for funding research should be to improve classroom reading instruction in kindergarten and the primary grades” (p. 1). Taylor and Traxis (n.d.) make a parallel argument in terms of resource deployment in education. Much of this consensus emanates from data revealing that many youngsters arrive in kindergarten with literacy backgrounds that place them at significant risk of school failure (Hart & Risley, 1995; Smith, 1997). This knowledge, coupled with our inability until now to develop successful post-primary interventions for students with low literacy achievement (Pikulski, 1994) and the growing recognition that students who remain behind after the second or third grade face very long odds in the race for school success (Honig, 1997; Juel, 1988), forcefully directs our attention to the literacy of young children.

While I cover the spectrum of students defined by ability and family background, I also provide space to investigating ways to ensure high levels of literacy for youngsters who historically have not fared well in our schools, that is, those children on the wrong side of the achievement gap (Spiegel, 1995). As Snow and her colleagues (1998) remind us, the group includes:

(1) children living in low-income communities; (2) children with limited English proficiency; (3) preschool children slated to attend an elementary school where achievement is chronically low; (4) children suffering from specific cognitive deficiencies, hearing impairments, and early language impairments; and (5) children whose parents have a history of reading problems. (p. 137)

Given the moral imperative of addressing the underachievement of these children, as well as the shifting economic and political landscape that heightens both the problem and the demand for its resolution, it seems especially appropriate to target strategies that promise to strengthen literacy outcomes for students at risk. In understanding this endeavor, the featured mechanism is prevention of problems rather than their remediation, as recommended by a host of reading analysts (Clay, 1994; Duffy-Hester, 1999; Slavin & Madden, 1989). Throughout, however, the focus is on reading and writing for purpose, not as ends in themselves. In addition, I am concerned with explaining success as well as describing it.

Finally, it is important to note that the material in this book is constructed from the best available knowledge—“a productive interplay among research and application” (Jones & Smith-Burke, 1999, p. 263)—about policies, practices, and behaviors that promote literacy achievement. Following Allington’s (1997a) advice, my aim is to build up a “generally compelling basis for modifying current practice” (p. 34). While I am cognizant of the ways that answers to literacy questions have been informed by “polemics” (Stanovich, 2000, p. 388), “half-baked philosophy” (p. 411), and “political” rather than “scientific” criteria (p. 401), the touchstone here is “the basic research on reading that has allowed the community of reading scientists and educators to agree on what needs to be done” (American Federation of Teachers, 1999, p. 7). How far we have progressed in developing that knowledge can be gleaned by reviewing the state of the art in reading research in 1960, 1980, and 2000.

The purpose of the [1959] meeting was to map out programs of needed research. Participants agreed that the problem of beginning reading, although acknowledged to be a difficult one, desperately needed more attention from researchers. They felt that the research then available provided evidence so vague, contradictory, and incomplete as to encourage conflicting interpretations. No serious research could state with any degree of certainty, on the basis of such evidence, that either one or another approach to beginning reading was indeed the best or the worst. (Chall, 1983, p. 4)

If one is willing to accept the standardized reading achievement test score as a criterion for effective instruction, then there is now sufficient evidence to say that some of the variables associated with successful instruction in reading at the elementary grades are known. (Berliner, 1981, p. 203)

No one could come away from reading this book without appreciating the enormous amount that has been learned in the past two decades about literacy development in the preschool and elementary years. (Pressley, 1998b, p. 274)

Audience

Morris, Shaw, and Perney (1990) assert that the struggle to ensure high levels of literacy achievement for all youngsters “will ultimately involve mobilizing societal and political support to change present educational policy” (p. 148). I concur, and I agree with Stanovich (2000) that “we have an obligation … to make sure that policies are informed by the best, most current, and most convergent knowledge we can provide” (p. 386). It is my aim, therefore, to influence political actions that shape the nature of literacy in our nation’s school districts, schools, and classrooms. Consequently, policymakers at the state (e.g., legislative staff, Department of Education personnel), district, and school levels form one audience for the insights ribboned throughout these chapters. At the same time, I am very much interested in directing the behaviors of leaders at the district and school levels into channels that will result in high levels of literacy achievement for all students. While the prime audience here is the principal, the work is also designed to inform teacher leadership at the school level and administration at the district office.

A Comprehensive Framework for Action

We need evidence from many different levels of analysis. This is as true when trying to understand literacy as it is for any other complex behavior. (Stanovich, 2000, p. 158)

The great challenge for reading educators, therefore, is one of understanding the parts of the system and their interrelations. (Adams, 1990, p. 6)

In the pages that follow, I describe the significance of a comprehensive approach to strengthening literacy, an approach that provides the scaffolding for the material in Chapters 5 through 12. I then explore the four realms of knowledge that were harvested to form the comprehensive design.

The Framework

Indicators [of success] concern home conditions of each student, the community in which the school is located, the organizational features of each school, the resources in each school, the reading program initiative the school takes, the school principal’s activities, the teaching experience of the reading teacher, and each teacher’s activities and strategies in teaching reading, and his or her views about reading. (Postlethwaite & Ross, 1992, p. 13)

Having a significant effect on literacy achievement will require operating in several domains: effecting changes in homes and schools, encouraging communication between parents and teachers, working to reform curriculum and school management, and enlisting community, state, and federal support for education. (Snow, Barnes, Chandler, Goodman, & Hemphill, 1991, p. 164)

The architecture I develop assumes that “the more elements of good parenting, good teaching, and good schooling that children experience, the greater the likelihood that they will achieve their potential as readers” (Anderson et al., 1985, p. 117). The design, therefore, attends to the multiple actors in the literacy script and to the multiple levels in the system. Throughout, coherence and integration across actors and levels is of critical concern. Finally, within this coherent pattern, the viability of strategies is highlighted. Underlying everything in the framework is the belief that knowledge should backward map from our best understanding of student learning. Center stage is occupied by “the learner and the ‘academic work’ the learner is engaging in” (Hoffman, 1991, p. 946).

The central idea here is that since “district policies, school level decisions, approaches used by individual teachers [and] other factors determine … reading achievement” (Armor, Conroy-Osequera, Cox, King, McDonnell, Pascal, et al., 1976, p. 20), what is critical is coordinated action on many fronts and across many levels of the educational system. Literacy interventions that appear as “isolated phenomena” (Gaffney & Paynter, 1994, p. 26) are rarely successful. In many places, state policies, district frameworks, school actions, and classroom work are only loosely aligned. “Practice[s] based on widely differing theoretical assumptions” (Pinnell, Lyons, DeFord, Bryk, & Seltzer, 1994, p. 10) are often thrown together. The power of coherence is absent. Teachers and pupils are often pulled by conflicting goals. There are often frequent shifts in programmatic direction. The benefits of action from multiple levels reinforcing common objectives are lost (Creemers, 1994; Murphy, 1992).

On the other hand, mastery of literacy skills is associated with comprehensive designs that weave levels of the schooling enterprise into a common tapestry (Slavin & Madden, 1989; State of New York, 1974). “The process of learning and development at every level of the education system” (Lyons & Pinnell, 1999, p. 197) is attended to. Each level (e.g., the school) is carefully nested within the next level (e.g., the district). Features do not exist in isolation. Rather, they can be viewed “as a set of interrelated components” (Samuels, 1981, p. 256). Influence moves in both directions through the levels (Samuels, 1981). The home and the school are linked and employ the same playbook to ensure that all children learn to read well (Snow et al., 1991). And this same systems ideology is applied within each of the levels as well. For example, there is a “comprehensive literacy framework in classrooms” (Williams, Scharer, & Pinnell, 2000, p. 27); teaching itself is a system. What is important is not so much the individual elements but “how the features fit together to form a whole … individual features make sense only in terms of how they relate with others that surround them” (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999, p. 75).

So far, I have shown that my framework underscores (1) the influence of the actors at multiple levels of the educational enterprise, that is, “school-level change is as important as change within classrooms” (Taylor, Pearson, Clark, & Walpole, 1999, p. 43) and (2) the importance of a comprehensive approach to action, with its essential requirement that each piece of the system perform in a coherent, coordinated, and consistent manner. My final point guides us to the road map needed to formulate an integrated design. Much of the literature on school improvement reads like the quest for the Holy Grail, the search for the single variable that will guarantee success. The position taken here is quite different. As Fraser (1989) reports:

The educational productivity research highlights that we should not expect any single factor to have an enormous impact on student learning; rather, the key to improving student learning and enhancing school effectiveness lies in simultaneously optimizing several different factors each of which bears a modest relationship to achievement. (p. 716)

Specifically, in the area of reading “a combination of factors, rather than one or two, makes the critical difference in raising the reading achievement level in a school” (Williams, Scharer, & Pinnell, 2000, p. 28; see also Fletcher & Lyon, 1998; Phi Delta Kappa, 1980; Sanacore, 1997).

There are so many important elements in a good reading program, that simple, “quick fix,” single element approaches usually cannot produce a significant impact on achievemen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Introduction
• Preface
• About the Author
• Dedication
• Epigraphs
• PART I: LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS FOR SUCCESS
• PART II: LEADING FOR LITERACY
• References
• Index