A wonderful thread full of comments who care a great deal about kids and families. I would love to hear more from Dan Plonsey. Can you recommend a person or organization leading efforts for greater economic equality? Who should we as educators (or just as concerned citizens) be following for guidance on what actions make a meaningful impact? Higher taxes for the wealthy is an easy thing to vote for but can we also direct where that tax revenue goes? I don't know how to do that yet and I'm ready to learn. Affordable healthcare strikes me as being similar to education: a way to reduce economic inequality over time. Not a quick fix but an investment that pays out over generations. A great place to put our time, energy, and tax dollars.
In terms of what I can directly control, it's my instruction. Improving how I teach is the fastest way I know to improve opportunities for kids. It's a "do what you know" or "lift where you stand" sort of mentality that does not absolve me from doing more, but does suggest I should use my talents/knowledge to impact economic inequality.
Something that is clear to me: Dan and Claude (and folks in the comments) want to do right by humanity. The "how" is where we find our challenge. #forthekids
Great thread - thanks all. If we begin looking at 'upstream' approaches to prevent future poverty and disrupt current cycles of poverty (and I think we should), teaching reading would still be at the top of my list. In the information age, earning a living wage or participating meaningfully in society is nearly impossible without literacy.
There's no doubt in my mind that eliminating (or greatly reducing) poverty would positively impact students' reading skills, attendance, mental well-being, post-secondary outcomes, etc. But there's also no doubt in my mind that eliminating (or greatly reducing) illiteracy would also positively impact students' reading skills, attendance, mental well-being, post-secondary outcomes, etc. And I already know how to do one of those. I spend my time and energy advocating for evidence-aligned literacy instruction - - not instead of, but in support of reducing poverty and increasing human flourishing.
Governments find it easier (and cheaper) to blame teachers and school systems for low reading scores even though we know that investments in supporting vulnerable communities before birth and in the first five years of life can work toward bridging the inequality gap.
Poverty and socieo-economic disadvantage is a major determiner in achieving academic outcomes. However, teachers can still add enormous value and implement change through their work with students. Teachers must be sensitive and responsive to the needs of students. This cannot be scripted or found in a ‘one size fits all’ syllabus. Good teaching is nuanced. This means we must invest in strong professional development to empower teachers to build their ‘tool boxes’.
In considering academic achievement, one area that receives less attention is the ‘teachability’ of students. Teachability is impacted by the student’s unique characteristics. It is influenced by student trauma, neurodiversity, executive functioning, ability to hold attention, cultural backgrounds, family values, processing speed, working memory, degree of oral language ( in any language- mother tongue and/or additional languages). These individual differences are often outside the control of teachers but directly impact a child’s progress. In disadvantaged communities the ‘teachability’ of students is often compromised. Greater support is required to assist these students to reach their potential. This means more government money for increased resources, student services such as speech therapy and a lower teacher- student ratio.
I think it’s a both/and issue. While we press for social improvements…we know how slow the democratic process is. We still have to give our students the very best chance to get their education and hopefully use it to their advantage. Those achievement/opportunity gaps are not going away with what we are doing now.
I agree. That was an interesting episode to watch. I would love to go visit the school and the community myself. I wonder if there is more to the story of their success. My feeling is that teaching literacy well and addressing poverty are both vital. But the part teachers have control of is how they teach literacy.
I suggest listening to Episode 11 of Sold a Story to see what's possible NOW.
"The sad fact is: Schools with lots of low-income students usually have low reading scores. But according to state test score data, this school was one of the best in Ohio."
I have asked about Steubenville…I’m curious about the % of English learners. From my limited research, they have very few compared to where I have taught.
I'm sure there are amazing things happening in Steubenville and a lot to be proud of. But I am also confident as with any person or thing that is put on a pedestal, that there are things we don't know about in terms of what is going on there. I'm also confident there are amazing teachers working their butts off in other places doing strong literacy instruction who are not seeing the results they are seeing. One part that made take pause about the Sold A Story episode was the little tidbit about the teacher keeping clothes in her teacher closet for kids who needed it. That is terrific that this teacher chose to do it. But teachers shouldn't have to be saviors or shouldn't feel that they need to do that to be a good teacher. It's their job to teach well and until there is a team behind children on all parts of what is needed to succeed we will only have pockets of greatness.
Just for clarity: the school at East Elementary in Steubenville has a closet with extra clothes for students, not an individual teacher. An instructional coach at the school manages the closet. At least that's how I read the transcript. (https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2025/02/20/sold-a-story-e11-the-outlier)
That might very well be correct. I'll check it out. Thank you--I'm wondering if having that closet is bigger than their reading program. Does that type of effort have more to with what leadership did. My bigger point is that I don't think that SFA is a silver bullet and that I would guess (but don't know for sure) that there was more to their success than a good program. I am still left with other questions. Who funds that closet for example? Who brings the clothes in? It's wonderful if the staff does that, but more sustainable if the community supports it. Until that is a team effort between schools and communities, we will never see that change everywhere because not everyone will be willing to volunteer for jobs that are bigger than what they signed up for.
Yes!!! I think I have my thoughts and feelings about this because my school adopted SFA, and we did not see similar results. We had it for 6 years. I could go on and on about it…maybe a bit of trauma there! But there really is a difference between schools with low SES and schools with low SES and high EL percentage. 😳🫢🤔
Have you listened yet to Michelle on Andy Johnson's Podcast? A school with top notch literacy scores for years doing what they call 'balanced literacy' being forced to change gears. Hmmm. This story is not being talked about..And also fascinating because what Michelle is describing is not how many people would describe balanced literacy. If we are going to talk about this we have to talk about this as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeeHFJLNX6g
YES! I was on that Zoom. I don’t think legislating what and how we teach is the answer. It’s beyond whole language vs. phonics. My whole career has been working with ELs in Title 1 schools, and my last position was as an instructional coach for ELs and teachers. I’ve seen some things. 😳🤐🤔
I am confident that if SFA was the answer then more people would just be doing it. Full disclosure: I'm getting a little tired of the same old routine. A podcast comes out about a silver bullet....lots of chatter about let's just do that. I keep thinking: Yes, there is a story and a good story being told BUT which stories are not being told.
I'm pleased that my discussion with Claude has had a number of interesting comments! I'll respond to several.
I'm hoping we can return to discussion of the core points I was trying to make with Claude. Yes, we need “both/and”: classroom/school improvement in addition to economic/political change – that's exactly my point. So where is the call for economic change, within our work as educators and researchers? Where did it go? I read endless debates about curriculum, pedagogy, and school/district policies. Not surprising, given that that's our area of expertise – but why is that? Why did our profession choose to be so apolitical? Remember the emergency room staff that called for gun control, who were told to “stay in your lane?” But wasn't it their job to keep people alive? I'm sure they would rather write endless papers about the best way to treat gunshot wounds. Sadly, that's where we educators are, and in doing so, we abandon our responsibility to children. Because none of us calls for economic change within our papers, articles, interviews, books, the mainstream press has learned to ignore it too, and now we're in a situation where policies are being made, education punitively defunded, and families are choosing charters and home-schooling – all based on the erroneous but near-universal belief that public education is “broken,” teachers are lazy, and unions exist to defend “incompetent” teachers. Otherwise liberal people unashamedly repeat the widespread racist/classist claim that “those” people don't know how to parent, and “those” kids have no morality or work ethic. Clearly, these ideas are in line with the whole Trump package. The very minimum that we can do is to clearly state that the primary cause of the education gap is SES inequality – every time! – and only then go on to advocate for whatever additional classroom change we support.
W/r/t recommendations for what specific equality cause to join, I've chosen to work for CalCare (Medicare for all in California). Nurses unions across the country are working for medicare for all, and the CNA in CA is organized and powerful. Each year a new bill makes it to the CA legislature, and each year the Democrats kill it, but there's been progress. If we can get CFT, CTA, along with the caregivers in SEIU as involved as CNA is, then I think we may finally succeed. My larger hope is that educators-nurses-caregivers (people in direct contact with children and families) can become the core of a workers' party or caucus, and I think that healthcare is just the issue to build around. Success will require collective actions (not just individual extracurricular work), e.g., our unions busing large numbers of educators to Sacramento to rally during the workday.
I'm reluctant to enter the Steubenville discussion precisely for the above reasons. I think that these “miracle” stories are popular in the mainstream media because they reinforce the narrative that the remaining 99% of us educators are incompetent, and the blatant lie that poverty needn't have any impact, and therefore doesn't need to be addressed. Consultants make millions by asserting that these "miracles" can be duplicated, yet the lack of instances of successfully scaling up leads me to believe that a Steubenville or a Mississippi, if even valid, is quite simply a data point from a couple SD above the mean which occur in any distribution: the existence of Shohei Ohtani doesn't prove that we can all hit 50 homers, steal 50 bases, and pitch. And lastly: even if we can scale up the Steubenville success, it will not magically make economic inequality go away: we'll still have millions without decent healthcare; we'll still pay crucial caretaking jobs miserably.
Thank you for raising such important points! Here's what I think you're missing:
"But wasn't it their job to keep people alive? I'm sure they would rather write endless papers about the best way to treat gunshot wounds."
I'm guessing there aren't endless papers being written about the best way to treat gunshot wounds. I'm guessing that when it comes to something so fundamental, it's widely accepted within the medical community--especially by those working directly with victims of gunshots in the emergency room.
By contrast, because we still don't have widespread agreement on the most effective AND efficient methods for teaching the fundamentals of reading, reading specialists like me (when schools are in a position to hire them) end up working with students who did not have their "wounds" treated effectively in the classroom. Moreover, I need to spend additional time rewriting inadequate assessments and training teachers on why they need to use them--and also train them in classroom practices that teach what they assess.
This is all extremely inefficient: we know what to do; we know how to do it; we need to agree that we'll do it to free up time to advocate for economic equality. The emergency care physician doesn't forestall dressing the wound in order to advocate for gun control. We are doing the same triage in schools--and we need to get this right--right now. As a profession, we need to prioritize best practices in the classroom to stem the bleeding.
I just got a beautiful call to action along these lines, a cri de couer regarding the centrality of literacy, from my beloved and badass colleagues over at the Writing for Understanding collaborative. I’m trying to help them figure out how to make their email blast shareable, but here it is shared with at least you all, Claude’s readers, in its entirety:
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An Urgent Message For Our Readers
Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope…. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories…. Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.”
Kofi Annan
We as a nation are currently undergoing, from the federal level, an unprecedented attack against equity in a great many forms. As the developers of an approach to writing instruction that we call Writing for Understanding, the Vermont Writing Collaborative would like to share some thoughts with you as educators about what equity in education can mean, and why it matters.
A teacher in a first grade public school classroom planned a unit on environmental sustainability. Using The Lorax as an anchor text, the teacher wanted all their students to be able to write a supported piece in response to the question “How does the Lorax feel about caring for the earth?”
They knew that many of their students could not read this text independently, so the first two reads were entirely readaloud. On the third readaloud, the teacher introduced the question, then guided students, page by page, to discuss in pairs what they were seeing /reading on that page that showed how the Lorax feels about the earth.
Using cut-out pictures, the class created a group chart of public notes (evidence). Led by the teacher, the class discussed that all this evidence showed how much the Lorax cares for the earth. Students then chose which pieces of evidence they would use for their own writing and, over the next few days, drew the evidence they had chosen and then composed or dictated a sentence to describe the picture evidence.
At the end of the instruction, all the first graders read their Lorax pieces aloud to each other - a complete piece of writing that they themselves had constructed successfully.
What do we mean by equity, and why does it matter?
Underlying this story is a value: the value of equity for all, the value that “everybody matters.” This teacher had designed a unit in which literacy - reading substantively, lots of discussing and sharing with peers, and finally writing - is for everyone.
Equity does not mean sameness. It does not mean ignoring the diversity of student experience, of student needs. Rather, it means paying profound attention to high standards - for all. It means doubling down on making sure that every student has the instruction/opportunity they need to achieve full literacy so that, ultimately, they are independently proficient.
In this Lorax unit, equity begins with using a text of substance, a text worth reading and knowing. It begins with a plan for how the text will become accessible for every student in the class. Equity means giving every student the opportunity to deeply know the text (even those who cannot yet read it independently), using multiple reads and frequent paired and full-class conversation, building deep and solid comprehension of written language and of that particular text. Equity means guided support so that all students begin to internalize what thoughtful writing can look like. And equity means inclusion - the creation of a classroom community culture of shared ideas, shared conversation, and shared recognition that everyone has value and everyone can learn.
In a very real sense, this approach to writing instruction is fundamentally democratic. In this sense, democracy is more than a form of government - it is a way of living, a worldview. When equity is the basis for literacy instruction, students are living the democratic experience of “everybody matters.” They experience what it feels like to develop agency (“I can do this”), what it feels like to problem solve (“we need to figure out this idea together”), what it feels like to respect others (“I can see that you can do this, too”).
Clearly, this is not the time to back away from equity in our classrooms - in so doing, we would be backing away from democracy itself. Please do what you can, wherever in education you find yourself, to provide what our children most need - the equity of sound, respectful, substantive instruction for all.
------------------------------------
(BACK TO ME) - if you’re still reading!
Of course, what-all contributes to students being able to read comfortably and confidently is a both/and - what isn’t?
But we who are self-described ‘literacy people', who have THIS year’s batch of students in front of us right now, or work with teachers desperate for guidance to help their particular students NOW, can’t wait for children to get what they need and deserve to have from society in this richest of rich countries.
And we’re now in as harsh and pitiless a political climate as any of us have ever experienced.
I always have been interested in what we can bring into students’ lives and experiences - into the classroom - to provide rich learning opportunities that can maximize student learning and efficacy.
What are the things that can keep curiosity alive, can teach kids - palpably - that they are each seen and valued - that they matter (too many dashes but I trust you get the point).
But I am interested in the power of working within those limits - figuring out what we can do with what we know and what we have available to us inside the walls of our schools.
….And doing that even while we spend our extracurricular time fighting the deep injustices.
Total agreement with both your advocacy for quality teaching methods and Dan’s response that taking steps to eradicate poverty are critical. May I add two comments?
1. I completely agree with your response that better teaching methods offer, in fact, a blue-ribbon method for addressing poverty. See, for example, Wolla, S. A., & Sullivan, J. (2017). Education, income, and wealth. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
2. Please, please consider addressing oral language decontextualized stages (OLDS) to your methods of high-quality teaching. That would include OLDS measures of students from high-poverty situations. In every Title I district where I headed projects, there was a documented mismatch between the OLDS of students and the OLDS expectation levels of the methods of curriculum delivery. When we matched the OLDS level of delivery to the OLDS level of students, we saw dramatic gains in both content and language plus a large spike in student enthusiasm. This is not, as some quality folks claim, a “deficit narrative” or attempt to blame the students. There is of course plenty of blame to go around. I blame myself for not taking the walk across the ASU campus to find reading research colleagues with whom to collaborate. I blame major curriculum publishers for not addressing the language-based needs. I blame national education test publishers for not seeking out and publishing assessments of OLDS*. I blame Title I district administrators for not becoming more curious about the impact of OLDS. But most certainly, I do not blame the students and I do not blame the parents. We’re the ones with the educational degrees, and we’re the ones who have the power to help.
*There are a few language level assessments around. See, for example:
a. Core Academic Language Skills (CALS) described at Phillips Galloway, E., & Uccelli, P. (2019). Examining developmental relations between core academic language skills and reading comprehension for English learners and their peers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(1), 15–31. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000276.
b. Preschool Language Assessment Instrument (PLAI) published by ProEd.
c. Test of Language for Learning-K (TOLL-K) at TeachersPayTeachers.
d. Assessment of Classroom Communication and Study Skills (ACCSS) by C. Simon. Out of print but sometimes found on Amazon.
I've never heard of the term "decontextualized language." Thanks for this mention. Where did you first learn about it? Where should I start reading to learn more?
Thanks for your question and the underlying curiosity. First a big shout out to Claude Goldenberg for making this space available for new ideas about what’s important to reading success.
Decontextualized language describes the amount of environmental support or clues needed for successful communication. As parents have witnessed, children move from a complete dependence on the environment (pointing, around ages 1 – 2), through supported (scaffolded) conversations about what’s going on around them (ages 2 – 3), to scaffolded conversations about their own sequences of experiences (ages 3 – 4), then being able to understand multiple sentence descriptions about objects and events not present (ages 4 – 5), and finally making use of a language-constructed internal model that can be used to critically evaluate what they hear (ages 5 – 7). Each of these oral language decontextualized stages (OLDS, my term) reflects a varying degree of dependence on what the listener and speaker sense (mostly see and hear) around them. Based on the normal development progress, here are the stages as I see them:
OLDS-1 is completely contextualized communication.
OLDS-2 is still mostly contextualized communication, although the language learner begins bringing up words from previous experiences.
OLDS-3 is a transitional stage between contextualized and decontextualized communication as the language learner gets help in talking about events not present in the immediate environment.
OLDS-4 is the first level of decontextualized language in which the language learner can understand talk about objects and events “remote in time and space.”
OLDS-5 is the final stage important to PreK-12 education, the stage that supports active and evaluative information processing, thoughtful responses, and the ability to provide support for ideas.
The ages for each OLDS are generalizations. Some children attain each OLDS earlier and many children, developing through them later, are still at OLDS-2 or OLDS-3 when they enter kindergarten. Some students remain at OLDS-3 even in middle school. Here’s the critical point: curricular activities presuppose an OLDS-4 level of language development starting at kindergarten. Knowing the OLDS of their students is a critical and powerful tool for teachers because they can modify their interactions to respect student immediate learning needs. This results in faster learning, increased OLDS, and eager learners.
I hope this addresses your question. I’ve left a lot out (including most literature citations) to keep it brief. Decontextualized language is a complex theoretical construct that has been around for at least 50 years and is still being discussed. * As a (retired) nationally certified SLP, former speech pathology department faculty, and district level educational consultant, I’ve seen how extremely important this information is. Projects acknowledging student needs based on OLDS have been dramatically successful. To get the word out I’ve written two books and published a newsletter**. The Substack, Building Eager Learners While Building Oral Language, represents my current effort in this area. Come check it out! One of the posts answers your question about how I first learned about decontextualized language. As for places to go to learn more, my own book, “Preparing for Success,” pulls together most of the relevant literature at that time. Others to consider are, The Language of Children Reared in Poverty,” edited by Vernon-Feagans and Ferran and “Communication Skills and Classroom Success,” edited by Simon.
I have seen that knowing and using information about OLDS can change lives, those of teachers, their students, and parents. Perhaps some day the term “decontextualized language” will become better known among those who make educational decisions.
*Uccelli, P. et al. (2018) Children’s early decontextualized talk predicts academic language proficiency in mid-adolescence. Child Dev. 2018 Jan 23;90(5):1650–1663. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13034
**Weiner, C. (2000). Preparing for success: Meeting the language and learning needs of young children from poverty homes. ECL Publications.
Ausberger, C., Creighton, J., & Martin, M. (1982). Learning to talk is child's play. Communication Skill Builders.
A wonderful thread full of comments who care a great deal about kids and families. I would love to hear more from Dan Plonsey. Can you recommend a person or organization leading efforts for greater economic equality? Who should we as educators (or just as concerned citizens) be following for guidance on what actions make a meaningful impact? Higher taxes for the wealthy is an easy thing to vote for but can we also direct where that tax revenue goes? I don't know how to do that yet and I'm ready to learn. Affordable healthcare strikes me as being similar to education: a way to reduce economic inequality over time. Not a quick fix but an investment that pays out over generations. A great place to put our time, energy, and tax dollars.
In terms of what I can directly control, it's my instruction. Improving how I teach is the fastest way I know to improve opportunities for kids. It's a "do what you know" or "lift where you stand" sort of mentality that does not absolve me from doing more, but does suggest I should use my talents/knowledge to impact economic inequality.
Something that is clear to me: Dan and Claude (and folks in the comments) want to do right by humanity. The "how" is where we find our challenge. #forthekids
Great thread - thanks all. If we begin looking at 'upstream' approaches to prevent future poverty and disrupt current cycles of poverty (and I think we should), teaching reading would still be at the top of my list. In the information age, earning a living wage or participating meaningfully in society is nearly impossible without literacy.
There's no doubt in my mind that eliminating (or greatly reducing) poverty would positively impact students' reading skills, attendance, mental well-being, post-secondary outcomes, etc. But there's also no doubt in my mind that eliminating (or greatly reducing) illiteracy would also positively impact students' reading skills, attendance, mental well-being, post-secondary outcomes, etc. And I already know how to do one of those. I spend my time and energy advocating for evidence-aligned literacy instruction - - not instead of, but in support of reducing poverty and increasing human flourishing.
I agree with both parties.
Governments find it easier (and cheaper) to blame teachers and school systems for low reading scores even though we know that investments in supporting vulnerable communities before birth and in the first five years of life can work toward bridging the inequality gap.
Poverty and socieo-economic disadvantage is a major determiner in achieving academic outcomes. However, teachers can still add enormous value and implement change through their work with students. Teachers must be sensitive and responsive to the needs of students. This cannot be scripted or found in a ‘one size fits all’ syllabus. Good teaching is nuanced. This means we must invest in strong professional development to empower teachers to build their ‘tool boxes’.
In considering academic achievement, one area that receives less attention is the ‘teachability’ of students. Teachability is impacted by the student’s unique characteristics. It is influenced by student trauma, neurodiversity, executive functioning, ability to hold attention, cultural backgrounds, family values, processing speed, working memory, degree of oral language ( in any language- mother tongue and/or additional languages). These individual differences are often outside the control of teachers but directly impact a child’s progress. In disadvantaged communities the ‘teachability’ of students is often compromised. Greater support is required to assist these students to reach their potential. This means more government money for increased resources, student services such as speech therapy and a lower teacher- student ratio.
I think it’s a both/and issue. While we press for social improvements…we know how slow the democratic process is. We still have to give our students the very best chance to get their education and hopefully use it to their advantage. Those achievement/opportunity gaps are not going away with what we are doing now.
I agree. That was an interesting episode to watch. I would love to go visit the school and the community myself. I wonder if there is more to the story of their success. My feeling is that teaching literacy well and addressing poverty are both vital. But the part teachers have control of is how they teach literacy.
I suggest listening to Episode 11 of Sold a Story to see what's possible NOW.
"The sad fact is: Schools with lots of low-income students usually have low reading scores. But according to state test score data, this school was one of the best in Ohio."
https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2025/02/20/sold-a-story-e11-the-outlier
I was going to say the same thing. That podcast shows how much teachers can achieve even in the face of economic challenges.
I have asked about Steubenville…I’m curious about the % of English learners. From my limited research, they have very few compared to where I have taught.
I'm sure there are amazing things happening in Steubenville and a lot to be proud of. But I am also confident as with any person or thing that is put on a pedestal, that there are things we don't know about in terms of what is going on there. I'm also confident there are amazing teachers working their butts off in other places doing strong literacy instruction who are not seeing the results they are seeing. One part that made take pause about the Sold A Story episode was the little tidbit about the teacher keeping clothes in her teacher closet for kids who needed it. That is terrific that this teacher chose to do it. But teachers shouldn't have to be saviors or shouldn't feel that they need to do that to be a good teacher. It's their job to teach well and until there is a team behind children on all parts of what is needed to succeed we will only have pockets of greatness.
Just for clarity: the school at East Elementary in Steubenville has a closet with extra clothes for students, not an individual teacher. An instructional coach at the school manages the closet. At least that's how I read the transcript. (https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2025/02/20/sold-a-story-e11-the-outlier)
That might very well be correct. I'll check it out. Thank you--I'm wondering if having that closet is bigger than their reading program. Does that type of effort have more to with what leadership did. My bigger point is that I don't think that SFA is a silver bullet and that I would guess (but don't know for sure) that there was more to their success than a good program. I am still left with other questions. Who funds that closet for example? Who brings the clothes in? It's wonderful if the staff does that, but more sustainable if the community supports it. Until that is a team effort between schools and communities, we will never see that change everywhere because not everyone will be willing to volunteer for jobs that are bigger than what they signed up for.
Yes!!! I think I have my thoughts and feelings about this because my school adopted SFA, and we did not see similar results. We had it for 6 years. I could go on and on about it…maybe a bit of trauma there! But there really is a difference between schools with low SES and schools with low SES and high EL percentage. 😳🫢🤔
Have you listened yet to Michelle on Andy Johnson's Podcast? A school with top notch literacy scores for years doing what they call 'balanced literacy' being forced to change gears. Hmmm. This story is not being talked about..And also fascinating because what Michelle is describing is not how many people would describe balanced literacy. If we are going to talk about this we have to talk about this as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeeHFJLNX6g
YES! I was on that Zoom. I don’t think legislating what and how we teach is the answer. It’s beyond whole language vs. phonics. My whole career has been working with ELs in Title 1 schools, and my last position was as an instructional coach for ELs and teachers. I’ve seen some things. 😳🤐🤔
I am confident that if SFA was the answer then more people would just be doing it. Full disclosure: I'm getting a little tired of the same old routine. A podcast comes out about a silver bullet....lots of chatter about let's just do that. I keep thinking: Yes, there is a story and a good story being told BUT which stories are not being told.
I'm pleased that my discussion with Claude has had a number of interesting comments! I'll respond to several.
I'm hoping we can return to discussion of the core points I was trying to make with Claude. Yes, we need “both/and”: classroom/school improvement in addition to economic/political change – that's exactly my point. So where is the call for economic change, within our work as educators and researchers? Where did it go? I read endless debates about curriculum, pedagogy, and school/district policies. Not surprising, given that that's our area of expertise – but why is that? Why did our profession choose to be so apolitical? Remember the emergency room staff that called for gun control, who were told to “stay in your lane?” But wasn't it their job to keep people alive? I'm sure they would rather write endless papers about the best way to treat gunshot wounds. Sadly, that's where we educators are, and in doing so, we abandon our responsibility to children. Because none of us calls for economic change within our papers, articles, interviews, books, the mainstream press has learned to ignore it too, and now we're in a situation where policies are being made, education punitively defunded, and families are choosing charters and home-schooling – all based on the erroneous but near-universal belief that public education is “broken,” teachers are lazy, and unions exist to defend “incompetent” teachers. Otherwise liberal people unashamedly repeat the widespread racist/classist claim that “those” people don't know how to parent, and “those” kids have no morality or work ethic. Clearly, these ideas are in line with the whole Trump package. The very minimum that we can do is to clearly state that the primary cause of the education gap is SES inequality – every time! – and only then go on to advocate for whatever additional classroom change we support.
W/r/t recommendations for what specific equality cause to join, I've chosen to work for CalCare (Medicare for all in California). Nurses unions across the country are working for medicare for all, and the CNA in CA is organized and powerful. Each year a new bill makes it to the CA legislature, and each year the Democrats kill it, but there's been progress. If we can get CFT, CTA, along with the caregivers in SEIU as involved as CNA is, then I think we may finally succeed. My larger hope is that educators-nurses-caregivers (people in direct contact with children and families) can become the core of a workers' party or caucus, and I think that healthcare is just the issue to build around. Success will require collective actions (not just individual extracurricular work), e.g., our unions busing large numbers of educators to Sacramento to rally during the workday.
I'm reluctant to enter the Steubenville discussion precisely for the above reasons. I think that these “miracle” stories are popular in the mainstream media because they reinforce the narrative that the remaining 99% of us educators are incompetent, and the blatant lie that poverty needn't have any impact, and therefore doesn't need to be addressed. Consultants make millions by asserting that these "miracles" can be duplicated, yet the lack of instances of successfully scaling up leads me to believe that a Steubenville or a Mississippi, if even valid, is quite simply a data point from a couple SD above the mean which occur in any distribution: the existence of Shohei Ohtani doesn't prove that we can all hit 50 homers, steal 50 bases, and pitch. And lastly: even if we can scale up the Steubenville success, it will not magically make economic inequality go away: we'll still have millions without decent healthcare; we'll still pay crucial caretaking jobs miserably.
Thank you for raising such important points! Here's what I think you're missing:
"But wasn't it their job to keep people alive? I'm sure they would rather write endless papers about the best way to treat gunshot wounds."
I'm guessing there aren't endless papers being written about the best way to treat gunshot wounds. I'm guessing that when it comes to something so fundamental, it's widely accepted within the medical community--especially by those working directly with victims of gunshots in the emergency room.
By contrast, because we still don't have widespread agreement on the most effective AND efficient methods for teaching the fundamentals of reading, reading specialists like me (when schools are in a position to hire them) end up working with students who did not have their "wounds" treated effectively in the classroom. Moreover, I need to spend additional time rewriting inadequate assessments and training teachers on why they need to use them--and also train them in classroom practices that teach what they assess.
This is all extremely inefficient: we know what to do; we know how to do it; we need to agree that we'll do it to free up time to advocate for economic equality. The emergency care physician doesn't forestall dressing the wound in order to advocate for gun control. We are doing the same triage in schools--and we need to get this right--right now. As a profession, we need to prioritize best practices in the classroom to stem the bleeding.
thanks Dan, well written and explained.
I just got a beautiful call to action along these lines, a cri de couer regarding the centrality of literacy, from my beloved and badass colleagues over at the Writing for Understanding collaborative. I’m trying to help them figure out how to make their email blast shareable, but here it is shared with at least you all, Claude’s readers, in its entirety:
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An Urgent Message For Our Readers
Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope…. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories…. Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.”
Kofi Annan
We as a nation are currently undergoing, from the federal level, an unprecedented attack against equity in a great many forms. As the developers of an approach to writing instruction that we call Writing for Understanding, the Vermont Writing Collaborative would like to share some thoughts with you as educators about what equity in education can mean, and why it matters.
A teacher in a first grade public school classroom planned a unit on environmental sustainability. Using The Lorax as an anchor text, the teacher wanted all their students to be able to write a supported piece in response to the question “How does the Lorax feel about caring for the earth?”
They knew that many of their students could not read this text independently, so the first two reads were entirely readaloud. On the third readaloud, the teacher introduced the question, then guided students, page by page, to discuss in pairs what they were seeing /reading on that page that showed how the Lorax feels about the earth.
Using cut-out pictures, the class created a group chart of public notes (evidence). Led by the teacher, the class discussed that all this evidence showed how much the Lorax cares for the earth. Students then chose which pieces of evidence they would use for their own writing and, over the next few days, drew the evidence they had chosen and then composed or dictated a sentence to describe the picture evidence.
At the end of the instruction, all the first graders read their Lorax pieces aloud to each other - a complete piece of writing that they themselves had constructed successfully.
What do we mean by equity, and why does it matter?
Underlying this story is a value: the value of equity for all, the value that “everybody matters.” This teacher had designed a unit in which literacy - reading substantively, lots of discussing and sharing with peers, and finally writing - is for everyone.
Equity does not mean sameness. It does not mean ignoring the diversity of student experience, of student needs. Rather, it means paying profound attention to high standards - for all. It means doubling down on making sure that every student has the instruction/opportunity they need to achieve full literacy so that, ultimately, they are independently proficient.
In this Lorax unit, equity begins with using a text of substance, a text worth reading and knowing. It begins with a plan for how the text will become accessible for every student in the class. Equity means giving every student the opportunity to deeply know the text (even those who cannot yet read it independently), using multiple reads and frequent paired and full-class conversation, building deep and solid comprehension of written language and of that particular text. Equity means guided support so that all students begin to internalize what thoughtful writing can look like. And equity means inclusion - the creation of a classroom community culture of shared ideas, shared conversation, and shared recognition that everyone has value and everyone can learn.
In a very real sense, this approach to writing instruction is fundamentally democratic. In this sense, democracy is more than a form of government - it is a way of living, a worldview. When equity is the basis for literacy instruction, students are living the democratic experience of “everybody matters.” They experience what it feels like to develop agency (“I can do this”), what it feels like to problem solve (“we need to figure out this idea together”), what it feels like to respect others (“I can see that you can do this, too”).
Clearly, this is not the time to back away from equity in our classrooms - in so doing, we would be backing away from democracy itself. Please do what you can, wherever in education you find yourself, to provide what our children most need - the equity of sound, respectful, substantive instruction for all.
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(BACK TO ME) - if you’re still reading!
Of course, what-all contributes to students being able to read comfortably and confidently is a both/and - what isn’t?
But we who are self-described ‘literacy people', who have THIS year’s batch of students in front of us right now, or work with teachers desperate for guidance to help their particular students NOW, can’t wait for children to get what they need and deserve to have from society in this richest of rich countries.
And we’re now in as harsh and pitiless a political climate as any of us have ever experienced.
I always have been interested in what we can bring into students’ lives and experiences - into the classroom - to provide rich learning opportunities that can maximize student learning and efficacy.
What are the things that can keep curiosity alive, can teach kids - palpably - that they are each seen and valued - that they matter (too many dashes but I trust you get the point).
But I am interested in the power of working within those limits - figuring out what we can do with what we know and what we have available to us inside the walls of our schools.
….And doing that even while we spend our extracurricular time fighting the deep injustices.
Thanks, all!
That sentence should read, "please consider adding addressing.." Neither my reader not I caught that. Apologies.
Dear Claude,
Total agreement with both your advocacy for quality teaching methods and Dan’s response that taking steps to eradicate poverty are critical. May I add two comments?
1. I completely agree with your response that better teaching methods offer, in fact, a blue-ribbon method for addressing poverty. See, for example, Wolla, S. A., & Sullivan, J. (2017). Education, income, and wealth. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
2. Please, please consider addressing oral language decontextualized stages (OLDS) to your methods of high-quality teaching. That would include OLDS measures of students from high-poverty situations. In every Title I district where I headed projects, there was a documented mismatch between the OLDS of students and the OLDS expectation levels of the methods of curriculum delivery. When we matched the OLDS level of delivery to the OLDS level of students, we saw dramatic gains in both content and language plus a large spike in student enthusiasm. This is not, as some quality folks claim, a “deficit narrative” or attempt to blame the students. There is of course plenty of blame to go around. I blame myself for not taking the walk across the ASU campus to find reading research colleagues with whom to collaborate. I blame major curriculum publishers for not addressing the language-based needs. I blame national education test publishers for not seeking out and publishing assessments of OLDS*. I blame Title I district administrators for not becoming more curious about the impact of OLDS. But most certainly, I do not blame the students and I do not blame the parents. We’re the ones with the educational degrees, and we’re the ones who have the power to help.
*There are a few language level assessments around. See, for example:
a. Core Academic Language Skills (CALS) described at Phillips Galloway, E., & Uccelli, P. (2019). Examining developmental relations between core academic language skills and reading comprehension for English learners and their peers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(1), 15–31. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000276.
b. Preschool Language Assessment Instrument (PLAI) published by ProEd.
c. Test of Language for Learning-K (TOLL-K) at TeachersPayTeachers.
d. Assessment of Classroom Communication and Study Skills (ACCSS) by C. Simon. Out of print but sometimes found on Amazon.
I've never heard of the term "decontextualized language." Thanks for this mention. Where did you first learn about it? Where should I start reading to learn more?
Hi Savannah,
Thanks for your question and the underlying curiosity. First a big shout out to Claude Goldenberg for making this space available for new ideas about what’s important to reading success.
Decontextualized language describes the amount of environmental support or clues needed for successful communication. As parents have witnessed, children move from a complete dependence on the environment (pointing, around ages 1 – 2), through supported (scaffolded) conversations about what’s going on around them (ages 2 – 3), to scaffolded conversations about their own sequences of experiences (ages 3 – 4), then being able to understand multiple sentence descriptions about objects and events not present (ages 4 – 5), and finally making use of a language-constructed internal model that can be used to critically evaluate what they hear (ages 5 – 7). Each of these oral language decontextualized stages (OLDS, my term) reflects a varying degree of dependence on what the listener and speaker sense (mostly see and hear) around them. Based on the normal development progress, here are the stages as I see them:
OLDS-1 is completely contextualized communication.
OLDS-2 is still mostly contextualized communication, although the language learner begins bringing up words from previous experiences.
OLDS-3 is a transitional stage between contextualized and decontextualized communication as the language learner gets help in talking about events not present in the immediate environment.
OLDS-4 is the first level of decontextualized language in which the language learner can understand talk about objects and events “remote in time and space.”
OLDS-5 is the final stage important to PreK-12 education, the stage that supports active and evaluative information processing, thoughtful responses, and the ability to provide support for ideas.
The ages for each OLDS are generalizations. Some children attain each OLDS earlier and many children, developing through them later, are still at OLDS-2 or OLDS-3 when they enter kindergarten. Some students remain at OLDS-3 even in middle school. Here’s the critical point: curricular activities presuppose an OLDS-4 level of language development starting at kindergarten. Knowing the OLDS of their students is a critical and powerful tool for teachers because they can modify their interactions to respect student immediate learning needs. This results in faster learning, increased OLDS, and eager learners.
I hope this addresses your question. I’ve left a lot out (including most literature citations) to keep it brief. Decontextualized language is a complex theoretical construct that has been around for at least 50 years and is still being discussed. * As a (retired) nationally certified SLP, former speech pathology department faculty, and district level educational consultant, I’ve seen how extremely important this information is. Projects acknowledging student needs based on OLDS have been dramatically successful. To get the word out I’ve written two books and published a newsletter**. The Substack, Building Eager Learners While Building Oral Language, represents my current effort in this area. Come check it out! One of the posts answers your question about how I first learned about decontextualized language. As for places to go to learn more, my own book, “Preparing for Success,” pulls together most of the relevant literature at that time. Others to consider are, The Language of Children Reared in Poverty,” edited by Vernon-Feagans and Ferran and “Communication Skills and Classroom Success,” edited by Simon.
I have seen that knowing and using information about OLDS can change lives, those of teachers, their students, and parents. Perhaps some day the term “decontextualized language” will become better known among those who make educational decisions.
*Uccelli, P. et al. (2018) Children’s early decontextualized talk predicts academic language proficiency in mid-adolescence. Child Dev. 2018 Jan 23;90(5):1650–1663. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13034
**Weiner, C. (2000). Preparing for success: Meeting the language and learning needs of young children from poverty homes. ECL Publications.
Ausberger, C., Creighton, J., & Martin, M. (1982). Learning to talk is child's play. Communication Skill Builders.
Syndactics Bulletin 1989 – 1991. Available at ERIC ED462690 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED462690.pdf