At long last, the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) has released the final report and recommendations from the Early Literacy Commission established by resolutions passed by both the Louisiana House of Representatives and the Louisiana Senate in the 2019 regular session. I must admit, I’m in a state of confusion because I don’t know whether to be happy, or furious. Let me explain.
Let me first be clear that I agree with most of the commission’s recommendations, and I want to thank all of the people who participated in the task. However, there are many existing barriers that will ensure that none of these recommendations will be acted upon, unless other changes are made.
For those of you who are not familiar with my advocacy, my involvement in the fight against LDOE and John White has always been from the perspective of a parent; first, and foremost. Yes. I am also an educator and have advocated for my profession, but the bulk of my energy has focused on academic standards, curriculum, and the assessments that come with them. It is important to understand that many of the recommendations made by the commission were in place and done away with in the era of Common Core. Myself, and many others, have been screaming this from the mountain tops for almost nine years.
Below, I am going to point out some of the things that I have an issue with. If you would like to read the report yourself, click this link–> Louisiana Early Literacy Commission Report. It is a quick read of only eleven pages, including the cover page.
In its opening statement, the commission sets forth its beliefs about early literacy and establishes a lofty goal of all Louisiana students being proficient (“Mastery” level) by third grade. It is worth noting that research indicates that reading comprehension and proficiency requires the introduction of a wide variety of texts that are relevant and contextually appropriate to the child’s age. In addition, and this is critical, children who are read to on a regular basis during the earliest years prior to entering the classroom are infinitely more likely to reach mastery. Despite this factoid, the burden of getting all students to proficiency by third grade will lie entirely on the shoulders of educators.
In the first few pages of the report, the commission explains the process and reasoning that they followed during the execution of the duties they were tasked with and introduces some Louisiana literacy statistics as derived from the use of Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy (DIBELS). From 2017 to 2019, the percentage of students “at or above” the benchmark decreased from roughly 60% to right above 50%. In addition, the most recent “Reading Report” indicates that only 43% of kindergarten students are “at or above” benchmarks. These statistics are important. We’ll come back to them.
The commission developed nine recommendations for changes in policy to address early literacy. They divided the recommendations into four categories.
- Instructional materials and intervention materials
- School system and school leadership
- Teacher preparation and professional growth
- Progress monitoring and communication
In the spirit of keeping this blog brief (I know it is already getting long), I’m only going to talk about the first two recommendations under the first group, and the first recommendation under the last group. I urge you to use the link above and read the whole report.
In the image above, you see the “Current State” of instructional materials, and the two goals of the commission. Notice that in the current state, 84% of school systems have adopted “standards-based high quality curriculum” addressing the “foundations of literacy,” and 88% have adopted “standards-based high quality curriculum” that “builds knowledge” through language and literacy. The question that arises is this…If this is true, why have the DIBELS results indicated that the percentage of students are “at or above” benchmarks continues to drop? Here’s why. The “high quality curriculum” adopted by LDOE does not teach what DIBELS is measuring.
In June 2016, I testified the Legislative Joint Education Committee regarding the adoption of the supposed “revised” academic standards. My testimony can be seen in the video shown above. The purpose of my testimony was to illustrate the meaningless changing of the name of our academic standards from “Common Core State Standards” to “Louisiana Student Standard” did not address the real problem with the standards. When Louisiana ditched its highly-rated “grade-level expectations” in favor of Common Core, it also ditched the most important standards in K-2 addressing early literacy. The point I am making is if the “highly-quality” curriculum is aligned to our academic standards, it isn’t teaching what DIBELS is measuring.
In the image above, you see the first two recommendation under instructional materials. It appears that the commission is acknowledging that the curriculum selection process needs to be revised to ensure that the selected curricula meets the criteria needed to carryout the recommendations and goals established by the commission. I want to agree with this, but here are the problems I have with the recommendations.
- It requires curriculum to be aligned with academic standards that ignore decades of research on literacy and cognitive development.
- It requires Tier 1 curricula to meet certain criteria. While it might be possible to select curriculum that addresses these topics, the Louisiana process of review doesn’t provide for the selection of “evidence-based” curriculum. Why? Because Louisiana’s “tier system” doesn’t match federal law. You can read more about that here.—>Louisiana Bamboozles.
- The recommendations suggest a “whole language” approach when an overwhelmingly percentage of the body of research indicates that literacy is achieved with the use of methodical instruction beginning at the bottom with the very basics working up toward the goal of proficiency. The “whole-language” approach is essentially jumping off the diving board and learning to swim as you drown. For some, it comes very naturally, but the percentage isn’t large enough to subject the entire population to the method.
The last thing I want to point out is shown below in the first recommendation under the “Progress Monitoring and Communication” category.
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is the fourth or fifth rebirth of the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). In all of its previous lives that included state assessments and accountability, testing begins in third grade and continues through twelfth grade. What I want to point out here is that the commission is recommending the inclusion of kindergarten through second grade in accountability. THEY WANT TO ADD THE STRESS OF TESTING TO OUR BABIES.
In summary, if the recommendations are put in place without making changes to the things I’ve pointed out, we will teach our youngest children with curriculum and methods not measured by one of the most reliable testing instruments, and when our children aren’t successful in stressful state assessments, the entirety of the blame will be place on the teachers.
Sound familiar?
Gandy, the elite don’t care about education. The definition for “peo ple” is commoners. Charlotte Iserbyt says it best, “The Deliberate Dumbing Down Of The World!”
She’s been WARNING about Communism Core for 20+ years. She can be viewed on YouTube.
For one thing , the early literacy commission’s work was redundant. Has everyone had their head in the sand for the last ??? number of years? MUCH research has been done regarding early literacy. We just keep studying and studying what is right to do with beginning and emergent readers. Please quit reinventing the wheel! Every time we stop and start over we lose many cohorts of children who can’t just hit the pause button and wait for someone to decide what to do with them.
Am I the only one in the state who sees the irony in the fact that John White disbanded the Literacy Office at the DOE as one of his first acts as state Superintendent? Why, you might ask? Me thinks it’s because Louisiana has such a high rate of literacy. Here’s where you say “What?!?!?”
Anyway, all the years of training state literacy staff and literacy coaches and teachers across the state went poof! I never even heard an explanation for that decision, but I suspect it was made because the staff of the Literacy Office were all former teachers. Anyone who works at LDOE knows how little real teachers are valued. As a matter of fact, former teachers who work at LDOE are looked upon with distain. They are NOT valued at all, despite their depth of experience and past success in the classroom.
Getting rid of the Literacy Office was just one of the steps to bringing in and giving all power to TFAers such as himself. End of story.
While the “reading wars” are still very much active and impacted the language in the report, the report does not recommend a “whole language” approach. Organizations, such as the Center for Development and Learning, who had representatives on the commission, support the Science of Reading and strongly advocate for a structured literacy approach. We need more advocates – educators and parents – to speak out about this too.
Any thought on the Board making a choice on the next Superintendent,Jessica should be Out just because she has as much experience as John White had. She has her name on changes in assessment and innovations in the ESSA plan.
The board need to look at the best interest of this state,Louisiana is in trouble. I agree that too much has been taken away in the name of progress with ESSA.
I cannot take the findings seriously when it is fighting with grammar from the beginning.
We need to elect better