Ready, Set, Go!

Ready, Set, Go!

 

What if you had exactly 60 seconds to do something and the trajectory of your future depended on that 60 seconds?  Would you be nervous before that performance?  Do you think your action in those 60 seconds is a clear picture of your real talents or ability?  I pose these questions because this is exactly what the State of Iowa is doing to our children.  Recently, I, as well as administrators across the State, had to send a letter home to parents that labeled their child “substantially deficient” if their child did not read a certain amount of words in 60 seconds.  The letter was scripted by the Iowa Department of Education and “substantially deficient” is written into the Iowa Code.

The above requirement is a part of the Early Literacy Implementation (ELI) law.  The law states all schools should have an approved universal screener, progress monitor students who exhibit a “substantial deficiency” in reading, send a notice to parents that their child is “substantially deficient”, provide an evidence-based summer reading program, and retention of any student not proficient in reading by the end of 3^rd grade. 

With so many flaws in the ELI law it is hard to pick where to begin.  Let’s start with the universal screener.  A universal screener is defined by the American Institutes for Research as “Screening is conducted to identify or predict students who may be at risk for poor learning outcomes. Universal screening assessments are typically brief, conducted with all students at a grade level, and followed by additional testing or short-term progress monitoring to corroborate students' risk status.”  The important piece to take away from this definition is that once a student is flagged, further evidence is needed before determining if a student is at risk, or as the State of Iowa puts it, “substantially deficient”.  This is not happening in the ELI law as schools are using one universal screener without any other data being used to label students “substantially deficient”.  The National Center for Learning Disabilities discourages this practice stating, “screening students in the early grades lends itself to at least two common errors: false positives and false negatives. False positives occur when students are deemed at risk when, in fact, they are not. False negatives are cases in which students who are deemed not at risk then go on to perform poorly on a future criterion measure” (Jenkins, 2003).  A “screener” by all definitions is simply to scratch the surface of a possible problem and should be used to dig deeper into that individual student.  In the State of Iowa, a 60 second screener is being used to determine if you child is “substantially deficient” and in need of 3^rd grade retention. 

Another flaw in regards to the universal screener is the norming.  All tests have a set of norms.  Norming compares the results of a statistically selected group of test takers.  Central has been a part of the FAST assessment (screener) for going on three years now (we were a pilot school in the State of Iowa) and the norms of that test have changed three times!  Three times in less than 3 years the number of words per minute a student is supposed to read at a given grade level has changed.  So if your child misses this moving target by one word per minute, they are termed “substantially deficient”?  The changing of the norms shows that the test we are using is not reliable, yet the consequences for our children remain.

Most, if not all educators, will agree that reading is so much more than how many words a person can read accurately in one minute.  Think about our upcoming Christmas holiday.  Many of us get the “joy” of putting together the presents Santa brings our kids.  What if I told you that you only get 60 seconds to read the directions and then put together the toy?  How many of you think you could do it?  I know I could not.  Even though I am positive I could read the entire directions in my 60 seconds, what good is reading fast if we can’t comprehend what it is that we are reading?  Fluency is a strong indicator of reading success, but it isn’t everything and it sure doesn’t mean a child is “substantially deficient”.

So what can we do about this?  There really is only one thing we can do and that is to contact our local politicians and share your concerns.  Here are some suggested questions/thoughts to pose:

·      Name something you do in 60 seconds and your future depends on it.

·      Do home school and private school students have to follow the ELI law?  If not, why?

·      Do Iowa employers want an employee who can read a set amount of words per-minute, or do they want an employee that can comprehend what they read?

Contact Information:

Darrel Branhagen: (515) 281-3221

Patti Ruff: (515) 281-3221

Michael Breitbach: (563) 920-7399

Linda Fandel (Governor’s Special Assistant for Education): (515) 725-3522

Governor Branstad: (515) 281-5211

References

Jenkins, J. R. (2003, December). Candidate measures for screening at-risk students. Paper presented at the National Research Center on Learning Disabilities Responsiveness-to-Intervention symposium, Kansas City, MO. Retrieved May 15, 2008, from http://www.nrcld.org/symposium2003/jenkins/index.html

Universal Screening. (n.d.). Retrieved November 9, 2015, from http://www.rti4success.org/essential-components-rti/universal-screening