Barbara Van Sickle on the narrowing of the reading curriculum

What kind of readers do we want our schools to produce? The answer to this question has huge implications for how we teach our children, what we measure as they develop, the experiences we provide in their classrooms, and the standards to which we hold ourselves and them.

Are we satisfied with readers who plod through controlled texts, only to parrot back literal information, or do we want readers who select texts purposefully, critique what they read, analyze and synthesize information, determine the relative importance of material, judge its validity and, know how and where to find out more?

Do we want readers who can function in society, or readers who can shape it?

Ultimately, do we want to produce readers who have found an important place for reading in their lives? I certainly do.

As Catherine Snow states ("From Literacy to Learning"), the difference between the vocabulary development of children from middle class families and that of children from families in poverty is staggering. Yet, there is no national curricular focus on oral language and vocabulary development in preschools or kindergartens. And, as we are well aware, early childhood is the optimal time to address this discrepancy in vocabulary knowledge.

There is a far greater emphasis on reading curricula that teach items of information like letter names and sounds. The acquisition of these skills has an important place in early literacy development, but alone, and devoid of a meaningful context, is insufficient in providing children with the strategies necessary for understanding challenging vocabulary, sophisticated language structures, and complex ideas, all of which are paramount for making meaning of complicated texts. Without these skills, children are not adequately prepared to meet the demands of a rigorous academic experience or to influence the world in which they live.

So why do we in this country, accept the implementation of reading curricula that seem so inadequate in providing our children with the instruction that they need in order to address the staggering gaps in language and vocabulary knowledge?

One answer, of course, is that it is far easier to count how many letters a child knows than it is to ascertain her ability to comprehend a sophisticated text. With the current atmosphere of accountability visited upon all of us by the mandates of NCLB, we in the public schools are being asked to measure growth in reading progress annually. Will the demand for accountability force us to focus on what is easily “measurable” and ignore what is ultimately critical for creating the kind of readers that we want?

Deborah Stipek tells us that we are at a crossroads in early education ("Early Childhood Education at a Crossroads"). The response to the demands for accountability seems to be a more academic focus in preschool classrooms. The instrument used to measure reading growth will have a significant influence on the programs and instructional practices employed in early childhood classrooms, and ultimately on the kind of readers that we will produce. “The National Reporting System, recently administered to more than 400,000 Head Start Children… assesses knowledge and recognition completely decontextualized from meaningful activities,” Stipek writes. Is this the direction in which we are going? Measuring and teaching what is easy, and not what is essential for the equitable achievement of all of our children?

If we in public education are to be held accountable for the reading progress of our children, let us in the field be true to our mission of producing the kind of readers that we know will be empowered to intelligently shape their futures. We must provide our youngest learners with rich oral language environments, engaging books, experiences that challenge their thinking, and exposure in meaningful contexts, to sophisticated vocabulary words. We must provide their teachers with professional opportunities to learn how to teach what is important, to observe what is critical, and finally, permission to stop counting and start talking.

Barbara Van Sickle is director of student achievement and accountability (K-8) in the Cambridge ( Mass.) Public Schools.