Reading instruction focus of task force

Alan Borsuk:

Again and again, I clicked on Wisconsin on an interactive map of reading scores from across the nation. Wisconsin fourth-graders compared with other states. Eighth-graders compared with other states. White kids. Black kids. Hispanic kids. Low-income kids.

The color-coded results told a striking story: In each case, there were few states colored to show they had significantly lower scores than Wisconsin. For fourth-grade black kids, there were none. For fourth-grade low-income kids, there were four.

Here's one that will probably surprise you: For fourth-grade white kids, there were only four (Nevada, Louisiana, Oklahoma and West Virginia) that were significantly below Wisconsin. Wisconsin white kids score slightly below the national average, putting us in a pack of states with kind-of-OK results, significantly below more than a dozen that are doing better.

Wisconsin is not the reading star it was a couple of decades ago. You'll get little argument that this isn't good.

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But how reading is taught may be exactly what it heads for. In interviews, Dykstra and Pedriana said they hope there will be a comprehensive review of how reading is taught in Wisconsin - and how teachers are trained by universities to teach reading.

"We need to pay more attention to what works best," Dykstra said. "We have known for 40 years a basic model for how to teach kids to read that is more effective than the predominant model in the state of Wisconsin."

Pedriana said Wisconsin was a particularly "grievous example" of a state that had not done what it could to improve reading achievement. "Teacher training has to be addressed," he said.

Related: Wisconsin Executive Order #22: Read to Lead Task Force and Dave Baskerville: Wisconsin Needs Two Big Goals.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 11, 2011 1:39 AM
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