Reading Failure

The best way to reconcile conflicting points of view when designing effective reading instruction for all readers is to realize that multiple factors are always at play when dealing with humans, and so no one answer will work for all children. Different types of practitioners and researchers find the root of the reading failure in different areas because of the focus of their study. Those who believe that reading is a series of developmental stages believe the cause and solution for reading failure can be found in those stages; meanwhile, those who focus on neurology or school structures find the problem and answer in those areas. I believe that these areas often overlap. First of all, in any given classroom, students' causes for reading failure will come from different factors because of their individual experiences and make up, thus it is a foolish idea to try to have one solution solve all reading failure. However, sometimes it is often a combination of different areas in one student that creates the reading failure, so it is also wise for the teacher to try multiple approaches toward individual students as well as the class as a whole.

There are five stages of literacy development: emergent (preK - K), initial (1-2), transitional (2-4), basic (4-6), and refinement (6 and on) (O'Donnell and Wood). As a secondary education teacher in a school that provides pull out services for students who are below a third grade reading level, I do not encounter students in the emergent or initial stages. However, I do often encounter students stuck in the transitional stage; in fact, this is the stage students in general most often get stuck. These students are able to read independently and know many sight words and word identification strategies, but still need to work on fluency and comprehension. These students are often good at “fake reading” as Tovani calls it in I Read It, But I Don't Get It (2000); they manage to get by without reading. Other high school students become stuck at the basic stage. While these students can read fluently and read a wider range of materials than transitional readers, they still struggle with comprehension, deeper vocabulary understanding, and metacognition. In my classroom, often these students are “word callers” who can read out loud beautifully, but have little understanding of what the passage means. Or, these students may not know how to tell when they are stuck or get unstuck while reading.

Those that believe developmental stages can diagnose all reading failure believe students become stuck in a stage for a variety of reasons, all of which relate to the students prior experience or knowledge. One of these reasons is socioeconomic factors, such as described in Lawrence Hardy's article “Children at Risk” (2006). Students who live in poverty often have reading failure. One reason is that students living on limited means are not exposed to as many life experiences. For example, a student who lives in poverty might not go on outings to zoos, parks, or museums that other children do. Similarly, children living in poverty may not go on vacation and thus would not know about other places, be them geographic locations such beaches, farms, or cities, or other states or countries that wealthier families could visit; impoverished children would also lack on knowledge about travel such as how an airport works or what a passport is. Furthermore, students who live in poverty may also not get the direct literacy instruction from their parents that other children receive. Such students' parents might not have the money to afford books, the resources to go to a library, or the time to spend reading to or with their children. The lack of these experiences can affect a student drastically once he or she enters the classroom affecting his or her readiness to read or his or her ability to understand the content of what is read.

Poverty is not the only way that students might lack prior knowledge. As Mary Pipher explains in her book Middle of Everywhere (2003), students from other cultures, primarily immigrant families, can lack cultural knowledge that affects their developmental stage in literacy. While language is a barrier, cultural knowledge extends even further. For example, if a students comes from a country with a different climate, that child might not understand have trouble understanding books in a unit on seasons changing or snow. This can extend to all sorts of aspects of culture including how a story is structured because different cultures share information with different organization. While in America we usually tell a story chronologically or share information in a direct fashion, other cultures are elliptical or work backwards. Lacking knowledge about American culture thus can also cause a student to become stuck at a developmental stage until these gaps in understanding are closed.
Another aspect that can affect a students progress through the developmental stages can be the values held in the students home, which could be due to a different culture or not. If parents or other families members do not value education or literacy, then it is very probable that these values will pass to the children in that family even if not directly taught. In my practice, I see this most often through male students who don't see the value in reading because they intend to enter the family business such as farming, lobstering, or mechanics. These students lose interest in reading after the novelty wears off and the reading gets more difficult.

There is also an emotional component to literacy. Years of failure can create emotional problems for students as Tovani describes in the first chapter of I Read It, But I Don't Get It entitled “Fake Reading.” She describes all the negativity that her students bring to yet another class designed for poor readers. Furthermore, in “Emotions, Cognition, and Becoming a Reader” Carol Lyons explains the affect that emotions have on learning and reading. She describes that there are chemical reactions in the brain that occur based on our emotions and those reactions then affect our learning. Ultimately, negative emotions can chemically prevent ideal conditions in the brain for learning, including reading (Lyons, 1999). Gerald Coles in his article “Literacy, Emotions, and the Brain” agrees that emotion is an important part of literacy instruction, but he asserts that students struggle because our instruction is void of emotion. We still teach children the Puritan work ethic that hard work is more important than happiness and then expect students lacking in confidence and motivation to sustain their own learning (Cole, 1999) Alfie Kohn (2005) explores emotional factors of teaching in an article entitled “Unconditional Teaching” discussing that we teach children that they are accepted only if they do well academically or behaviorally. All of these discussions suggest that emotion can play a large role in a student's prior experience with school and reading causing a student to stall at a developmental stage.

However, one of the biggest factors that has affected a students prior knowledge and experience upon arrival in my freshmen classroom is experience with school and teachers. While some practitioners believe that teachers and schools can be the root of reading failure, I believe that it is more accurately put that teacher methods and school structures can negatively affect a students' experiences and knowledge base thus causing that student to become stuck at a stage for one or more of the reasons stated above.

There are many teaching methods and school practices that can negatively affect students. One huge problem with teachers is a lack of necessary training. When I think of my own undergraduate education, I did not receive any instruction on literacy in terms of metacognition, assessment, writing process, ELL, and many other areas that directly affect my daily instructional decisions. Poor teacher training can lead to any number of methods that could lead to reading failure including relying on only canned prepackaged reading programs or not reading research data critically. Another problem steaming from school can be a lack of balance. Schools might not offer enough choice in reading materials, causing students to become unengaged with texts they can't relate to. Or, a school might spend too much time preparing students for assessments such as standardized tests instead of providing reading time or authentic literacy experiences. Schools might put too much attention on phonics or whole language instead of balance of the two as recommend by Gerald Coles, Marie Clay, and recently the National Reading Panel; thus only some learners reached, leaving others behind. The use of tracking or pull out classes could emotionally affect students. I can remember knowing I was in the lowest reading group in first grade how that felt. I can only imagine how much worse it would have been to pulled out of story time, music or art to get further reading instruction.
Sometimes the belief that neurological factors are the root of reading failure leads to some of the poor teaching practices listed above. Psychologists and medical doctors often believe that reading failure comes from problems within the brain that cause the student to have difficulty with word recognition, decoding, or spelling. In her book Overcoming Dyslexia (2005), Sally Shaywitz explains the differences between a dyslexics brain versus an average reader. To overcome these problems, she focuses strongly on a phonics approach asserting that there is a one best approach to phonics (unlike Patricia Cunningham in Phonics They Use (1995)). While Shaywitz also discusses other ways to help dyslexics that include approaches found in whole language practice, schools can read Shaywitz push for phonics done a certain way as a solution to reading problems and create imbalanced programs. From my own experience with dyslexia, I know that it was not phonics instruction that made me the reader I am today. Quite the contrary, a combination of the phonics instruction at my school coupled with strong value education in my family, frequent trips to town and school libraries, and frequently being read to by teachers and my father kept me interested and invested in reading more than any phonics solution alone could. So, teachers and schools must be careful to read research critically to avoid implementing imbalanced programs which negatively affect students school experiences.

Thus, instead of taking one approach to reading failure, teachers and schools must be prepared to deal with multiple causes. Developmental stages can be affected by teaching methods, and teaching methods can be dictated by beliefs on neurology. Schools must realize that reading failure has no panacea and teachers should be trained to attack it on all front. For this to work, teachers must be well trained in literacy and then must get to know their students. Teachers need to use a variety of assessments that allow them to know their students on multiple levels so that they can decided what the cause or causes of reading failure could be, because there is no one cause for all children. This preparation coupled with principles presented in question one such as student engagement through time, choice, and social interaction with reading; using gradual release and the principles of comprehension; and enthusiastic teachers who share their literacy lives and create rich print environments will create reading instruction where all students succeed.