Live Long and Prosper...

A very disturbing item in the news a few days ago...

Idaho Teacher in Face-Marking Incident Faces Probe

A southern Idaho teacher whose students used a permanent marker on the faces of classmates who fell short of reading goals is the subject of a formal complaint.

...One 10-year-old came home in tears after his entire face, including his eyelids, had been scribbled on with green, red and purple markers.

According to the article, the teacher allowed her students to choose their own "incentive" for their Accelerated Reader goal. The incentives the class chose were 1) staying in from recess until the goal was met or 2) having their faces drawn on with markers by peers who met their goals.

The parties involved have kept fairly quiet about the incident since it's a personnel issue...however parents brought the issue to the public eye, including a petition to the school board.

First of all, the obvious problem with the incentives put in place is the poor choice made by the teacher. I understand and can appreciate the positive learning opportunity of giving children choices, but as the adult in charge it's the teacher's job to monitor those choices and make sure that they are appropriate. The students chose to punish their peers who didn't (or couldn't) reach their goal. Punishment for failing to achieve an academic goal is not appropriate.

Second, some questions...

Were the students actually allowed to set their own goals? What if a student chose a goal of not reading any books at all? Would the teacher have allowed that?

Were all the student goals realistic? Some students, especially students with learning problems, often can't accurately determine their own limits. In that case it's up to the teacher to help them make appropriate goals.

The students chose the "incentives" based on the assumption that reaching a reading goal was a choice. This might not have been true if students weren't able to pick a realistic goal for themselves.

Finally, what's the atmosphere in this classroom that allowed the teacher to choose a punishment as an incentive? I tend to differentiate between "incentives" and "consequences." The former should be something positive. The Accelerated Reader documentation also suggests positive rewards as incentives.

Consider reinforcing meeting individualized goals with certificates, bookmarks, pencils, or other items. Some teachers allow students to enter their names in a drawing every time they score 100 percent on a quiz for a book within their ZPD. Prizes might include a free yearbook or free admission to a basketball game, prom, or other special event. Ask students to help you identify the most appealing prizes.

...prizes, not punishments.

[Although Alfie Kohn has argued against both punishment and rewards in his book Punished by Rewards. See articles HERE and HERE.]

Letting students choose incentives is fine, but punishing students for not achieving is inappropriate at any level. Punishments masquerading as "incentives" should be avoided.

The publicity which this story received makes it clear that many people think the teacher made a mistake. It's likely that some "reformers" might use this story to illustrate how much we need to fire "bad teachers." It's ironic, however,  that the teacher was just following the lead of education "reformers". The federal government as well as many state governments have been punishing students, teachers, and school systems for low achievement for nearly a dozen years, through No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top and a variety of state-based initiatives (such as IREAD-3 in Indiana).

Neither classroom based punishments, nor government supported punishments are appropriate for improving academic achievement.

Accelerated Reader is a Reading Incentive Program which started out encouraging kids to read...and has grown into a massive data collection project.

Susan Ohanian explains how it works in Accelerated Reader: The Data Softshoe.

With the Business Roundtable and the U. S. Department of Education preaching that teachers can’t manage what they don’t measure, Renaissance Learning™, offers Accelerated Reader, reading management software that promises teachers an easy way to let computers measure and keep track of what students read. This means that students must choose books in a computer-determined Zone, say, Grade 3.5 to 4.0. The student reads the book and takes a computer-delivered multiple choice test. The test results dictate the reading Zone allowed for her next book choice. Zones are determined by a readability formula that counts syllables and sentence length—resulting in the information that The Tale of Peter Rabbit and The Color Purple are both written at a 4.0 reading level.

They call this science.

Schools label existing library books according to the AR system and limit new purchases to books in the AR system. In many libraries, books are then shelved by AR numbers instead of by the Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress system. This means that in an AR-arranged library, the 2.6 Zone books hang out together, so Junie B. Jones Smells Something Fishy sits next to High interest/low readability titles also clocking in at 2.6--such as Nuclear Submarines and Keeping Cholesterol Low, not Junie B. Jones and Her Big Fat Mouth (2.3) or Junie B. Jones Is Not a Crook (3.0).

More often than not, librarians disappear; replaced by paraprofessionals who make sure the computers deliver the tests on schedule. The teacher’s role is reduced to that of data tracker. Here’s how AR describes it:

AR systematically gathers student-level information on daily practice. The software produces reports, which helps teachers track individual progress and consequently make instructional decisions based on the data they receive.

The “information” is student scores on multiple choice test; no enjoyment, insight, or curiosity.

Many schools require students to get a certain number of points, which encourages students to choose books with high point totals rather than books matching their interests. This has the effect of teaching students that reading is done for a reward, not that reading is a valuable learning tool or a fun activity.

Jim Trelease, author of the Read Aloud Handbook has this to say about Accelerated Reader...

Believe it or not, high reading scores have been accomplished in communities without computerized incentive programs, places where there are first-class school and classroom libraries, where the teachers motivate children by reading aloud to them, give book talks, and include SSR/DEAR time as an essential part of the daily curriculum. And the money that would have gone to the computer tests went instead to building a larger library collection. Unfortunately, such instances are rare. Where the scores are low, oftentimes so is the teacher’s knowledge of children’s literature, the library collection is meager to dreadful, and drill and skill supplant SSR/DEAR time.

Here are some serious negatives to guard against:

• Some teachers and librarians have stopped reading children’s and young adult books because the computer will ask the questions instead.
• Class discussion of books decreases because a discussion would give away test answers, and all that matters is the electronic score.
• Students narrow their book selection to only those included in the program (points).
• In areas where the “points” have been made part of either the grade or classroom competition, some students attempt books far beyond their level and end up frustrated.

Before committing precious dollars to such a program, a district must decide its purpose: Is it there to motivate children to read more or to create another grading platform?

Is this focus on reading for points rather than reading for pleasure or knowledge the fault of Accelerated Reader and Renaissance Learning? Award winning author Susan Straight (Highwire Moon, A Million Nightengales) wrote about Accelerated Reader for the New York Times Sunday Book Review a couple of years ago.

Librarians and teachers report that students will almost always refuse to read a book not on the Accelerated Reader list, because they won’t receive points. They base their reading choices not on something they think looks interesting, but by how many points they will get. The passion and serendipity of choosing a book at the library based on the subject or the cover or the first page is nearly gone, as well as the excitement of reading a book simply for pleasure. This is not all the fault of Renaissance Learning, which I believe is trying to help schools encourage students to read. Defenders of the program say the problem isn’t with Accelerated Reader itself, but with how it is often implemented, with the emphasis on point-gathering above all else. But when I looked at Renaissance Learning’s Web site again this summer, I noticed the tag line under the company name: “Advanced Technology for Data-Driven Schools.” That constant drive for data is all too typical in the age of No Child Left Behind, helping to replace a freely discovered love of language and story with a more rigid way of reading.

Parents, how is AR used at your child's school? Is it an incentive program used to open up the world of words to your child or is it adding stress to the already pressure filled data gathering which is the driving force behind America's public education system? Is it helping them enjoy reading for reading's sake, or just another chore?

Published online on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2009 in the Fresno Bee

By Derek Boucher

Last week, a friend of our family came to us distraught after her child, a student in the Clovis Unified School District, read the adolescent favorite "The Name of This Book is Secret." Despite having a very positive experience with the book, she failed her school's Accelerated Reader comprehension test.

This resulted in a lowering of her English grade. Accelerated Reader is a popular, expensive commercial program used in many of our schools today. Last year, we learned of another child who was discouraged by a librarian from reading Hemingway's classic "The Old Man and the Sea" because it was considered too low for that child's reading level.

As we transition into another school year, parents throughout Clovis Unified and other Valley schools have been notified that a portion of their child's English grade will be determined by completing novels, and answering narrow comprehension questions online about the story.

The concept is simple: Pass the online test and the student gets points that go toward their grade. No points are awarded if the student fails the test. Fail the test, and no retakes are allowed. This program is very convenient for teachers who simply upload the AR points from the computer and translate them into a grade. No fuss, no mess!

But this is so typical in today's schools, where lust for high standardized test scores and short-term gains often overshadow the more important and difficult work of creating curious learners and life-long readers.

One might assume that adults with long résumés might ask the question: What is the long-term impact of this program on our children?

Different studies suggest that incentive programs (reading to get prizes or a grade) tend to have a deleterious effect on young readers. When the incentives (or punishments) to read stop, the children stop reading as well. This shouldn't be surprising, since performance and learning tend to decline when extrinsic motivators are present (Kohn, 1999).

In most schools today, reading has not been presented to children as an inherently pleasurable experience, but as a vehicle to get a prize or a grade.

Voracious readers understand that literature allows us to lose ourselves in the world of a story. Avid readers engage in intensely enjoyable experiences with plot and characters.

In contrast, programs like Accelerated Reader teach students to read literature in a superficial manner. Students read with a mind to skim for the facts they will need for the quiz, which is very different from the thoughtful engagement we want to see when our children open a book. One parent shared with me he is going to buy Cliff's Notes so his child will be sure to pass his next AR test.

A study by Carter (1996) suggests that incentive programs create a system where "the rich get richer." Children who are already strong readers will usually do quite well on comprehension tests. In contrast, resistant readers become demoralized when, after struggling through a book, they are left with zero points because they failed their AR test. This reinforces their perception that reading is not for them.

Here's a challenge to educators who favor Accelerated Reader. Choose any piece of literature you like. Ask a friend to read the same book. After reading, create 15 comprehension questions. Quiz one another. Don't cheat! You can't refer back to the book, and you can't discuss what you enjoyed about the story. (Too subjective!) And, you only get one try. Now repeat the process 10-15 times in nine months. See how you like it.

Derek Boucher of Clovis teaches science at Roosevelt High School.

• 2–3 hours per day of literacy and math instruction and testing

• Of that, 20–30 minutes per day of standardized testing and test preparation

• Less than 30 minutes per day—and often no time at all—for play or choice time

These practices may produce higher scores in first and second grade, but at what cost? Long-term studies suggest that the early gains fade away by fourth grade and that by age 10 children in play-based kindergartens excel over others in reading, math, social and emotional learning, creativity, oral expression, industriousness, and imagination.