The principles of readability are in every style manual. Readability formulas are in every word processor. What is missing is the research and theory on which they stand.

Much of the traditional and prevailing dogmas surrounding ‘factors’ affecting students ’ experiences and outcomes of schooling throughout their primary and secondary years – especially socio-cultural and socio-economic factors – are now understood to be products of methodological and statistical artefact, and amount to little more than ‘religious’ adherence to the moribund ideologies of biological and social determinism. Moreover, post-modernist perspectives espoused by academics promoting the deconstruction of gender-specific pedagogy and ‘middle-class’ curricula, are equally unhelpful. Above all, a good deal of this ‘discourse ’ is not supported by findings from evidence-based research. In this paper, key findings are presented highlighting ‘real’ effects from recent and emerging local and international research on educational effectiveness. For example, whereas students ’ literacy skills, general academic achievements, attitudes, behaviors and experiences of schooling are influenced by their background and intake characteristics – the magnitude of these effects pale into insignificance compared with class/teacher effects. That is, the quality of teaching and learning provision are by far the most salient influences on students’ cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes of schooling –

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Texas Woman’s University Early writing experiences provide children with instances in which they may learn the processes and concepts involved in getting meaningful messages into print. This study examined the opportunities lowprogress first-grade children had in learning to use strategies while writing a brief message in daily interaction with a Reading Recovery teacher. Specifically, three strategies for writing words were investigated: (a) writing known words, (b) analyzing new words by hearing and recording sounds in words, and (c) analyzing new words through analogy with known words. Eighty-two Reading Recovery children from eight states were the subjects for this study. Data were collected from the children’s writing books, writing vocabulary charts, records of text reading, and the teachers’daily lesson records. Analyses demonstrated that low-progress children acquire a considerable amount of knowledge about words, about letters/letter clusters and their sounds, and about the orthography of the language in a relatively short period of time. Limitations and implications of this study are discussed. Writing involves a complex series of actions. Children have to think of a message and hold it in the mind. Then they have to think of the first word and how to start it, remember each letter form and its features, and manually reproduce the word letter by letter. Having written that first word (or an approximation), the child must go back to the whole message, retrieve it, and think of the next word. Through writing, children are manipulating and using symbols, and in the process learning how written language works.

This study is a retrospective examination of elements that influenced one elementary school staff to initiate and implement a school-wide innovation in their reading program in 1990-91. This school served 315 preschool children through grade three in small town set in the rural countryside. Case study methodology was used to discover how the change was initiated; why the particular program elements were chosen; the role of the staff, the principal, and the parents played in initiating the innovation; and what lessons this school's experience may have for school reform. As the school community planned for the initiation of their new reading program, the "whole language" approach to reading was gaining momentum. The notion of "early intervention" was popularly used to describe a variety of methods educators were using to deal with evidence of reading failure in young children. Their stories describe the challenges this school staff felt as they attempted a year- iii long initiative to merge phonics and whole language into a holistic approach to reading for grades one through three. Findings were reported around seven central themes emerging from the data collection, including: 1) empowerment, 2) academic improvement, 3) shared vision/beliefs, 4) collaboration, 5) focus on children's needs, 6) site-based decision making, 7) participatory leadership. iv DEDICATION This manuscript is dedicated to my father, George Vartenisian, who modeled in his own life and instilled in me a need to be scholarly. This milestone in my life not only fulfills my ambition, but lets him achieve his own doctoral aspirations through me. Thanks, Dad, for your inspiration and support. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A number of individuals deserve recognition for the role they played in helping me with this ...

Traditionally, standardized achievement tests have been used to monitor program effectiveness. Recently, however, educators have questioned the appropriateness of standardized tests for this purpose, especially for programs designed for young children. Early childhood advocates suggest using developmentally appropriate assessments instead of standardized achievement tests for making classroom-level decisions about children and for program evaluation. Proponents, however, have not fully identified the psychometric properties of the assessments, certainly not for the purposes of program evaluation. Although developmentally appropriate assessments have been implemented in a number of classrooms across the country, few studies have verified their ability to discriminate among developmental levels. In addition, even fewer studies have addressed their use for evaluating program effectiveness. Using the records of 293 students from the local site of a National Transition Project and both classical test theory (CTT) and item response theory (IRT) procedures, three assessment instruments and a standardized test were examined. It was shown that the Concepts about Print portion of the Early Childhood Assessment Package, the Language Arts component of the kindergarten developmental progress reports, and the first grade Early Literacy Scale tasks are, in fact, developmental assessments. Additionally, IRT procedures located students on the developmental continuum underlying the assessments. Although classical ANCOVAs were unable to identify Treatment or Head Start program effects beyond the kindergarten year, IRT procedures showed that the expected proportion of students at the highest latent ability levels tended to be greater for students in Demonstration schools and Head Start g...

Exhibit 2.1

Our most complex accomplishments as human beings are the cultural and conventional life strategies of which language, in all its many forms, is the central and most pervasive example. One of the delights of parenthood is to stand back and watch our own idiosyncrasies of manner and speech flower in the behaviour of our children. In taking credit for these apparent miracles, from time to time, we know that we have contributed little in conscious effort or deliberation to those sophisticated accomplishments — they just pop up unheralded and thrive in the ecology of family culture, healthily nurtured and well formed. How do these apparent miracles come about? We need a theory, and a perennial one is to hand in the concept of “nature.” That wonderful portmanteau term “natural ” has come to be used most commonly to characterise these wonders of normal development. However, this usage hides paradoxes of its own — indeed, the word “natural ” throws up implicit contradictions and confusions which appear impossible to resolve. The types of development we wish to identify here — sophisticated skills including language, art, culture, and thought — these are activities which drive human experience quite beyond anything that could be called “natural ” in normal usage. (Thinking of the DNA helix, or sub-atomic physics, of course, the term “nature ” could indeed stand for the level of complexity we observe in developmental

Running records of children’s oral reading are commonly used to assess children’s reading and to make decisions about the types of reading instruction that children require. This paper critiques recent guidelines on the use of running records and questions the value of this assessment technique. The guidelines are unclear about whether running records should be used for beginning and fluent readers. There are difficulties in making comparisons between running records taken on different texts, and running records do not assess comprehension. The paper argues that the analysis of oral reading errors is a time consuming procedure that may provide misleading information about the type of instruction that would most benefit a particular child. Critique of Running Records 3 A Critique of Running Records Running records of oral reading are the most commonly used assessment technique for children in the first years at New Zealand primary schools. Teachers spend a considerable amount of time recording and analysing the running records of individual children. The results of running records are used to organise children into