by Dr. Patrick Groff
NRRF Board Member & Senior Advisor

Dr. Patrick Groff, Professor of Education Emeritus San Diego State University, has published over 325 books, monographs, and journal articles and is a nationally known expert in the field of reading instruction.

A historically well-documented, yet unpublicized aspect of reading instruction is the fact that teachers' judgments vary greatly as to how well individual students can read. A given teacher may report to parents that the reading behavior of a student is proficient, and thus deserves a grade of A. However, another teacher, in the same school, observing identical reading behavior, may judge it as mediocre or otherwise substandard.

It empirically is well-established that subjective opinions of teachers, one from another, as to the precise extent to which students can read competently, are not altogether well-founded, dependable, nor trustworthy. In short, such judgments by teachers are said to be not reliable.

Thus, in the past century it became apparent to researchers conducting investigations as to how best to teach students to read that they could not completely depend upon teachers' views of the reading ability of students. Some different measure of students' reading, other than teachers' opinions of it, was necessary before truly scientific investigations could be conducted into what is effective reading methodology.

Necessity being the mother of invention, standardized reading tests (SRTs) came into being. These assessments were determined to be reliable. That is to say, teacher bias, misinterpretation, and wishful thinking as to how well students perform when reading are eliminated. A student's score on an SRT is not affected by the person who administers the test.

Standardized reading tests also are valid in the sense they accurately measure what they purport to assess. That is to say, SRTs determine how competently students (a) can recognize individual written words, and (b) can comprehend the precise meanings that an author of a text intended it to convey.

The two factors (a) and (b) constitute fundamental aspects of adept reading. Moreover, they are prerequisites to students' ability to read independently, to make critical judgments about the material they read, as well as to read to learn.

In addition, SRTs satisfy the need to compare a student's progress in learning to read with that of his/her peers. From the score that a student makes on an SRT, it can be determined if he/she is reading below, at, or above the grade level in which he/she is enrolled. This information is compiled by writers of SRTs by administering experimental forms of a test to a representative, random sample of students at the different grade levels. From the data so collected, a norm or average reading score for each grade level is calculated.

With the advantages of SRTs in mind, attention of educational policymakers of late properly has been focused on precisely how to detect if reading is being taught effectively. A federally-funded SRT for that purpose was constructed, called the reading component of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The NAEP provides information as to the relative proficiency of reading instruction in the various states.

Also, individual states mandate that school districts administer an additional SRT. A popular measure in this regard is the reading section of the Stanford Achievement Test-9th Edition (SAT-9). On November 8, 2000, Education Week (EW) reported the federal Department of Education's latest compilation of scores on the SAT-9, made by students in grades 2 through 8 in 6 states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, and South Dakota.

These data are instructive. They illustrate that reading teaching in South Dakota is the most cost-effective of the six states. Students here achieved the highest average SAT-9 scores. At the same time, state expenditures per-student in South Dakota are relatively low. This information confirms a common finding that only a low statistical correlation exists between how much states spend on public education, and how well their students can read.

California is displayed in EW as the state in which reading is taught the least effectively. That fact is unsurprising. In 1995, data from the NAEP revealed that California students were the least competent readers in the nation. At the same time, it was noted that the experimentally discredited Whole Language (WL) approach to students' reading development was more popular in California than in any other state.

Although there now are state laws in California proscribing further conduct of the worst excesses of WL, public schools in the state openly defy them. A notable example is the San Diego city school district. Its superintendent mandates that teachers here follow an empirically invalidated reading instruction program devised by WL luminary Regie Routman.

The EW article on reading test scores also reveals that differences in average SAT-9 scores by students in grades 2 through 8 do not vary dramatically, from grade-to-grade. However, beginning in grade 9 and continuing through grades 10 and 11, these scores drop-off noticeably in all six states.

The publisher of the SAT-9 for high school grades could not satisfactorily explain the cause of this puzzling phenomenon. It is likely the publisher did not establish the grade-level norms for these grades in a satisfactory manner.

In any event, demonstrated here is that while SRTs are more valid and reliable than teachers' subjective judgments, they at times do display weaknesses. However, it remains safe to conclude that the SAT-9 is a dependable measure of students' reading ability in grades 2-8. Parents, school boards, and the public may justly put their faith in it as a valid and reliable test of progress that students in these grades make in learning to read.

That is a vitally important conclusion to emphasize since a sizeable segment of the public school establishment (PSE) at present expresses disfavor with standardized tests of any sort. However, none of the various outbursts of dislike of SRTs is warranted. The objections to SRTs to follow thus must be dismissed for lack of convincing evidence as to their veracity.

One is the displeasure within the PSE that SRTs are used as a means to hold it responsible for how well students have learned to read. Two is the contention that use of SRTs forces teachers to falsify students' scores on them. Three is the charge that SRTs do not truly measure reading ability. Four is the conclusion that a student's low score on a SRT reveals nothing to teachers as to the remedial help he/she needs. Five is the protest that SRTs require teachers to develop in students the reading abilities that the tests measure.

Six is the argument that the contents of SRTs are racist, and/or do not reflect the socioeconomic and cultural diversity among students. Seven is the supposition that time taken up by SRTs significantly reduces students' opportunity to learn academic subject matter. Eight it rightly is contended that elementary school students' SRT scores have been used to decide whether they will be promoted. However, the legitimacy of that practice is a unique issue, apart from whether or not administration of SRTs should be eliminated. Nine is the allegation that inclusion of SRT scores in high school students' personal files causes a significant number of them to dropout of school. Ten is the calculation that SRTs are so expensive that administration of them is not a cost-effective practice.

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