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.

The National Education Association (NEA), the nation's largest teachers union, is resentful of ongoing pressure from parents, voters, and their state legislatures to hold public schools accountable for how well they teach students to read. This goad to NEA members came in the wake of reports, such as ones by the federally funded National Assessment of Educational Progress, that there is an unacceptably high percentage of students who leave public schools as "functional illiterates." They cannot read well enough to successfully perform personal, civic, and job duties.

The January 2001 issue of NEA Today, the official organ of the NEA, presents the results of its interview regarding these matters with education professor Lorrie Shepard. She is the immediate past-president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). The AERA is the country's largest professional organization identified as devoted to improvement in the "scientific study of education," for example, to promotion of "credible scientific research" as to how students best learn to read.

In her interview with the NEA, Shepard commented on whether or not: (a) students should be retained in a grade if they do not score high enough on standardized reading tests (SRTs), and (b) public schools should be rewarded or penalized financially depending how well student score on SRTs.

Reputable SRTs are ones produced and sold by publishing companies for Use by schools to gain objective evidence as to how well students can read at various grade levels. These tests were found to be necessary after it was discovered that teachers' judgments in this regard were not dependable. Teachers are prone to have overly optimistic views as to the progress their students make in learning to read.

The AERA's ex-president believes that attempts to stimulate more effective reading teaching by "using rewards and punishments for [standardized] test scores" is a perversion of the ideal of "honest reporting" on student's reading achievement. Unfortunately, she does not name the supposedly more honorable, effective replacements for these incentives.

Shepard does reasonably argue that "you [parents, public, and legislators] can't announce that everyone [all students] will be above average [in reading] and start beating up on schools for not reaching that goal." The norm, or average, grade-level score on an SRT is set so that only 50 percent of students at large will surpass it. While Shepard does not mention it, the degree to which students in a given school year exceed the progress in learning to read that they made in previous grades, is the best measure available of how well they were taught.

Shepard furthermore is convinced that the majority of politicians believe that SRT "scores are a measure of the quality of [reading] education, rather than of resources and the student's socioeconomic characteristics." She is correct that inferior reading ability plagues children from low-income families. It has been demonstrated, however, that reading teaching firmly based on experimental research findings significantly improves the SRT scores of economically deprived children.

Moreover, the degree to which the amount of spending on reading instruction affects students' reading proficiency, is problematic not proven. That is to say, the statistical correlations calculated between (a) how much money the various states pay to educate each pupil, plus how much their teachers are paid, and (b) how well students read, are so low they have no usefulness for predicting the progress students will make in learning to read competently.

Shepard also downgrades the importance of any SRT by maintaining that it "can't be used to guide instruction because it's [results are] not there when you [teachers] need it." It is true that SRTs are administered infrequently, usually no more than once a school year.

However, it is irrational to claim, as Shepard does, that SRTs "are driving out quality classroom assessment," i.e., "are looming over and threatening our classroom practice." In point of fact, the contents of SRTsrepresent the kind of fundamental reading skills teachers should develop in daily lessons. An SRT gives teachers a periodic report on how effective they are in this practice. Thus, Shepard's warning to educators not "to teach to the [standardized reading] test" is a misleading one.

At this point, Shepard ventures that some SRTs are "unfairly difficult." This opinion contrasts with the relatively high statistical correlations calculated between different well-known SRTs. That is to say, it is quite likely that a student's score on one respectable SRT will be about the same as his/her score on another one.

The NEA ends its report of Shepard's negative opinions of SRTs with a recommendation that its members consult a current online (www.aera.net) document called "AERA Position Statement Concerning High-Stakes Testing in PreK-12 education." An SRT becomes a "high-stakes" instrument when scores on it have "serious consequences for students or for educators." Positive consequences in this regard could be public praise and financial rewards for schools and teachers, and promotion of students to the next higher grade.

The AERA makes twelve recommendations about high-stakes SRTs. All are worthy of critical analysis. It is held that:

In conclusion, both Shepard's views on standardized testing, and the AERA's position paper on SRTs, unfortunately contain comments that have potential for use as a weapon by negative critics (such as the NEA) of holding public schools accountable for how effectively they teach students to read. It is clear that any foe of high-stakes standardized testing of how much students have learned is a friend of the NEA. The organization doubtless is grateful that the AERA's official statement on standardized assessment did not stress the need to hold teachers and instructional methods accountable for how well students progress in learning to read.

Equally worrisome is the revelation, given above, that an ex-president of an organization, that touts itself as devoted to the scientific study of educational questions, would make the demeaning and empirically unconfirmed statements about SRTs that she does. "I really care about" only "forms of classroom assessment" made by teachers, Shepard emphasizes. The application of SRTs "are driving out quality classroom assessment," the only legitimate means for students to "show what they understand" when reading, she goes on.

The truth of this matter is that without the application of SRTs there could be no scientific study of various forms of reading instruction. In the absence of objective evidence that SRTs provide, it would be impossible to determine experimentally which kind of reading instruction methodology is the most effective. As a consequence, subjective opinion about reading teaching would abound and prevail. As a result, many students would suffer being denied full opportunity to learn to read.

In spite of the empirical necessity of SRTs, Shepard insists that NEA members to do as much as they can, in various ways, to disrupt or banish the application of SRTs in their schools. Identifying herself as a supporter of the NEA in this regard, she eagerly adds: "We need to speak to the public about these things."

The above expose of the weakness of the Shepard/NEA case against SRTs provides the public the means to speak back to the detractors of SRTs. As noted, the warnings by the AERA about the application of high stakes SRTs are generally irrelevant or insignificant. The public thus must not remain silent on this issue. If it does, children in our public schools will continue to endure the dire consequences of ineffective reading instruction.

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