Reading Reform Foundation
Hosts Annual Conference
By Sarah Ann Mockbee
Dr. Agnes Howell-Jack, an aspiring principal with the Chancellor's
Leadership Academy, recently attended the Reading Reform Foundation's
23rd Annual Conference with the hopes of becoming
more familiar with innovative teaching approaches that were
being introduced and discussed. Reading Reform Foundation,
a not-for-profit literacy organization based in New York, hosted
the conference, “Effective Techniques for Teaching Reading,
Writing and Spelling.” The conference included 24 workshops
on specific teaching strategies as well as a keynote address
given by Dr. Diane Ravitch, noted author and Research Professor
of Education at New York University.
“As educators, it's our responsibility to be exposed
to new ideas,” Howell-Jack said. She noted that “following
a routine” will never be a successful strategy in education
and that the Reading Reform Foundation Conference offered her
an opportunity to stay on the cutting edge.
Marcelina E. Lyew, a kindergarten teacher
at PS 166, already knew the value of Reading Reform Foundation's
educational seminars. She took a course with the Foundation last
summer in which she was introduced to a reading program called
the Spaulding Method. “I
have been teaching for 30 years in the New York City school system,” states
Lyew, “and I have been through many reading programs. The
Spaulding Method, which I discovered late in my career, is the
best program I've used.” After seeing the progress her
students made with the program, she was eager to attend the conference
to learn if there were other methods she could supplement into
her daily curriculum.
Administrators and teachers like Howell-Jack and Lyew are part of a target
audience the Reading Reform Foundation hoped to reach through its conference.
The Foundation's mission is to influence and encourage educators of both children
and adults to teach reading, writing and spelling by using phonics methods
that employ multi-sensory techniques. Dr. Ravitch honed in on that very principle
with her address, “Why Content Matters.”
Speaking to hundreds of teachers, administrators, tutors and parents, Dr.
Ravitch spoke about the benefits of a phonics-based approach for teaching students
how to read and, more importantly, how to comprehend what they are reading. “Children
need to understand the connections not only between letters and sounds but
also between what they read and what it means. [They] must be able to make
a large leap from being able to decode words to being able to comprehend words
in different contexts.”
Dr. Ravitch, who holds the Brown Chair in Education policy at the Brookings Institute,
also stressed the importance of a coherent curriculum that builds on vocabulary
and knowledge incrementally, but she concedes that this is where education has
fallen short. Curricula tend to be more random and less integrated. She maintained
that an aligned curriculum helps children establish a foundation of background
information that will prove critical once they begin to approach larger, more
complicated subjects. Dr. Ravitch insists that as long as curricula lack continuity,
students will miss valuable opportunities to connect ideas and concepts across
disciplines.
Phonics-based learning, coupled with a coherent curriculum, has earned Dr.
Ravitch's backing not simply because it makes good sense to her but also because
it is a proven method of learning. “Study after study, underwritten by
the National Institutes of Health, affirmed that teachers must use a variety
of strategies, including phonics and phonemic awareness, especially when teaching
beginning readers.” The research has been overwhelmingly convincing,
yet it has taken many years for the program to be endorsed officially by state
departments of education and schools of education, which dramatically influence
the way future teachers educate students.
Dr. Ravitch noted, however, that the New York Department of Education has
yet to approve a phonics-based program and has instead adopted a reading program
that does not place emphasis on phonemic awareness. She suggested that the
test results for New York City public schools have been less than satisfactory. “Not
only is the current achievement gap growing between the have and the have-nots
under the current program, but the population of excellent readers is rapidly
declining.” Dr. Ravitch acknowledged that the Department of Education
stands behind their program and that they strongly believe that it is good
for students, but she disagrees.
Dr. Ravitch was quick to point out that because most departments of education
around the country have endorsed a phonics-based reading program, youth literacy
was on the right track. She was also optimistic about New York's position,
thanks in part to private institutions like the Reading Reform Foundation. “Things
are looking up in reading and much of the credit goes to the stalwart members
of the Reading Reform Foundation who have steadily and quietly done the right
thing for year after year, decade after decade, helping teachers learn to be
effective in the classrooms whether or not it was fashionable to do so.”
Leona D. Spector, Vice President of Reading Reform Foundation, Trustee Sandra
Priest Rose, and President Aileen Lewisohn Godsick were all in attendance at
the conference. Obviously pleased with the turnout, Spector felt confident
that the workshops that followed Dr. Ravitch's address would prove beneficial
to both teachers and students. Most workshops focused on the importance of
content and were conducted by education experts as well as some of New York's
most prestigious cultural institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, the American Museum of Natural History and the Lincoln Center Institute.
Spector assured attendees that the workshops would reinforce what teachers
were already doing and would offer many ideas to take back to the classroom.
So why does the Reading Reform Foundation
host a conference like this year after year? Rose enthusiastically summed
up the answer when she stated unequivocally, “We
love teachers.” We can unequivocally add that teachers love the Reading
Reform Foundation because they are taught how to convert their children into
fluent readers and lifelong learners.#