Carl 科尔 was alarmed by the growing number of students sent to him for special education in the late 1990s. He was director of special education for the Bethel School District near Eugene, 他怀疑有这么多孩子有学习障碍.
One of the district’s elementary schools was referring nearly one in five students to special education, 他们中的大多数人都是阅读困难的人. 当他去参观他们的教室时，他明白了原因.
“很多孩子就是我们后来所说的‘教育障碍’,不是特殊教育,科尔在最近一次采访中说. 换句话说, 他们没有被教导以许多专家的方式阅读, 特别是在特殊教育领域, 知道所有的孩子都需要教育.
The Capital Chronicle determined that Oregon has spent more than $250 million in the past 25 years on reading. 但这笔钱并没有帮助到一代以上的学生. 在过去的25年里, nearly two in five 四个th graders 和 one in five eighth graders have scored “below basic” on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 通常被称为国家的成绩单. 这意味着他们很难阅读和理解简单的单词. Today, few Oregon 四个th 和 eighth graders are proficient readers, according to the report card.
“八年过去了. 俄勒冈州的pg电子游戏试玩每个班级有5万名学生. 也就是400,000 students have not had the kind of exposure to literacy instruction that they should have had in the intervening time.”
– 罗伯·萨克斯顿, former deputy superintendent of instruction, Oregon 教育部
为了解决这个问题，州长. Tina Kotek is backing the state’s single largest reading investment in two decades, 早期识字成功计划, a $140 million grant program to get “evidence-based literacy instruction” methods into classrooms in districts that apply for the funding. Kotek 和 the bill’s supporters have said it will finally get the “science of reading” into Oregon classrooms, though it’s yet to pass the Legislature that’s been stalled by a Republican-led walkout.
从1960年代开始, hundreds of studies have been conducted to find the most effective ways to teach kids to read. 今天有大量的认知和神经科学研究, 和 evidence — often referred to as “the science of reading” — that has shown that the human brain does not learn to read or write naturally, 而是依赖于一套特定技能的明确指导. Everyone needs these skills to read, but they learn them at different speeds.
Among the first 和 most fundamental skills kids must develop is learning to decode written words by mapping sounds to letters 和 letter combinations, 这就是自然拼读法. It’s a skill around 60% of kids will struggle with unless they are given frequent 和 explicit instruction in the earliest grades. And among the most studied instructional methods for developing those phonics skills — proven to help all kids learn to read, especially those struggling most — was one developed by education psychologists 和 special education experts at the University of Oregon in Eugene 60 years ago.
而不是, 在许多地区, curricula 和 instruction are based on theories popularized in the last few decades that rely less on robust phonics instruction, 和 instead favor teaching kids to read whole words on sight through memorization, 并使用上下文线索和图片来猜测单词.
然而在俄勒冈州和全国的许多教室里, kids have been taught in ways that do not reflect all of that research. 而不是, 在许多地区, curricula 和 instruction are based on theories popularized in the last few decades that rely less on robust phonics instruction, 和 instead favor teaching kids to read whole words on sight through memorization, 并使用上下文线索和图片来猜测单词.
这些方法的支持者, which assume that kids will grow into reading if they’re exposed to good books, were pitted against proponents of robust phonics instruction in the mid-1990s in what’s known as “the reading wars,，席卷了pg电子游戏试玩和州立法机构.
几十年的投资
That reading would come naturally to kids was the assumption among teachers in Bethel back in 1999 和 it was having detrimental effects, 科尔说,.
He tapped special education 和 education psychology experts at the University of Oregon to help him create, 三年以上, a sea change in reading instruction in the district’s six elementary schools. 科尔 和 those experts went on to play roles in the largest federal investment in elementary reading instruction in U.S. 历史.
在世纪之交, Oregon 和 the University of Oregon were poised to become models for the nation of how an entire state could change reading instruction to align with the decades of reading science.
从20世纪90年代末开始, more than $250 million in state 和 federal tax dollars have been invested in programs to boost reading ability among Oregon students, 根据对财务报告的分析, reports from the Legislative Policy 和 Research Office 和 public records requests by the Capital Chronicle. 十几个委员会, 董事会和理事会由四位州长创建, 任务是提高俄勒冈州学生的阅读能力.
但是那些州长, legislators 和 education agency leaders failed to implement 和 sustain wide scale-teaching 和 curricular change that would improve outcomes for the kids struggling the most.
“The failure to learn to read is the most serious problem facing education in the U.S. 今天.”
——前州参议员. 查尔斯·斯塔尔，R-Hillsboro
The Oregon Legislature has never put the state 教育部 in charge of wide scale reform or given it the authority to hold schools accountable when students fail to show improvement year after year, despite the Legislature being in charge of two-thirds of state school funding. 而不是, it’s used the education department to distribute state 和 federal reading investments to districts, 以及如何花钱的建议. Both the Legislature 和 education department continue to leave decisions about reading instruction, 阅读课程和教师培训以个别教师为主, 学区管理者和pg电子游戏试玩董事会.
At no point in the last 25 years have state leaders moved to override local control — a foundational principle of Oregon education for decades — from the state’s 197 districts to uniformly improve reading instruction for all students.
The state’s latest attempt to get the science of reading into Oregon classrooms is not the first proposal of its kind. 十年前有俄勒冈早期阅读倡议, 以及十年前的早期成功阅读计划. There was the 2002 plan sent from the state education department to the federal education department for millions in funding titled: “Oregon Plan to Connect the Science of Reading to pg电子游戏试玩 和 Classrooms.”
In an interview with the Capital Chronicle, Kotek said she wasn’t aware of that 21-year-old plan. 她的两位教育政策顾问, Pooja Bhatt和Melissa Goff, 拒绝了《pg电子游戏试玩》的采访请求.
俄勒冈州的“阅读战争”
俄勒冈州也未能幸免于20世纪90年代的阅读大战, 这已经不仅仅是教育了吗, 但是政治. 自然拼读教学是前州参议员奥巴马最喜欢的话题. 查尔斯·斯塔尔, a conservative Republican from Hillsboro known for controversial proposals such as allowing schools to post signs of the Ten Comm和ments. 但斯塔尔在阅读教学方面发现了一些东西. He tried at least three times between 1998 和 2003 to propose legislation that would m和ate Oregon school districts provide explicit phonics instruction in the earliest grades 和 ensure schools had access to curricula that included phonics instruction. 根据斯塔尔一项法案听证会的会议记录, 一九九九年五月, just 15 of the state’s 197 districts had K-5 literacy instruction that included direct phonics instruction.
“The failure to learn to read is the most serious problem facing education in the U.S. 24年前，他在立法会对同僚们说.
Passage of Starr’s phonics proposals through the Republican controlled House 和 Senate were largely divided along party lines, 和民主党政府. John Kitzhaber vetoed two of Starr’s three proposals that made it to his desk. 在全国范围内强制执行自然拼读法已被视为共和党的信条, 试图规范和规范教师和教学. An article in the Willamette Week from 2001 quoted one lobbyist saying Starr had become obsessed with phonics.
“Nearly every bill that came up in committee he attached a phonics amendment to. There was the phonics game, a phonics pilot program, it was silly,” the lobbyist said.
It’s unclear if Kitzhaber had any strong political feelings about Starr’s bills. The then-governor was arguably more preoccupied at the time with keeping schools financially solvent than he was with reading curriculum. 没有任何资金用于大规模的教育改革. 1991年选民通过了第5号法案，1997年通过了第50号法案, both of which capped the state’s ability to tax property to help pay for schools. 来自这些税收的pg电子游戏试玩资金减少了三分之二. The state education department didn’t even have a reading specialist at the time to oversee a curricular shift or any major investment in phonics. Kitzhaber削减了这个职位以节省资金.
伯特利阅读计划
To transform reading instruction in Bethel in the late 1990s 和 early 2000s, 科尔从俄勒冈大学请来了三位重量级人物. 爱德华冰砾'enui, Deborah Simmons 和 Beth Harn were all experts in reading 和 specifically, 特殊教育阅读指导.
科尔 和 the experts discovered there was no continuity in how reading was taught across classrooms, 在伯特利的年级和pg电子游戏试玩, 因为当地的控制. 许多学生没有按照科学来接受教育. Students might get some phonics instruction, but not enough to fully develop those decoding skills. Some students were taught to read 和 memorize whole words before they had learned to decode them, 类似于先学乘法后学加法.
The philosophy was, according to 科尔: “Kids will read when they’re ready.”
With a $700,000 federal grant, they launched the 伯特利阅读计划. They began retraining teachers 和 educational assistants in reading science, providing frequent assessments 和 extra instruction for students struggling most. Teachers agreed to switch to curricula focused on explicit phonics instruction. 三年内, Bethel went from about 15% of students leaving first grade unable to read, 降到2%以下. By 2003, the proportion of third graders meeting state st和ards in reading rose from 79% to 92%. School employee associations 和 leaders in other districts asked 科尔’s staff 和 the UO researchers to give presentations about what they’d done in Bethel, but there wasn’t any major effort from Oregon education leaders to fund or scale the experiment elsewhere, 他说.
“I actually got tired of doing Oregon presentations because we did so many of them,” 科尔说,. “There wasn’t any strong support from the Oregon 教育部.”
阅读第一
当伯特利阅读计划即将结束时, the federal government was rolling out its single largest investment — $6 billion over six years — in improving reading proficiency called “阅读第一.” It was part of the No Child Left Behind Act that Congress passed in 2001, which required states to get all students to “proficient” levels on state tests by the 2013-14 school year. 如果pg电子游戏试玩想从这60亿美元中分一杯羹, they needed to get reading instruction in their classrooms aligned with the reading science.
Kame’enui 和 Simmons would become major architects of 阅读第一 和 of the program’s rollout in Oregon. Leaders at the state department of education submitted a 220-page application for 阅读第一 money, 包括题为“Oregon Plan to Connect the Science of Reading to pg电子游戏试玩 和 Classrooms.”
In 2002, UO became one of three universities in the nation that was designated a “雷丁第一中心对教师进行再培训, train reading coaches for schools 和 facilitate research to instruct teachers across the U.S. on the most effective instructional methods rooted in scientific research.
“We would develop all these materials 和 hold these institutes for three, 四个, maybe five days — all day long — training teachers on the big ideas of beginning reading,“卡梅伊说.
对于很多地区来说, 阅读第一 was the first time there was money to hire reading specialists 和 reading coaches for schools. 这也是, 对于许多, 学生第一次得到明确直接的自然拼读教学, 尤其是那些最挣扎的孩子.
在全国范围内，这项服务的推出并不完美, 和 some studies would later find that gains didn’t materialize or were not sustained in schools where implementation was poorly done. But in many places where 阅读第一 was implemented well, it seemed to be working.
阅读前, only 18% of students at Humboldt Elementary School in Portl和 were at grade level for reading. 四年后，近75%的人接受了“阅读第一”课程.
凯姆努伊和西蒙斯继续向美国政府咨询.S. 教育部. 科尔, 伯特利的特殊教育主任, went to work for the Western Regional 雷丁第一中心 to help spread 阅读第一 across the West 和 to support schools with its implementation.
但到了2008年，雷丁第一破产了. Academics whose curriculum did not meet program st和ards accused Kame’enui, Simmons 和 other prominent 阅读第一 figures of using their positions to promote their own textbooks 和 materials for financial gain. 两位教授辞去了该项目的顾问职位, 从他们与美国的合作来看.S. 教育部. 凯姆埃努伊回到了俄勒冈大学. He maintains that he 和 Simmons did not try to promote their work to districts to earn more money.
“这是非常痛苦的，但这是政治上的，”Kame 'enui说.
By the end of 2008, the reading first money had dried up 和 a financial crisis 和 recession hit.
Jamila Williams was principal at Humboldt Elementary during 阅读第一. The school closed in 2013, 和 Williams lives in Arizona now, but she remembers the fallout vividly.
“We ended up having to really cut things that were important for the kids,”她说。, “但我们没钱买.”
善意的失败
尽管努力维持“阅读第一”的收益, 然后是教学主管, 苏珊·卡斯蒂略, 并上交. 泰德·库隆戈斯基仍然抵制教学命令, 和 sustaining funding for schools continued to be the central educational challenge for the Legislature.
卡斯蒂略于2012年辞职, 和Kitzhaber, 时隔7年后，谁当选了州长, appointed former Tigard-Tualatin Superintendent 罗伯·萨克斯顿 to the position. Saxton had overseen a successful reading intervention program based on direct instruction 和 scientifically proven reading methods that targeted students struggling most in his district. It had been so successful that reading experts from his district went on to offer voluntary training to school staff in 90 other Oregon districts.
Saxton began developing a proposal for the single largest state investment in state 历史 in reading instruction: $180 million for the “幼儿园至三年级阅读计划让孩子们在三年级前阅读. 它本可以提供pg电子游戏试玩, 就像《pg电子游戏试玩》一样, 拨款给阅读教练, 教师培训和课程设置根植于阅读科学.
“Governor Kitzhaber promised me that he would not sign the budget bill into law until this literacy initiative was funded,萨克斯顿告诉《pg电子游戏试玩》.
But in February 2015, Kitzhaber abruptly resigned following ethics violations 和 the attempt died. Saxton resigned several months later to take a job leading the Northwest Regional Education Service District.
“八年过去了，”萨克斯顿说. “俄勒冈州的pg电子游戏试玩每个班级有5万名学生. 也就是400,000 students have not had the kind of exposure to literacy instruction that they should have had in the intervening time.”
在接下来的八年里, the Legislature focused on initiatives that would balance the state school fund after decades of disinvestment. 时任国务卿凯特·布朗成为俄勒冈州州长, 并专注于提高该州的毕业率, 哪个是全国最低的. 她选中了一位前伯特利pg电子游戏试玩的负责人, 柯尔特吉尔, to become her education innovation officer 和 eventually to lead the education department.
在吉尔的领导下，俄勒冈州的毕业率上升了, 但是根据州政府的评估, 这并不是因为学生的阅读能力提高了. 吉尔, 谁的任期这个月结束, continued to consult with Kame’enui 和 other experts at the University of Oregon while at Bethel 和 at the department of education, 他说. But any attempt at instructional reform in reading took a backseat to his priorities as director of the department when, 工作一年了, COVID打击.
He said he hopes to see 早期识字成功计划 signed into law. 它是, 在很多方面, 和他的前任如出一辙, 罗伯·萨克斯顿, 八年前的求婚, 比萨克斯顿当时想要的少了大约4000万美元. 吉尔, 像他的前任一样, trusts districts to be in charge of improving reading instruction without the state education department taking the lead.
“We’re going to have to continue to work on it over the next several biennia to be able to get the outcomes we’re looking for,他说. “我们不是一夜之间到达这里的.”
Next: Part 2: Failure to teach kids to read starts at Oregon teacher colleges
This project was funded by the Urang Schuberth family in the Portl和 area. The Capital Chronicle was rigorous in maintaining a firewall between the project 和 the funders. 州编辑部, the nonprofit 501c(3) organization based in North Carolina that created 和 funds the Capital Chronicle, 监督项目资金.
俄勒冈州首府纪事报 是国家新闻编辑室的一部分, a network of news bureaus supported by grants 和 a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. 俄勒冈州首府纪事报保持编辑独立性. 接触正(电子邮件保护). 继续关注俄勒冈州首府纪事报 脸谱网 和 推特.
消息提示? 发送电子邮件至 (电子邮件保护).
如何订阅 – The 的篇幅企业 delivers quality local journalism – fair 和 accurate. 你可以随时随地通过数字订阅来阅读它. 在你的手机、平板电脑、家用电脑上阅读. 点击 订阅 – $7.50元/月.
