"Reading Don't Fix No Chevys': Literacy in the Lives of Young Men.

"READING DON'T FIX NO CHEVYS": LITERACY IN THE LIVES OF YOUNG MEN

By Michael W. Smith and Jeffrey D. Wilhelm. Heinemann, 2002.

LITERACY AS SNAKE OIL: BEYOND THE QUICK FIX

By Joanne Larson, Colin Lankshear, and Michele Knobel, eds. Peter Lang, 2002.

READING THE NAKED TRUTH: LITERACY, LEGISLATION AND LIES

By Gerald Coles. Heinemann, 2003.

RESISTING READING MANDATES: HOW TO TRIUMPH WITH THE TRUTH

By Elaine M. Gaxan. Heinemann, 2002.

During my visit to your classroom this morning I noticed many supplemental books from either [names specific materials] or other materials maybe from your reading recovery stock. I asked you when these books are used and you said that you teach with Open Court and use these other books also.

It is very important to utilize only the Open Court materials during the prescribed reading time and no other trade books during the directed teacher lessons except for those books that Open Court recommends to complement the modules. It is obvious that you continued to do your own program. It is insubordinate [sic] to refuse to implement the Open Court reading program as prescribed.

Your training in the area of reading is extensive and I respect your need to utilize your training but in lieu of the fact that we are an Open Court school, mandatory that the script be followed.

Thank you for your immediate compliance to this direction.

(Principal to teacher, personal communication, 1999, in Gutierrez p. 115, Snake Oil).

Who controls curriculum and instruction in an evidence-based education era? Conflicts of interests are dramatically played out--in practice, in research, in theory, and on the policy level--in four books which highlight a national reading tragedy: Literacy as Snake Oil, Reading the Naked Truth, Reading Don't Fix no Chevys and Resisting Reading Mandates. Reading these together, one could experience great disenchantment about the state of reading in the U.S. The authors amplify "truths" about reading, and carefully strip down the staging and scripts of glorified national reading policies, to expose major defects. Sadly, this isn't a theater performance, but a disturbing reality. These four books intensely recap the "reading wars" that were recently catalyzed by 21st century evidence-based research by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Research Council (the highly promoted, elusive NRP, or, Report of the National Reading Panel, of 2000, which followed on the heels of the more lucid, but limited, 1998 report, Preventing Reading Difficulties by Snow, Burns, and Griffin). They poignantly question dominant assumptions about reading, and move beyond the polarized debate over practice, research, and theory.

Critiques of national reading policies have been crisply summarized in a previous Educational Researcher article in 2000. The authors of this article (Taylor, Anderson, Au & Raphael, 2000) outlined four problems of this type of research: "First the text created by these researchers focuses on word-level processing rather than on reading. Second, it connotes a perspective of deprivation rather than difference. Third, the text equates instructional methods with teaching. Fourth, it substitutes training for professional development: (p. 17). The authors of these four books elaborate these problems, and spotlight reading as a cultural process rather than a hard-wired trait that scientific medical models of reading research take for granted. They also critique the hasty connections that have been made among this kind of research, practice, and policy, and override the slick advice on "training boosts" and, "balanced reading instruction." They provide alternative and contrary evidence for reading problems of children. Examples of the subversive strategies employed by both teachers and students to resist compliance with dominant reading practices (that have been dictated on all levels) are also interwoven into the texts. This review will focus on the themes that are highlighted in these four books, from different vantage points.

Teachers, who know that they can be blamed for low reading scores rather than policy makers, react to these policies by negotiating them, rather than implementing them wholesale. In Kris Guiterrez's provocative chapter, "Smoke and Mirrors: Language Policy and Educational Reform" in Literacy as Snake Oil, the teacher tries to make the content interesting to his students, by supplementing the required basal reading series with other materials. Yet, he is caught and reprimanded by the principal who is trying to act in accordance with district policies. Patricia Irvine and Joanne Larson, in a powerful chapter in Snake Oil, judiciously document the construction of reading deficits in classrooms where teachers do comply with the commercial reading package programs. Stories of other teachers who are more covert, and who openly resist the curriculum, are told too. One teacher, Lynn Asterita Gatto, who received a major award from the White House, writes about her experience of using alternative materials and methods in Snake Oil. She decides to ignore the supplementary materials of the dictated basal materials given to her, like "overheads, charts, sentence strips, paperback sets and tapes" (72). Instead, she chooses problem-based materials, like a vivarium project, and public library and school library materials to teach, as well as Sustained Silent Reading (SSR). She discusses how a critical pedagogical approach to reading and learning strengthens children's critical thinking abilities. Yet, these outcomes are not normally prized so much as higher test scores. The seduction of quick fix solutions is challenged in the eight Snake Oil essays, which highlight the devastating effects of these highly promoted reading programs in many types of classrooms.

These teachers respond to the many intellectual and emotional needs of their students as they read. They try to work around dysfunctional norms, like one male high school student who confessed to researchers in Reading Don't Fix no Chevy's, "I am slacking it because I don't know. I find it is not challenging enough, that is the thing, and if I am not challenged, you know, especially with something that I know. If I am not challenged then I am going to get bored real quick." (114). The authors, Smith and Wilhelm, are especially careful not to use feminist backlash theories to explain boys' low reading interests and poor literacy achievement. Instead, they see teachers as critical players in hooking students on reading. This boy, like other teens the authors studied, wants to read something enjoyable and meaningful. The researchers found that reading is highly motivating when it is oriented around realistic, immediate and relational needs requiring problem-solving. The boys' strategies for reading were found to be active, and based in inquiry, competence and control. Although the boys valued school as a gatekeeper for better jobs and futures, they were often bored by the standard curriculum. At home, they chose to play video games, read comics, and use other materials that were not endorsed in their classrooms. These practices were so distinctive, they could be considered "home literacy" practices. The objective, according to the authors, is to integrate these practices into school-based literacy instruction, which could supply both girls and boys with interesting material and instruction based on active engagement. The authors emphasize emotional connections with texts: "If they do not care about the characters and issues presented--then they will never proceed to more nuanced readings" (195). After interviewing and analyzing four different sets of qualitative data (from reading logs to hypothetical profiles and case studies) of 49 teenage boys, they suggest that teachers use pre-reading activities, and focus on relationships built up at home. The goal is to foster a kind of invigorating literacy instruction, so that children don't "see school as a necessary evil" (204). At this age, they may think about dropping out, which is not something current reading reforms, which are aimed at younger children, consider.

For practitioners and the public, Elaine Garan serves as a "pied piper" in Resisting Reading Mandates through her analysis of the panel report. She coaches teachers to voice their concerns about administrative directives and she helps administrators defend teachers and their existing practices. Garan questions the generalizations of the NRP study. She claims there are so many mixed messages within the report and the findings are so misrepresented, that they have little value for instruction. There are also many excluded groups, like English as Second Language (ESL) students. Although they comprise a growing percentage of students in the nation's schools, they are left out of the NRP Report, making phonics prescriptions a conundrum for a wildly diverse population. She attacks the NRP media hype because the study's recommendations contain an explicit message: "You must teach this. You must use this program. You must follow this script because scientific research says you should. This book will enable you to respond to the 'research says' claims." (xv).

Garan uses a question-and-answer format, with real-life examples in the book to explain her points and argue her case. She ends her book with the words of a kindergarten teacher who writes, "I love teaching and I love children, but I am tired. I am exhausted from trying to fight standards, and programs, and curriculum changes that are based on some political agenda imposed on children in the name of scientific research based standards. As a kindergarten teacher, I am personally tired of being asked to teach to standards mandated as a "quick fix" by people who are not teachers and who have no ideas what is best for children in the long term. This is UNREALISTIC..." (89).

In fact, challenging the NRP led Garan into a transformation, creating a stronger conviction that authentic literacy development tasks, not isolated skills, need to he assessed as outcomes for children's reading. The book itself is educational and well sequenced, and can be easily read by teachers and parents alike. She uses layperson's language to explain reading terms as well as research jargon. For example, she discuses different approaches to teaching phonics (11), and defines research terms, like "meta-analysis" (14). She scours the report for loopholes as well as strategies, reassuring teachers every step of the way that the NRP report confirms their authority, and does not in fact determine a "one best method." She, like, Coles, advocates for a "pro-choice" position (Coles, 2003, 127) on the teaching of reading, based on NRP conclusions. She also supplements her main argument by building a case for supports to children's reading, like quality literature, parental involvement, and libraries. She concludes that the reading wars no longer represent a pendulum of philosophically different educational ideas that naturally swing back and forth, but have become dangerous political weapons that can deskill and pacify both teachers and children. Garan maintains, "current state and federal mandates for education are blatantly political and shamelessly financial" (87). Her passionate plea for opposition and advocacy can create a broad-based constituency, including parents, the public, teachers, and policy makers.

For researchers and policy makers, Gerald Coles in Reading the Naked Truth, takes on both the NRP report (for its spurious, inconclusive, tapered findings) and the Bush administration, which has officially promoted it through research and legislation. In a deconstruction of the language of the NRP report to "end the wiggle room" (1) and question the studies on which it is based, he finds hidden variables, offers alternate explanations, and digs below the scientism to uncover the political girding of the study. Of the panel members, he traces the reasoning and agendas of these emblematic actors. As if he were Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, he rips the curtain from the wizard to reveal a comedy of errors. With catchy chapter headings such as "Systematic Phonics Beats Whole Language!" Coles relentlessly casts doubts on the internal and external validity of the NRP findings, which he suggests have fired up a back-to-basics campaign of the 1970s with a new right-wing face. His findings are synthesized in a chapter in Snake Oil. In this essay, he forcefully argues that the NICHD research excluded many studies and instructional methods that did not fit their agendas, combined with the use of a meta-analysis approach which contributed to the narrow, miscalculated findings that focus on phonemic awareness over other reading dimensions. Five studies illustrate these problems. Coles's analysis focuses heavily on these studies and calls particular attention to categorical misnomers in them under such rubrics as "causation vs. correlation," "the missing control group," and "training compared to what?" He also considers what is missing from the conversation on reading, including the need for libraries, classroom size, drop out rates, writing, educational success beyond the 3rd grade, and why silent reading instruction gains were not emphasized more. Coles especially challenges the efficacy of the control groups, the use of distorted "whole language" and reading recovery instruction, the overestimated review of 100,000 studies, and asks why phonemic awareness rather than comprehension was emphasized in the study. He makes clear that the current testing emphasis measure skills and behaviors, rather than reading.

Cole points out how the media hype (such as the "Texas miracle" and unsubstantiated superior claims of phonics instruction in schools) is deceptive because it is based on invidious comparisons, a "stepwise" view of comprehension, and dichotomous reading models (learn to read/read to learn) that draw on behaviorist views of reading rather than the deeper meanings of reading achievement. Most importantly, the social and cultural contexts of reading are downplayed in "scientifically-based" reading research. Coles and others (Irvine and Larson) have discussed how zip codes and social class indicators can predict reading scores and construct "academic disadvantages." James Gee, in "Reading, Language, Abilities, and Semiotic Resources: Beyond Limited Perspectives on Reading," discusses the silences and paradoxes of this limited discourse of the National Research Council research in Snake Oil, and points to race and class issues that are the real issues behind the "true crisis" in reading, mainly, "access, equity, and equality" (8-11). The first problem is the way reading is defined (as a phonically-based concept), and at a "Dick and Jane level" (13) instead of as a multidimensional 21st century literacy construct. The second is that other social factors are not named, such as racism and poverty, which affect minority children disproportionately, especially as social welfare policies are dismantled, and cut down their literacy learning opportunities. Gee criticizes the logic of teaching to phonological deficits, especially with a "4th grade dropoff" and later "slump." These premises ignore critical variables. Early language resources and abilities, like expressive vocabulary, and the specific school-based resources children need to succeed are neglected in the formulas. The upper middle class resources available to some children give them a distinct advantage in entering social practices that are rewarded. Their "way of being in the world" (22) distinctly helps them navigate these familiar discourses.

It is this cultural theory of reading and teaching that is so important and explored in depth in these books, that is nearly absent from mainstream reading policy texts, which the authors claim, are myopic to their own cultural biases about reading and its meaning in society. These authors critique how the definition of reading that is used is self-fulfilling, because the success with which readers decipher official texts is itself a cultural phenomenon (Smagorinsky, 2001). While the authors do refute deficit models of reading, none of them sidesteps reading problems, and they are all intensely engaged in educating teachers to educate diverse groups of children. They provide insights into where these ideas come from and their power. Often, mainstream texts that do focus on "culture" market it in rigid terms, making the discourse itself morally bankrupt, according to Patrick Shannon in his chapter in Snake Oil. His content analysis of William Bennett publications reveals an agenda to save "at-risk" children through character education and the transmission of moral literacy via certain virtuous texts. Following from this, national reading policies could be viewed as part of this overall program to prescribe cultural literacy and instill particular principles, while avoiding diversity issues.

The absence of multiple perspectives on reading is also intolerable to these authors. Garan and Coles shed light on the lack of diversity among the panel members in terms of ideology, and the fact that there were no reading teachers who were on it. The real biases of the panel members are not accounted for in the NRP report. This information would be especially important, since the reports have made recommendations that benefited major commercial publishers and government officials. This predisposition, according to Garan and Coles, influenced the kinds of studies that were selected for review, the definitions that were applied, and their recommendations for policy. Arguments about the panel's unofficial ties, reputations, status, fields, and need to receive subsequent funding is too persuasive to be considered paranoid by Whole Language advocates. Yet at the same time, as Garan and Coles have emphasized, the criteria for selecting and analyzing the studies, plus, the recommendations are too discombobulated to be considered a real coup. Coles leans heavily on Joanna Yatvin's analysis of the conditions of putting together the Report. Yatvin, a panel member, has discussed the process of publishing and how the study yielded hurried, incomplete findings and recommendations as a result of being pushed to get it out quick. Also there were some real differences in views and allegiances expressed by subcommittee members. This backdrop makes the report both controversial and confusing to be applied in policy and practice across-the-board or uniformly. Yatvin wrote a chilling online piece in Phi Delta Kappan (2002) about the process of the NRP study; in which she describes in detail the behind-the-scenes negotiations and points out major conceptual problems of the study. One problem was the use of only one model of reading. Another one is that no compass was used for guiding their knowledge bases. They also used one method, meta-analysis, for too many diverse, incomparable studies. In addition, the work was published too early and was viewed as definitive rather than unfinished. Furthermore, the studies were not really re-checked for accuracy. Yatvin, and many of the authors of the four books have made strong cases that the decision to use a scientific reading model rather than a social constructionist framework could be considered a pre-censoring activity that limited the amount of studies, the methods, the experts, and the types of findings that could glean real lessons about reading. From a research perspective, with better triangulation (see, Norman Denzin's work for example), of methods and theories, the panel might have come up with more expansive findings and results, as well as recommendations. All of these critiques, of course, raise doubts about the current focus on evidence-based research, another theme in these books.

Many of the problems of evidence-based education research make the ethnographic work of Smith and Wilhelm especially apt. This kind of study, however, would be blacklisted from the current Department of Education's list of acceptable research because of the chosen research design and methodology (see Whitehurst, 2001). Yet this intensive qualitative research can be considered, "hard-to-do" rather than soft (Berliner, 2002) because it incorporates local contexts, hidden variables, biases of researchers, and captures meanings of reading in ways the other kind of research cannot, like reading interests and practices. Unfortunately however, evidence-based policies are penetrating all areas of education, even adult education, where reading research has focused on skills like never before (see Kruideneir, 2002). Anyone who can patiently and carefully read through the NRP report on the web, or in print and video, might also want to check out the reverberations of this report in other educational fields that are less known. Teenagers, like the boys featured in Reading Don't Fix no Chevys, could enroll in adult education programs thinking they were getting a reprieve from the kinds of standards-based reading reforms taking place in K-12, only to discover they are promoted in these schools as well, in order to "adequately address the national basic skills deficit" (see U.S. Department of Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education, 2003, 3). Yet there are even fewer resources to support an evidence-based agenda in adult education, and there is even less research to substantiate its grounding in the field. Adult Basic Education programs have very low retention rates, a part-time teaching force, little professional development or credentials, and working conditions that even K-12 teachers would find abysmal (see Focus on Basics issue, 2001). It would be difficult to implement program models and generalize under these circumstances, or acquire adequate resources to do large-scale studies (see NCSALL, 2003). Most importantly, reading for low-literate adults needs to be highly motivational and related to their lives outside of literacy programs, especially for those who were pushed out of regular schools previously. Reading progress is also but one of many outcomes for these adults, as well as for the teachers who instruct them. In addition, many ESL learners are in adult education classrooms, which begs the question of how replicated (or even, modified) reading reforms from K-12 would benefit a multilingual population.

In conclusion, Kris Gutierrez's notion of "robust learning communities" provides an exit door from this "reading horror show." She describes what "rich" learning communities do. They mediate learning in a variety of ways: employ heterogeneity in instruction, utilize all social, cultural, and linguistic resources of all participants, regard diversity and difference as resources for learning, and define learning rather than reaching as the targeted goal (117-118). Reading, when situated in this kind of diverse learning community, could have great potential for both teachers and students. While the principal featured in Gutierriez's memorandum may not have read the NRP report, the interpretation of the report has become one of the most important issues for the reading field. Although the media has played out the importance of phonics, as Gerald Coles has discussed, everyone else is left in a vacuum about what to do with these punitive, standardized policies. Teachers are left to decide on their own how to conduct their individual classrooms, students are left to read at home, and the rest of us researchers have to pick up the pieces and restore faith in literacy research.

REFERENCES

Berliner, D.C. (2002). Educational research: the hardest science of all. Educational Researcher. 31 (8), 18-20.

Focus on Basics. Volume 4 Issue D. April 2001. Cambridge, MA: World Education/NCSALL.

Kruidenier, J. Research-based principles for adult basic education reading instruction. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: RMC Research Corporation. Retrieved on 11/18/03 http://www.nifl.gov/partnershipforreading/publications/adult_ed_02.pdf.

Comings, J. and Primary Working Group (2003) Establishing an evidence-based adult education system. NCSALL Occasional paper. Cambridge: National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy.

Smagorinsky, P. (2001). If meaning is constructed, what's it made from? Toward a cultural theory of reading. Review of Educational Research, 71 (1), 133-168.

Taylor, B., Anderson, R.C., Au, K.H., and Raphael, T. (2000) Educational Researcher. August-September 2000. 16-26.

U.S. Education. Office of Adult and Vocational Education (2003). Blueprint for preparing America's future. The adult basic education and literacy act of 2003: Summary of major provisions. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

Whitehurst, G. (2001). [Powerpoint presentation on Evidence-Based Education EBE, slide 8]. U.S. Department of Education website. http://www.ed.gov/admins/tchrq ual/evidence/whitehurst.html. Retrieved 11/29/03.

Yatvin, J. (2002). Babes in the woods: The wanderings of the National Reading Panel. Phi Delta Kappan. 83 (5), 364-369. Retrieved on 9/29/03 http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k0201yat.htm.