One year after announcing a pilot program to test a new Core Knowledge Early Literacy program in ten New York City Schools, Joel Klein Tuesday announced very strong early results. As a news release from the New York City Department of Ed puts it:
The progress of students in the ten participating schools was more than five times greater than the also-significant performance of students at ten peer schools with comparable student populations, and was reflected among students at all levels of literacy. Additionally, teachers surveyed as part of the pilot rated the program highly, and nine of the ten participating schools have selected to use the Core Knowledge program with their new kindergarten classes in addition to continuing the program with their first graders, who remain in the pilot.
Speaking at a press conference at a South Bronx elementary school — one of the pilot schools – E.D. Hirsch noted thatwhile the initial results were gratifying, the bigger payoff could come later, since the program is designed to build broad background knowledge across the curriculum, which pays off in improved reading comprehension in the years ahead:
Kindergarten is just a start. There is always the danger of fade out in later years, as we know from Headstart research. Elsewhere in the nation, and right here in New York, schools have made noticeable progress in raising reading scores in the early grades according to NAEP, the Nations Report Card. These improvements reflect better teaching of decoding. But the improvements in scores are still confined to the early grades. Verbal scores in the later grades of NAEP have stayed unacceptably low. Yet these later verbal scores are the ones that predict a student’s ultimate success in life.
The program consists of two strands: a phonics-heavy decoding strand, and a “listening and learning” strand to build content knowledge. “Assuming that we will get funding to develop materials for the later grades,” Hirsch noted, “I am predicting that even more dramatic results will show up further on. Instead of the current flat or even declining verbal scores among middle and high school students we will see in students who follow a program like this significantly higher scores, and we will see a narrowing of the language gap between races and ethnic groups. ”
More coverage of the pilot program results can be found here and here.
Don’t know the edublog Gotham Schools? Here are two good reasons for that to change: Our own Matt Davis is on the site today answering questions about the Core Knowledge Reading Program. We like Matt. But we love Elizabeth Green, the all-star ed reporter from the late, lamented New York Sun. She has just signed on to blog and report for Gotham Schools. NYC parents and those who follow ed reform will want to start paying close attention. GS also debuts a bright, shiny redesign today.
There’s a good, in-depth interview on ednews.org with Dr. Matt Davis, the head of the Core Knowledge Reading Program, which will be piloted in New York City this year. He talks about the two major strands of the program: a unique phonics-based “Skills” strand, and a “Listening and Learning” strand that enables very young children to build up vocabulary and background knowledge, through read-alouds of classic literary selections, fairy tales and poems, as well as a non-fiction selelctions in history, science, art, and music.
“We think the two strands together will be a great one-two punch. The Skills Strand should teach the students to decode fluently, while the Listening and Learning strand should help ensure that they have the breadth of background knowledge they will need to understand what the words they decode.”
Davis also makes a good, if little appreciated point about Core Knowledge in general. “Although people have been slow to see this, it is a curriculum designed for social justice,” he notes. ”The well-off kids, the ones whose parents read to them, teach them about numbers and letters, take them to New York and Washington, DC in the summer, visit museums, listen to public radio, and so on – those kids are going to tend to soak up a lot of cultural literacy in the home environment, and they will be able to make sense of a lot of what they read. But other kids are not as fortunate. These children need to get their cultural literacy in the schools. These are the children the Core Knowledge Foundation is looking to help, and they are also the children we are hoping to help with the reading program.”
Core Knowledge founder E.D. Hirsch is interviewed by Claus von Zastrow of the Learning First Alliance over at the website Public School Insights. While supporting the broad aims of accountability, Hirsch laments the narrowing of the curriculum that has occurred under NCLB, since broad general knowledge is critical to reading comprehension. Thus ”if you push out subject matter, you’re also pushing out reading comprehension.”
Discussing the new Core Knowledge Reading Program, which will be piloted in ten New York City schools this year, Hirsch notes that the “listening and learning” strand of the program is key, since when it comes to taking in information ”reading doesn’t catch up to listening until 7th grade on average. You’re really handicapping yourself in the teaching of general knowledge that’s needed for reading comprehension if you insist on doing it through the decoding process.”
There’s lots more. You can hear the entire interview here.
Fordham’s Mike Petrilli weighs in on the Core Knowledge reading program announcement. So does Richard Whitmire. Elissa Gootman’s longer piece in yesterday’s NY Times even manages to elicit warm words from Lucy Calkins. But especially welcome is Richard Lee Colvin’s entry at Early Stories, which concludes
“Journalists might look into pre-kindergarten programs or elementary schools in their area that are using the Core Knowledge approach. Are the kids bored? Do their heads hurt?”
If anyone wishes to take up Colvin’s suggestion, a complete list of Core Knowledge Schools can be found here. Such a visit would help counter the nonsense peddled for years by Alfie Kohn, for example, that Core Knowledge is merely a bunch o’ facts that “steal time from more meaningful objectives.”
Indeed, too many people in education still carry around the idea that reading is a content-neutral skill, and don’t appreciate the connection between background knowledge and reading comprehension. There is an assumption on the part of many teachers that the ability to decode and to apply metacognitive “reading strategies” is enough to make any text comprehensible. Isn’t it pretty to think so?
Over the next couple of days, UVA cognitive scientist Dan Willingham and Matt Davis, who heads the Core Knowledge Reading Program will weigh in here on reading. Stay tuned.
Richard Whitmire dropped a hint last week calling it “the biggest development in reading instruction that won’t make the front pages of any national newspaper. But it should.” Today came the announcement: a three-year, $2.4 million pilot project to test a new Core Knowledge Reading Program in New York City Schools. Chancellor Joel Klein made the announcement, along with Core Knowledge founder E.D. Hirsch, Jr., and Amida Gentile of the UFT. The DOE’s press release is here.
Lots to say about this initiative, but here’s coverage in the New York Times, Edweek, and New York’s WABC-TV.
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