Reading Recovery vs. Orton programs

You might be interested in this analysis of Reading Recovery stats, etc.
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~bgrossen/rr.htm

Briefly, RR was no better than untrained teacher aides, etc just working with the kids and Title One programs. The data re: RR is flawed. The testing of RR is flawed. Many of the RR studies have serious methodological flaws. It does not reduce the need for special ed.
Kids at risk do much better with programs stressing phonemic awareness and structured explicit phonics.

What does this entail, well it might be OG. I think that some schools and programs have used less intensive than OG for at risk kids such as Jolly Phonics, the add on to Open Court for high risk kids, etc. There are also quasi OG approaches or OG based programs used with young children. For example, Wilson has come up with a program for younger kids (there is a K version, a 1st grade version and a 2nd grade version). I think the thing these would all have in common would be strong elements of phonemic awareness and structured explicit phonics with decodable text.

Whether you’d want to immediately jump to OG is another question.
But it definitely is an option. Whether the school wants to pay for doing this properly is another subject. I think the difference would be that most of the above would be used in classrooms and small group settings vs very small or one on one settings for Orton.

—des

what’s your opinion/experience with this?

Is Reading First the name of a program? What is the web-site? I haven’t heard of it.

But clearly, someone hasn’t done their homework if they are implementing Reading Recovery. Easy to find many critical articles about it. This site has some: http://www.nrrf.org/

Janis

I don’t know much about Reading First. I know it is not a complete program. I think it is just an approach.

Reading First is neither — it’s the political phrase for the grant funding given to schools to use to improve reading.

Therefore, it can take many different forms; depends on who’s writing the grant.

Reading Recovery is thought (extremely) highly of by many who implement it. Hey, it is 1:1 work with kiddos… they often do make excellent progress (in the short run — but granted, for some students, it does get ‘em ‘back on track’). However, while it is used for kids “at risk of classification” it’s not at all designed for dyslexia — when the Reading Recovery folks get backed into corners they say that well, it’s not supposed to be for kids iwth special needs. (Sorta like the way whole language proponents in ivory towers say that of course whole language includes the phonics for the kids who need it… well, except that the teachers don’t even *know* the phonics themselves since hey, they don’t need it…) And, it was also designed to be a short-term, first grade intensive intervention.

I don’t think Reading First was mentioned??
I think one of the posters asked what my opinion/experience of Reading Recovery was. I have no direct experience, but the research isn’t very good. However, *their* own research is quite good. :-)

Sue, I don’t know exactly who the RR is really geared for and not really convinced it really works for many kids. There must be someone somewhere though…. If you want to just work one on one to do something nice with kids why not just get peers or some untrained volunteers though? I think that was actually stated to work better.

I think if you are going to do intervention, you should do what really works and not mess around and waste the tax payers (and kids) time.

—des

Des, go back and read the thread; yes, Reading first was mentioned twice :)

When a group of people of significant numbers and funding has found (what they consider to be) success with a program, I find that they don’t respond at all well to people who aren’t convinced it works… because they are convinced. They always have research to cite. (Flaws… oh, the people who point them out must have another program they want to make money from. ) Reading Recovery has some real zealots (programs with zealots so often means that you have to be a blind-follower-type to buy into it… so I try not to sound like a zealot ;)).

Hey, respected reading experts at one point *did* back Reading Recovery — it was a trailblazing idea, to intervene intensively, early. (It came up at an IDA conference with a reading panel of folks like Louisa Moats.) Seems, though, that they lost favor when they didn’t adapt when research on phonemic awareness and dyslexia came out.

I just meant in the original post. Yes, I saw it twice as well (just proves I was, er, reading. :-)).

As per the research review stating flaws in the research, to my knowledge the people doing the review were NOT selling something else. However, they were advocating what current research advocates. If that is selling something, well could be explained that way. I wouldn’t but you could. :-)

Yes, RR was a groundbreaking idea at the time. I didn’t know that Moats was involved in it. But shows that time flies when you’re having fun or something. I’m sure RR has an “audience” or some group that it is successful with, not sure who they are exactly but it may work for someone. Perhaps some kids who just need that individual touch. No telling there are kids like that. I think with it’s predictable text, etc it would be pretty safe to say that dyslexia is not one of the populations it would work with.

—des

Small paragraph deep in the NRP report:
While Reading Recovery alone doesn’t seem to do much, a *modified* Reading Recovery that included some phonics training showed extremely good results. Oddly, the type of phonics training was one that I find inefficient, a “word parts” approach. But the combination of all the things done in RR with enough skills training to get some good out of all those reading activities seemed to be highly effective. Of course it was a small study and teacher skill probably helped a lot too.
As I’ve said before, it’s not that what these folks are doing is wrong, just the right thing in the wrong place at the wrong time; if you get the necessary underpinnings there’s a lot of stuff in there worth doing.

Moats wasn’t involved in it (if I’m remembering it all correctly) — but basically, that part of the reading research community thought it showed great promise but then were disappointed.

My point about claiming research was done out of competitive motivation was to point out that that was the response of the people who didn’t like it. It’s not that the criticisms aren’t valid, just that the True Believers won’t find them so. (And there’s that personality thing — the warm fuzzy “I want to help the children” person who thinks we spend too much time on the analytical details is, sadly, not going to value or perhaps even have the analytical skills to recognize when something isn’t working — how can it not be working if it creates happy learners? Sure, in fifth grade they’re not as happy… but we don’t see them then, do we? )