Needs opinions about Accelerated Reader

Hi Mary,

The parochial school my son attends (and my homeschooled daughter previously attended) uses the AR program. AR is part of the reading curriculum and all students have to obtain X number of points depending on the teachers requirements. AR stripped away the joy of pleasure reading and made a job of it instead. At the beginning of this school year, we were at the library checking out books when my son found one he was particularly interested in reading. He brought it to me and with his face alight, he excitedly described what it was about. Then he paused and asked if it was on AR. When I told him it wasn’t, the sparkle left his eye, his face dropped and he sadly returned the book to the shelf. Even when AR wasn’t mandatory, the teachers encouraged it by putting big progress charts on the wall. So my LD daughter, whose homework load prevented pleasure reading, was constantly negatively reminded, along with all her classmates, that she wasn’t reading like they were.

AR gets a big NO vote from me!

Blessings, momo

The AR system at our school sets required a set amount of points needed for grades 3 to 8. Kids under third grade are not required to get points but still have a reward system for the kids who want to take the tests to get point. The kids above third grade also have a reward system but more points are needed to get an award based on the age of the child. Points start with getting a coupon for a free ice cream cone for maybe 10 points up to a $5.00 gift certificate for a book for getting 80 points etc. etc. This reward system, is a big motivator with my kids.

My son, who stuggles with reading, would never have read as much if not for AR. Each class has a set amount of points that each child need for the quarter. This was a good motivator for him as it gives him a goal. Once he meets that goal he no longer wants to read. My younger son, who reads very well, also loves AR. He is only in second grade so there is not a minimun requirement. But, he is trying to get enough points to go out for lunch with the teacher. This is a huge motivator for him to read.

I agree with Momo. My kids do not like to read books that are not on the AR list because then they don’t get to take the test and thus get an award. Neither of my kids, however, have problems finding books that they like on the AR list. They now have even gotten the books of the bible on the tests. Because I attend a private school, tests are purchased once money is available.

I also agree with Momo about the big chart in the kids room on everyone’s progress with AR points. I feel like that should be veiwed as a grade and be a private mater for the kids. It should not be on public display.

AR also has a test that each child can take called “The Star Program”. This is given at the beginning of the year and the end of the year so that the child’s reading progress can be documented. This helps to give feedback about the child’s reading progress. It also helps me to help pick out appropriate reading levels for my child.

AR has helped to encourage reading in my house. I give it a “yes” vote.

Donn

Mary MN wrote:
>
> The principal of my daughter’s school is considering ordering
> Accelerated Reader for next year. I would like to gather
> opinions on it from both parents and teachers. Please either
> post your opinion here or email me privately.
>
> Thanks in advance to all who respond!
>
>
> Mary

I use a free program at the bookadventure.com site. It is like AR. I do not require it for my kids, but do have rewards for earning points. Book Adventure is something you can even do at home. It would be nice if all kids didn’t need incentives to read, but that is not the case. Even us as adults are more likely to do something if there is an incentive involved.

I do not like the idea of AR being used as part of a child’s grade received, but I do vote yes to programs like this if it will encourage even one child to do extra reading. Teachers must be careful though so they have kids read books at their independent and not instructional reading level.

Using Acc. Reader has encouraged the students at our school to read. There is enough variety offered to enable students to choose books that interest them. They enjoy the rewards and benefit from the reading.

My daughter was in a similar situation — dislikes reading overall, and then the ONE book she FINALLY wants to read is not on the “AR” list — what a battle!

I “solved” this problem this year by writing a proposal to our school’s PTA to purchase more AR tests. (Currently, although the AR program is “pushed” and chilren rewarded, less than 30% of the library’s total books were available to test!)

Needless to say, few people at the school were aware of the real situation, the grant was awarded (and on a renewable basis as well!) until hopefully, we have 75% of the library’s books available for this really good program!

If this is a similar situation in your school, contact your librarian (or whomever handles the AR program) and find ways to increase the number of books available.

In addition, there is also www.bookadventure.com available on-line for home use, byt I have found it very limited, as well.

Good luck.

As a parent of a struggling student I very much dislike the AR program. It has not helped my son enjoy reading, and adding in that competition factor (posting the “top readers” for every grade level, as well as a huge classroom chart showing how many each student passed) is just further discouragement.

Last year (2nd grade) his techer relied on the students to keep track of the number of tests passed by recording them on a slip of paper for her. His solution was to just write down 100% for every test he took. At the end of the year, when the teacher got her printout and realized he had not passed the required number, she was furious with him.

The students seem to view books designated “accelerated reader” to be somehow better lieterature than other books, as though the folks selling the program were the final authorities on good literature.

Hi. as far as the ‘Star test’ goes, I would not regard it as the only way to see your child’s progress. My son has struggled with reading since 1st grade and at our 4th grade eval. where he was finally put into sp.ed. his reading teacher came in all bubbly to tell us he had just that week reached grade level. Earlier in the yearhe was on about 2nd grade level and once he was evaluated, he was still on 2nd grade level for reading. So don’t depend on the test to tell you what level your child is reading on, look at the other stuff too(like carryover into classroom work.). Just my 2 cents worth. AR has some good things going for it but no I would not want my son’s grades to depend on it, incentives should be enough. Also, it is not secure, other kids can get in to look at your kids points, number of books read,etc. Sometimes fuel for teasing. For a good reader it is great, for a poor reader not so good. Thanks for listening.

I believe there’s a way for the librarian (or whoever’s running AR) to make quizzes to put into the program, too, so you might ask about that. I think AR is one of those things that can be useful if handled delicately — but it’s like any competitive and arbitrary measure of “achievement” — it’s really easy to get caught up in the short term “did I win” and forget the real goal of what you’re doing.

AR was intended to encourage reading. Unfortunately, it is rarely used as the creators intended, which makes it counter-productive. The levels are not indicative of a students actual reading level. Undue pressure is applied to get points rather than reading for enjoyment. The program is used as part of the Reading grade - a BIG no-no!! Reading choices are restricted. In general, it becomes a nightmare for kids and teachers who truly love reading. Add to all this the fact that the tests include only low level questions - those that require mainly factual knowledge. The computer cannnot grade questions that require real thinking. I am the Reading coordinator for a mid-sized school district. Although, several of our elementary buildings have opted to spend building budget on this program, it is not sanctioned or encouraged by our district administration for all of the reasons above. If your district is contemplating using this program, insist that it be used as intended. Do not allow it to morph into a monster. Good luck.

by Alfie Kohn for an eye-opening expose of using bribes as incentives for ANYTHING including reading. If your goal is to have your child read more books for a short period of time and see his teachers sit in vats of jello and other foolishness, but long-term have his/her interest in reading DIMINISHED, AR is the program for you. It has been proven in study after study that placing an external motivator as a carrot to “reward” people for doing something ultimately makes that task, whatever it is, distasteful. Please, please, read great books with your kids, find kits to put together and have them read the directions, etc., etc., but let them fall in love with reading for its own sake.

Punished by Rewards has done more harm to education than I can imagine. Those of us trained in the behavioral sciences have been put on a defensive and accused of bribing when all that is happening is the logical reward that goes with an accomplishment.

I am neutral on AR. It has its points. The STAR testing however seems relatively accurate.

The reason there are so many educators “bribing” is because training is inadequate and salaries are low. I am a strong believer in incentive awards - especially concerning our LD kids. I also have been well enough trained to know not to develop the “knee jerk” hands out response - where children want to know what they get before trying a task.

If I were to write a book on reading in response it would be the much simpler
‘PUNISHED BY PUNISHMENT” which more aptly applies to what is happening to our youngsters encountering reading problems in the early grades.

PUNISHMENT INVARIABLY LEADS TO ESCAPE BEHAVIORS

Hi,

I remember as a kid reading this huge number of books one summer, all of them too easy for me, but we got points for every book we read, so all I did was check books out of the library by the armful, quickly breeze through them, and turn them back in. The intellectual involvement was approximately zero, and I do not believe the experience taught me to read books for pleasure.

However, our school experimented with the DEAR program (Drop Everything And Read.) When it was in full bloom, I heard comments from teachers at many grade levels about how kids who had not read anything on their own for years were finally reading, and reading for enjoyment.

The DEAR program has one thing going against it. It’s free to implement, so no one has a monetary incentive to sell it. The way it works is to basically shut down the school for 15 to 20 minutes a day and have EVERYONE read…teachers, principals, kids, janitors, cooks…everyone. For those 15 to 20 minutes, everyone has their head in a book of their own choosing (with obvious limitations) and is not to be disturbed. In my opinion, it really works, but again, because no one makes any money off of it, no one does any research, and it has a hard time being sustained.

In spite of how successful it “appeared” to be, it was subject to being picked away at. If 10 minutes was needed for busing time, it came from DEAR time (“They can read on the bus,”) etc. One of the obvious benefits of the program is that kids would see others reading a book they’d never heard of, and ask how it was. Some kids would tell others that they should try a particular book because it was really good, etc. This is, in my mind, what pleasure reading is all about, and the DEAR program seemed to foster it.

Does anyone out there continue to use it?

My kids old school in suburb of Buffalo used it—may still—we just aren’t there.

It was incredibly helpful and, as a result, I was able to provide the principal of our school with a packet of information about Accelerated Reading. Since it is a very small school, 110 children K-8, my recommendation was to use http://www.bookadventure.com (thank you, Sarah!) and DEAR (thank you, Rod!). She is also forewarned about the potential for misuse of AR and bookadventure.

Mary

As a reading teacher and parent, I strongly recommend AR. I onlly wish it was in my son’s school when he was in elementary school.

It is great, but first the librarian has to be sold on it because it is the most work for her. Then the teachers have to be willing to use it.

We have a school of many children who were poor readers and didn’t want to read when we implemented AR and the kids could find a library book at their level, thanks to AR leveling the library books. Our entire school took off.

I can certainly see why you hate AR.

Your school is not using AR correctly. Contests are not to be held by totaling the number of points. Any contests are to be based on the percentage of goal achieved. The computer figures this out. With this plan the child is competing with himself. With this plan the child who reads the most and may have the most points does not necessarily win the contest. This allows every child to have a successful reading experience.

You need a fund raiser to
1. Get some training for your teachers from the AR company
2. Buy more quizzes for your books.
3. Hopefully you have a good librarian to label books. Or as seems to often be the case in parochial schools a great volunteer system to label the books.
4. You also need a teacher who understands the philosophy to head the program because your school has missed the boat.

I repeat, this program is to be based on the individual’s persentage of goal achieved, not total number of points compaired to his classmates. This is calculated by the computer. All the teacher has to enter is the reading level of the student and the computer figures out the percentage of the goal that each child acchieves. Ar recommends short term goals i.e. goals for each quarter rather than one goal for the year.

Your teachers also need training from AR company.

This is another example of a school that has missed the boat.

If children are getting into your child’s points. You should ask to have your child’s password changed. Most schools use initials for a pass word. Your child and every other child has a right to privacy and this sounds like a school wide problem. If the person in charge of the program does not know how to fix this. Have the teacher telephone AR and they will walk the teacher through the process.

As a teacher, and a parent, I feel sorry for your youngster and the others in the school. I am ashamed of your school and your teachers.

I agree!!

Your child is also covered under the Right to Privacy Act. No child should be doing this kind of record keeping. It is not only illegal, but the AR program does this for the teacher. There was a case where a teacher was sued for having other students correcting papers. The teacher lost because of the Right to Privacy Act. This case was a little extreme, because this is a done in many classrooms, but if the teacher is unaware or can’t control how other children handle it, perhaps she should be sued.

AR charts displayed in the classroom is not part of the program. This is not endorsed by AR.

What’s wrong with the teacher? She can get these reports daily. It’s not the job of students to record your son’s progress.

You need to voice y our concerns and get the PTA or some group to raise money for teacher training by AR program. Better yet if the school has created this the principal had better find the money for the training.

Another example of a school on the wrong bus. Poor leadership!!!

We had rewards at first, but they were not great and they fell off and the kids didn’t even ask about them after a while. They low kids especially were so excited about passing a quiz that was a great reward for them. They had never passed a test before, but now they were reading library books at their own level and that was a great reward for them

In our school DEAR became DEAD for teachers. That stands for drop everything and drink. We saw kids with open books and never knew who was actually reading and who was just turning pages. Then the endless book reports. Kids became excellent at writing great book reports on books they had never even read.
Teaches spend time reading all the books to keep ahead of the kids. AR takes away all the work for the teacher and keeps all the information on the computer and it is very motivating for the children.