More from the Radical Middle

In 2011 Language Arts edited and published a podcast interview with Richard Allington and P. David Pearson discussing the unanticipated ways in which NCLB, and other policies since, have actually undermined literacy education in this country.  At worst, out-and-out corruption lie at the heart of the mandated adoption of proprietary methods like DIBELS.  At best, we are simply guilty of merely looking at how we can get money to fund our literacy programs rather than looking at what research tells us actually works.  In any event, the upshot is by now familiar: we don't trust teachers to be professionals.  More than that, we don't want them to be professionals.  Said one policy-maker: "we don't want teachers making these, you know, professional and differential decisions about how we're using [literacy] materials"  (p. 73).

While supposed research-based methods like DIBELS are not necessarily hurting students (apart from the fact that they take time away from comprehensive reading instruction), they are hurting teachers.  Teachers become less capable and less flexible in adapting to the changing demands of the job and curricula.  Rather than learning broad concepts that they can tailor to meet specific needs, they are being trained to robotically apply specifics with no thought to how those specifics fit into an overall literacy framework.  No wonder that, as Allington and Pearson point out, half of teachers leave the "profession" at the end of five years, the point at which they would actually start to get the hang of the job.  My guess would be that the half of teachers dropping out within five years is not the half we would like to keep.