Debbie Hepplewhite's SyntheticPhonics.com

[Tad]

http://www.readingrecovery.org/sections/home/oigrequest.asp

Reading Recovery Requests Investigation from U.S.D.E. Inspector General

Updated 3-15-06

On March 15, 2006, the Reading Recovery Council of North America submitted a report to the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) documenting intimidation, conflict of interest, and bias in the implementation of Reading First, a $1 billion annual program aimed at improving reading results for children most at risk of reading failure. The report is titled, "Evidence Ignored, Learning Denied: The Attack on Reading Recovery." Full Report. News Release.

The latest report follows a letter of request to the Inspector General sent in August, 2005 for a formal investigation of the U.S. Department of Education's implementation of Reading First. (Attachment 1)(Attachment 2).

The purpose of the request was to have Reading First dollars administered fairly so that the most vulnerable children can receive research-based reading interventions like Reading Recovery. Unfortunately, under the Department of Education's restricted view, many schools are being told that Reading Recovery is NOT an approved use of the federal government's Reading First funds.

RRCNA is not alone in its concern about the implementation of Reading First. Concerns have been raised by elected officials, other reading programs, and publishers.

[Debbie Hepplewhite]

Tad - I feel sure that your posting would lead to an interesting thread if you posted it on the Reading Reform Foundation message board.

www.rrf.org.uk

The Reading Reform Foundation has grave doubts about Reading Recovery for a number of reasons - as have many other people who follow the reading debate.

Synthetic phonics involves very fast-paced rigorous phonics teaching and strictly no guessing of words from multi-cueing.

Synthetic phonics proponents and trainers are not the least bit precious about their knowledge and skills and wish to share these wherever possible including to the general public.

My impression about Reading Recovery teachers is that they are very precious about their 'training' and their 'expertise' - and that they make the teaching (remediation) of pupils overly complex and 'individual'.

I am more than happy for you to enlighten me and tell me about your viewpoint and experience.

[Lee]

Does The Rose Report present a positive or negative view of Marie Clay and RR?

[Chas]

As the report actively promotes the use of systematic phonics instruction and the removal of the Searchlights strategy (which, I think was heavily influenced by the thinking of people such as Marie Clay) it does, implicitly, promote a negative view of Reading Recovery. It also says that intervention should be based on synthetic phonics, which RR is not. However, Reading Recovery has been funded and rolled out in many primaries. It's a problem!

If the Rose Report is properly implemented the need for any sort of intervention should be drastically reduced, so maybe RR will quietly wither away.

[Debbie Hepplewhite]

Here we are, three years later, and Reading Recovery has still not withered away!

There are now threads at the top of the UK Reading Reform Foundation message forum which make essential reading for anyone interested in what is the status quo in England.

I have contributed email exchanges between myself and government personnel which demonstrate quite clearly that the government is being decidedly 'slippery' when it comes to its promotion of Reading Recovery under the umbrella project of 'Every Child a Reader'.

We have just uploaded the latest RRF newsletter no. 61 which you can access via the homepage or message forum of www.rrf.org.uk .

This includes articles about the UK government's official guidance 'Letters and Sounds' and Reading Recovery.

By the way, my latest correspondence with a government official admitted that Reading Recovery is not in line with the Rose recommendations - but tried to claim it WAS in line with Gough's 'Simple View of Reading'.

Now, how can this be? Rose promoted the 'Simple View of Reading' as a model which matched with his recommendations for synthetic phonics teaching - for which he provides the principles.

So how can Reading Recovery be both 'not in line' and 'in line' with Rose's recommendations?

This is just more evidence of the fix that the government has got itself into.

Unfortunately, there seems to be such a lack of joined-up thinking when it comes to any area of life doesn't there!

We'll just have to see what develops over time in the political sphere.

Meanwhile, my solution whilst continuing to correspond to a degree with officials is to have designed my online synthetic phonics programme to spread knowledge and information and good practice and helpful resources world-wide!

What is the saying? "Don't bring me the problem, bring me the solution!"

[Debbie Hepplewhite]

http://rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4298

And here we are, over a year later, and Reading Recovery is still going strong.

We had an inquiry led by the UK Science and Technology select committee at the end of 2009 who criticised the British government for its promotion of Reading Recovery.

They queried the quality of the research, the cost (in money terms) and also questioned the fact that it is a whole language programme and yet the government had accepted the Rose recommendations which rejected the multi-cueing guessing strategies of whole language.

And, what has happened since then I wonder.

The government just defended the indefensible with the slippery language that we are used to.