The Claimed Success of Reading Recovery is Based Largely on a Myth
Around $26 million of taxpayer funding is spent on Reading Recovery every year. So is this money well spent or are we still holding onto one of the biggest myths in New Zealand education? James Chapman, Professor Emeritus of Educational Psychology at Massey University argues for the latter. Find out why in our latest blog. Download as a pdf here.
And read our Position Statement on Reading Recovery here.
Supporters of Reading Recovery (RR), including some principals and politicians, are ignoring the science of reading and holding on to one of the biggest myths in New Zealand education. The myth is that RR is a great programme that meets the needs of most children who struggle with reading after one year of schooling. Those who hold to this myth sell many of our children short.
Reading Recovery was developed by Marie Clay in the 1970s and implemented throughout the country in the 1980s. The goal of RR is to accelerate to average levels the literacy performance of the lowest 20% of readers after 1 year of schooling; a wait-to-fail approach. The programme involves 30-minute individual lessons over around 20 weeks. Students are discontinued from RR when they are reading at or near the average for their class. If students are unrecovered, they are referred on for additional, ongoing support. Such support does not always exist.
The Ministry of Education publishes an Annual Monitoring Report of data for RR. The latest report I’ve analysed is for 2018; the reports are usually published around two years following the year for the data. The 2018 data showed that:
55% of schools were delivering RR;
23% of 6-year-old children in schools that offered RR were placed in the programme;
74% were discontinued;
17% were referred on.
These figures have been remarkably similar each year for at least two decades. The students who benefit the most, albeit modestly at best, are in higher decile schools. The programme is least helpful for Māori and Pasifika students and students in Decile 1 schools.
In short, every year, 15%-20% of children who enter RR will not benefit from the programme. Their entry scores on assessments used in the Observation Survey tests that guide decisions about RR placements, strongly predict the likely outcome in the programme. The patterns of assessments are staggering in their consistency. Yet, children most likely to be failed by RR are still placed in the programme.
Yes, RR is beneficial for some students. But various studies show the positive effects wash out for around 40% of discontinued students two to four years following exit from the programme.
Consider for a moment what these numbers really mean. Between 15% and 20% of children who enter RR each year are failed by the programme. A further 40+% who are initially successful in RR are unable to maintain the gains two to four years later. These add up to over half of children who go into RR each year being failed by the programme. And these numbers don’t include those who are really struggling with reading but not placed in the programme because of the (correct) belief that RR won’t help them. And they don’t include the children who are withdrawn from the programme well before 20 weeks are up because of inadequate progress. So, this expensive programme might be useful for far fewer than half of those who are placed in RR. Incredible!
Why is RR so inadequate for those children who struggle the most with learning to read? A large number of struggling readers perform at lower developmental phases of word learning. Linnea Eri described these as pre-alphabetic and partial-alphabetic phases. Students in these phases have limited phonemic and alphabetic coding skills. Without appropriate teaching they struggle to fully understand the alphabetic principle and learn spelling-to-sound relationships. More intensive and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness and phonemically-based decoding skills is usually required for these students to make progress. Such instruction is not normally provided in RR lessons.
In fact, Marie Clay specifically wrote that students should be taught not to rely too heavily on word-level cues: “if a child has a bias towards letter detail the teacher’s prompts will be directed towards the message and the language structure.” According to Clay, when students come across an unfamiliar word in text they “Need to use their knowledge of how the world works; the possible meaning of the text; the sentence structure; the importance of order of ideas, or words, or of letters; the size of words or letters; special features of sound, shape and layout; special knowledge from past literacy experiences before they resort to left to right sounding out of chunks or letter clusters or, in the last resort, single letters.” By the time most struggling readers have engaged in all of those steps, they will have been overwhelmed and dispirited. The cognitive demands are simply too much, as many teachers know.
Contrary to the RR claim that lessons are tailored to meet the specific needs of each student, the programme has a one-size-fits-all approach that is, at best, suited mainly for middle class students in higher decile schools. The programme overlooks that most students entering RR need to receive explicit and systematic instruction in the development of context-free word recognition ability and associated phonological processing skills.
Because of the seriously misguided and out-of-date approach, RR fails children with persistent literacy learning difficulties every year. And nearly half of those children who are “successful” in RR lose the gains within a few years, mainly because RR has not taught them the basic skills that underpin reading acquisition and success.
Yet, the RR website continues to claim that RR is an effective programme: RR “operates as an effective prevention strategy against later literacy difficulties. Nationally, it may be characterised as an insurance against low literacy levels.” Herein lies the myth. This claim is completely without evidence. Arguing that RR is beneficial in terms of the programme’s main goals and that RR can and should exist alongside a structured literacy approach is naïve and not based on an abundance of research data in New Zealand and elsewhere.
John F Kennedy said in 1962 that the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth – persistent, pervasive, and unrealistic.
The claimed success of RR is based largely on a myth. In good conscience, Reading Recovery cannot be recommended for students with persistent literacy learning difficulties. Instead, more effective research-informed instruction should be provided in Year 1, such as a structured literacy approach that is already being used successfully in an increasing number of schools. Let’s disband the myth of RR and instead rely on science.
References
Buckingham, J. (2019). Reading Recovery: A failed investment. Sydney, AU: The Centre for Independent Studies. From https://fivefromfive.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/PP15-RE-BRAND.pdf
Chapman, J.W., & Tunmer, W.E. (2020). A review of Reading Recovery for those who most need early literacy supports. Perspectives on Language and Literacy, Winter, 45-49.
Chapman, J. W., & Tunmer, W. E. (2018). Reading Recovery’s unrecovered learners: Characteristics and issues. Review of Education, 7(2), 237–245. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3121
Chapman, J. W., & Tunmer, W. E. (2016). Is Reading Recovery an effective intervention for students with reading difficulties? A critique of the i3 scale-up study. Reading Psychology, 37(7), 1025–1042. https://doi.org/10.1080/02702711.2016.1157538
Chapman, J. W., Tunmer, W. E., & Prochnow, J. E. (2001). Does success in the Reading Recovery program depend on developing proficiency in phonological-processing skills? Scientific Studies of Reading, 5, 141–176.
New South Wales Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation. (2015). Reading Recovery: A sector-wide analysis. Sydney: Author. Retrieved from: https://www.cese.nsw.gov.au/publications-filter/reading-recovery-evaluation
Nicholas, K., & Parkhill, F. (2014). Is Reading Recovery sustainable two to four years after discontinuation? Education 3–13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education, 42(6), 663–672.