Robert Pondiscio is a senior fellow and vice-president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He previously worked for E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge Foundation and shares Hirsch’s (and my) belief that children need background knowledge to become good readers. That means that they should have many opportunities to learn about the world, about current events, history, science, and to broaden their understanding in the context of reading and experience.
This article by Pondiscio has a curious title: “Testing Alone Won’t Make Good Readers.” If the word “alone” were deleted, the title would make sense. Testing doesn’t make good readers. Reading makes good readers. Love of reading makes even better readers. Writers usually don’t write titles, so I assume this title reflects EdNext’s love of testing.
The other peculiar thing about the article is that it celebrates the new Secretary of Education John King for his belief in a rich, well-rounded education. When King was Commissioner of Education in New York, he kept these views secret and instead was a zealous advocate for testing.
Perhaps Secretary King has turned a corner. Perhaps he now regrets his fervent support for testing and VAM, which narrowed the curriculum.
Let us hope.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Testing makes students dislike reading because the material is boring and irrelevant. So much of it is “passages.” Read this pointless passage and answer some pointless questions. I compare these passages to a tv show or movie that you begin viewing midway. You don’t know how it started or finished, so why bother watching it at all? Testing makes reading a chore, when it should be a pleasure.
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By the way, E.D. Hirsch was my professor at the University of Virginia. I am sad to see how the idea of a common core of knowledge got perverted into common core and common standards.
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I have so much respect and admiration for E.D Hirsch. I cannot believe that he would support the CCSS and what his foundation has become if he were fully aware of what is happening in the classrooms today. Perhaps his son would be willing to shadow some students to see how bad it is.
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There is a strong body of research that supports the value of independent, recreational reading. Instead of spending mega bucks on standardized testing, schools would get better results from supporting libraries, both school and public. In fact, public libraries like public education have a democratizing impact on both citizens and community, regardless of socioeconomics. In fact, recreational reading will engage and inspire readers more than informational texts for the majority of readers. Success will breed more success.http://www.edutopia.org/discussion/taste-honey-and-other-ways-encourage-recreational-reading-reluctant-readers
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I was very fortunate to grow up in a household that valued reading, and fondly remember my dad taking my siblings and I to the local library weekly. That helped to foster a lifelong love of reading that was further encouraged by fine teachers in our local public schools. That was 50 years ago, long before meddling technocrats and billionaires got their hands on education
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Isn’t it ironic that Andrew Carnegie donated the money for so many public libraries but today’s super-rich are, in effect, trying to destroy public education?
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retired teacher: quite so.
Pair your comments with this part of the posting—
“This article by Pondiscio has a curious title: “Testing Alone Won’t Make Good Readers.” If the word “alone” were deleted, the title would make sense. Testing doesn’t make good readers. Reading makes good readers. Love of reading makes even better readers. Writers usually don’t write titles, so I assume this title reflects EdNext’s love of testing.”
IMO, his rebranding of standard rheephorm pedagogy slyly brings up “out-of-school factors.” But in a clumsy slight-of-hand he doesn’t acknowledge what is glaringly obvious: the rheephormsters are those that have argued, incessantly, that anything that even hints at out-of-school factors (“poverty is not destiny!”) are simply excuses for lazy LIFO unionized teachers and others to continue cheating students and parents and communities out of a quality education in those infamous “factories of failure” and “drop out factories” aka public schools.
So when you bring up the life-changing power of “independent, recreational reading” it throws into sharp relief his inability to engage in even a hint of critical self-reflection and responsibility.
Hence his shamefully clumsy rewriting of history in order to make his points.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
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retired teacher, what you said. Being read to at home AND AT SCHOOL turned me into a bookworm early on & I couldn’t get enough, & re-read what was available at home many times (no library at school until 4th grade). My mother would drop me at downtown library while she did errands, where I could access 4 more a week. The library habit lasted for decades until I could buy my own, & I expect will return as soon as retirement makes me thrifty again.
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“The other peculiar thing about the article is that it celebrates the new Secretary of Education John King for his belief in a rich, well-rounded education. ”
What’s peculiar about that claim?
John King actually does believe in a rich, well-rounded education
…for his own kids.
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SomeDAM Poet: note how Mr. Pondiscio converts Mr. King into practically an Einstein in all things relating to pedagogy.
This is the same Mr. King featured in a posting [one of many] on this blog when he was leading NYS in his own quite cage busting achievement gap crushing 21st century innovatively disruptive way:
[start first paragraph]
I received an email from a Montessori teacher in Wisconsin. She asked me to publish this so that Dr. John King, State Commissioner of Education in New York, understands that the Montessori school to which he sends his own children does not have a philosophy aligned with what he proposes for Other People’s Children.
[end first paragraph]
I cannot do justice to the entire posting and the thread. Read for yourselves.
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/11/03/montessori-teacher-to-john-king-montessori-is-not-about-testing-and-common-core/
Folks, this didn’t occur 20 or 30 years ago. He hasn’t suddenly “geniused-up” since becoming part of the Washington Beltway.
The only difference is that now Mr. King has taken to heart this distorted version of the old Pete Seeger standby:
“To everything spin spin spin
There is a reason to spin spin spin
And a ROI on every investment
In Rheephorm”
Rheephorm. Rebranding. Shameless. This three-work troika go together very well when it comes to the “thought” leaders of corporate education reform.
😎
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John King lauding a “rich, well-rounded education?”
As the Bard would say, it’s the devil quoting scripture, to serve his own ends…
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You mean, John King, Lord of the NYS Modules? “Rich, well-rounded education” is doublespeak at its finest when you examine these lessons he approved and applauded.
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Perhaps King will take any stance his puppet masters decree, and will decry what goes out of fashion. Make no mistake, however, that none of them are turning over a new leaf – they will not throw the baby out with with bathwater. They have the money and the stamina and the bought politicians to last and last until the way they want it is the wait it is. They will take a different tack, they will seem to appeal to the masses and take what may appear to be a half step back, and say some politically correct catch phrases….but they will never change direction. They are in it until there are no more career teachers, no more unions, no more public schools, etc.
It is a war on the 99%, a war on women (who represent the majority of teachers in elementary schools), a war on the blacks, browns, yellows and whites who come from impoverished cities/states that we read about weekly. Detroit, Newark, New Orleans, etc. The inhabitants/residents have been disenfranchised, and this is by design.
King isn’t even masterful at the game — someone puts out stories — propaganda – but draw your own conclusions until things change, they are the same.
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“children need background knowledge to become good readers. That means that they should have many opportunities to learn about the world, about current events, history, science, and to broaden their understanding in the context of reading and experience.”
I have to disagree. Children become good readers by reading and the earlier they are introduced to books by their parents and/or guardians, the odds go way up that they will love to read instead of hate it. After becoming avid loving readers, then they become more knowledgeable of the world through literature, nonfiction, and print media.
Parents are the foundation and the key to children growing up to be good readers who love to read, and a love of reading leads to knowledge of the world and more.
Tests do nothing, absolutely nothing to achieve that goal. Most children, if they have not developed a love of reading before starting kindergarten start out behind in school and fall further behind as time passes. Once a child has acquired a love of reading, the knowledge follows because avid readers are lifelong learners. In Finland, for instance, I have read that it is cultural for most if not all parents to introduce their children to print media as early as age 2 and then encourage them to read and teach them to read all the way to age 7 when they start school. By the time most if not all children start school in Finland they are life long readers and learners.
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Lloyd, I write in the second paragraph that children become good readers by reading.
We don’t disagree
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Sorry, after I published my comment, I returned to read the rest and saw that we agreed. In my defense, I couldn’t help myself after reading the first paragraph, and I stopped and wrote the comment before reading the rest.
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Lloyd I left this comment at the article
I feel there’s a crucial piece missing here: reading stories to PreK-2 children, i.e., pre-reading & beginning readers. Fantasy written levels above their reading ability, but not far above their speaking ability & couched in familiar setting. For a rural kid in the ’50’s like me that meant Beatrix Potter, Oz books, Burgess. I remember Toby Tyler a bit later, set in a circus (familiar enough), not a fantasy but a cliff-hanger thriller for 9& 10y.o.’s. Even in our [isolated] college-town it was never assumed that enough (or any) of this was done at home. At least an hour a day was spent in listening to exciting, demanding fiction.
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My parents, both high school dropouts at 14 during the Great Depression, were both avid readers — and no wonder, they grew up in a world without television. My father read mysteries and westerns. My mother read sanitized romances where the only physical contact was maybe holding hands. If she discovered a sex scene, the book went into the fireplace and she refused to finish reading it.
After my mother forcibly helped me overcome my sever dyslexia and I learned to read— something an expert told my mother would never happen—I became an avid reader too, but I wasn’t attracted to dull and dry informational non-fiction that later would all but put me to sleep when I was a struggling college student. I think most over-priced informational college texts are so boring, they drug students into numbness.
I was attracted to science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, westerns and sometimes mysteries. My mother’s brand of romance fiction never caught on with me. And somehow without the informational crap the Common Core test obsessed, for profit, autocratic, corporate public education reform movement is forcing on the U.S., I reached college with a high enough literacy level to avoid taking any bone-headed English classes and eventually graduated with a BA five years later.
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People often hang on to faulty beliefs despite strong evidence to the contrary. In many instances these false beliefs can hurt others.
In regard to reading, many people confuse it with decoding or “sounding out,” when research tells us of the critical importance of getting meaning from text. Sure, decoding is a critical skill for the beginner, but every skillful reader needs comprehension, a skill that is heavily dependent on background knowledge. Comprehension is similar to thinking, so there’s no fast and easy way to develop it. Frequent testing will not help, but frequent reading will.
Because of this common misconception, many reading programs rely almost exclusively on decoding skills which are constantly tested. Thus you will find many “readers” who can decode anything while understanding little or nothing. This lack of comprehension becomes very evident in the upper grades and is likely the main cause for a lack of college readiness.
We have a lot of good research in education, but much of it is ignored.
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A few years ago, a young homeless woman from NYC got a scholarship to Harvard. She got it from being bright, hard-working and spending most of her free time in the public library. Rather than wasting time, she did her work there and then read for hours.
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I beg the indulgence of the readers of this blog, but I want to throw into higher relief Mr. Pondiscio’s attempt to spin by omission.
First, the following excerpts from his article:
[start]
If there’s ever been a case of “wrong for all the right reasons,” it’s the laser-like focus on reading and math that has been the hallmark of schooling for the last few decades and was enshrined in education policy under the No Child Left Behind Act. There’s a surface plausibility to the idea that nothing matters more than reading, but we’ve followed this well-intentioned idea off a cliff.
…
Significantly, the secretary did not shy away from discussing the role that testing has played in narrowing the focus of schools to reading, math, and not much else. Done well and thoughtfully, testing provides vital information aimed at ensuring equity. “But in some places, an exclusive emphasis on the tested subjects drove a narrowing of what was taught and learned,” he noted. “There is a lot of reason to believe that students are not getting the instruction in science, social studies, the arts, and world languages that they need.”
The secretary cited one study that found students spending only about twenty minutes each day on social studies and little more on science. …
… King’s words matter. He read the research, the data on curriculum narrowing and the unintended consequences of test-driven accountability practices.
[end]
Ok, let’s start by dispensing with self-aggrandizing [egos and wallets] and turn off all that reflexive deflection and avoidance and silence.
Here on Planet Reality: 2016. That’s the date of Mr. Pondiscio’s piece.
MANY CHILDREN LEFT BEHIND: HOW THE NO CHILD ELFT BEHIND ACT IS DAMAGING OUR CHILDREN AND OUR SCHOOLS (Deborah Meier and George Wood eds.). Book. 2004.
2016 – 2004 = 12 years difference. Hmmmm…
From the 2004 book.
1), “The biggest problem with the NCLB Act is that it mistakes measuring schools for fixing them.” [p. 9, Linda Darling-Hammond]
2), “School people are no fools. Tell them what they will be measured on and they will try to measure up. What this has meant for the curriculum and the school day is that test preparation crowds out much else that parents have taken for granted in their schools.” [p. 42, George Wood]
3), “1. How many schools will NCLB-required testing reveal to be troubled that were not previously identified as such? For the last year or so, I have challenged defenders of the law to name a single school anywhere in the country whose inadequacy was a secret until another wave of standardized test results was released. So far I have had no takers.” [p. 86, Alfie Kohn]
The above three are a tiny sampling. The contributions in this slim book anticipate every putatively brilliant observation attributed by Mr. Pondiscio to Mr. King.
Mr. King never heard of Linda Darling-Hammond or George Wood or Alfie Kohn? Not much of a genius. And yet, if he had strayed even a teeny bit outside the Rheeality Distortion Fields that rheephormers inflict on themselves he could have been saying the same things 12 years ago. If, that is, he could have first worked out that dang difference between Montessori and Common Core.
😱
NCLB aka NoChild’sBehindLeft. RTTT aka DashForTheCash and all their brethren, new and old—the education establishment and the heavyweights of self-styled “education reform” have pushed and promoted and mandated and served themselves well pushing their worst pedagogical and management practices.
No amount of clever tricks can cover up the fact that rheephormistas can’t shift the responsibility for their failed policies and practices onto others.
And what bothers me most is not their attitude that dishonesty is the best policy, but that they hold the rest of us in such contempt that they assume we will take their self-serving fabrications at face value.
And I don’t care how often they make some snappy literary allusion:
“I’m not lying, I’m writing fiction with my mouth.”
As rheephormistas put it, “You can’t argue with that! It’s Homer!” Yeah, right, Homer SIMPSON…
Dohhhhhh…
😎
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“Perhaps Secretary King has turned a corner. Perhaps he now regrets his fervent support for testing and VAM, which narrowed the curriculum.”
ha ha ha ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ah ha! And for you Spanish speakers, je je je je je je je je.
It’s always hard to come out of the woods (even though that is were I live) where I don’t have access to any technology to try to catch up with this blog, but I just had to chuckle at that statement.
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“ha ha ha ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ah ha! And for you Spanish speakers, je je je je je je je je.”
No es ja ja ja ja ja ja?
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That would be a more literal translation!
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The only testing that could help children with reading would be testing/screening for dyslexia. It is estimated that nearly 80% of children who have difficulty reading have some form of dyslexia. Unfortunately this reality is largely ignored by public schools. Unfortunately, the diagnosing of dyslexia is left mainly to the small handful of parents who take on the responsibility on their own. Most children with dyslexia go undiagnosed throughout their school career. Teacher training could go a long way in helping to identify the signs that could lead to formal diagnosis and treatment/strategies, including 504 classification.
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My memory of where I read this is vague but evidently in a fair percentage of those that are struggling readers a very subtle but detectable eye movement interferes with processing in the written word (the gaze jumps back and forth and around, not large jumps but enough to throw off the reader).
Anyone know anymore about this phenomena?
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There used to be an emphasis on tracking exercises (eye) for those kids who missed lines. The ones who reread are more often because they realize they did not understand what they read. At least with those kids we knew that they were trying to understand/make meaning. Kids who skipped lines also frequently realized what they read did not make sense, but there was always those who just kept calling out words. You knew they had no idea what was happening in the book. Just a note card under a line helped some kids, but others had much bigger issues. There was also a small group who had eye convergence problems, where each eye is seeing a separate image that is not combined into one image. I had one student who I caught in eighth grade whose “LD” problem was convergence. I had puzzled over how slowly she read and yet still managed 100% comprehension without fail. It finally hit me one day when I was doing a fluency test with her (yes, they figured giving weekly tests would improve reading!) that it might be an eye problem. I had to suggest that it was possible without recommending she be tested (so the district wouldn’t have to pay!). It took a bit of time and another outside recommendation to get her to an ophthamologist who could identify the problem before she was correctly identified. Money was tight so her mother had taken her to an optometrist who did not identify the convergence. I always wondered what happened in high school. She was a very bright girl and without the struggle of having words jump around or appear double I hoped she would “fly.”
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“(so the district wouldn’t have to pay!)”
And that right there was/is dead wrong on the district’s part. I’ve heard that line before also. Didn’t give a damn whether the district had to pay as if the child needed it it should have been done. Dead wrong the adminimals that do that crap. Aren’t worth the paper that says they are “certified” to be administrators.
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“Robert Pondiscio … That means that they should have many opportunities to learn about the world, about current events, history, science, and to broaden their understanding in the context of reading and experience.”
It is a given that readers need background knowledge to understand a text.
What is behind the eyeball is more important than what is in front according to Frank Smith. Sometimes and entire class period has to be devoted to developing background knowledge in order to understand a story. Some text is just not age appropriate regardless how much background is given. First graders cannot related to such topics as early civilization, and the building of the Statue Liberty. It would be a waste time developing background knowledge for those topics because they are not age appropriate.
Hirsch’s cultural literacy list of facts – 5000 subjects and concepts that he believed that everybody should know in order to be considerate educated was/is highly contested. English-language arts along with world history and geography, American history and geography, visual arts, music, math and science were all important to Hirsch. However, I maintain, read non-fiction in the other disciplines; don’t take time away from the study of great writings of poetry, drama, novels- and for young children narratives in the ELA classes. Some non-fiction/expository text is important but 50% is totally inappropriate.
It is the narratives that stimulate the imagination, creativity, and sustain interests. Narratives with characters and problems, searching for a solution can more readily capture readers’ attention and even a desire to read a sequel or at least another story by the same author. It is the narratives that develop the skill of reading. With the narratives, sight vocabulary is constantly being reinforced; rich vocabulary is developed- along with varied sentences and narrative structure are reinforced. Narratives also lend themselves to the development of all the higher order thinking skills instead of just a few developed by CC with the expository text
Narratives, furthermore, provide human experiences with a moral/ethical component. Good writers help the readers to understand an experience, themselves, other people, themselves in the world in relation to nature, to God, and to themselves. Above all the children are learning what it means to be human- something the filling in bubbles can’t test. Literature in our ELA classes is too important to waste precious time studying expository text for the facts that we can gleam from them.
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Hirsch’s Core Knowledge curriculum has been hotly contested, but while educators engaged in a debate about the specifics, we have produced a largely ignorant generation of students. The problem with ignoring content knowledge is that if presented in interesting and engaging ways, it also acts inspires, motivates, develops curiosity, and open doors of opportunity that would otherwise remain closed. Hirsch’s program smartly suggested that his “core” of recommended cultural literacy facts and ideas represent only 50% of content knowledge – leaving the rest up to local districts. It’s a shame that his fundamental idea has been so often misrepresented and ignored.
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The rhetoric of the US Department of Education really has changed now that Duncan is gone.
I don’t know if it means anything, other than they (now) recognize they sounded like grim, joyless, scolding technocrats under Duncan but the rhetoric has changed.
They now insist they’re all for well-rounded education. It’s really remarkable how much the tone has changed.
I don’t think it matters- Duncan was there for so long and his agenda was so universally and uncritically embraced it’s too late to change the educational legacy of Obama.
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Duncan was using an automated gibberish generator that always used the same three words “testing, VAM and charters” as input.
He took it with him when he left because he is lost– quite literally speechless — without it.
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I find that Robert Pondiscio, like all the so-called “thinkers” whose income is dependent on the largesse of billionaires, only writes what is acceptable to them.
The ONLY reason that there is any willingness among reformers to acknowledge faults in testing is the revolt of the middle class suburban parents which has seriously damaged their “brand”.
In their ignorance, the “reformers” and their supporters thought they could move their charters into suburban neighborhoods where most of the middle class kids they covet live. But when the politicians whom their billionaire supporters owned — like Chris Christie — tried to accommodate them, there was a huge pushback from those well-educated parents who understood that those charters would only take resources from a great public school and direct it into private hands.
So what to do? For the past 5 or 7 years, the “reformers” have tried to use “testing”. The big testing companies like Pearson were awarded contracts and understood their job was to design ambiguous tests that even suburban kids would struggle with. Look, that charter school that educates poor kids is getting better results than your suburban school which obviously is terrible. Don’t you want a charter school to open in your neighborhood?
But a funny thing happened on the way to undermining good suburban public schools. The parents started looking at what was actually on the tests! And seeing how embarrassingly bad these tests were. Reformers were telling them to believe these tests, not their “lying eyes” at what their kids knew. Reformers wanted those parents to turn on their good public schools for not teaching their child to get high scores on that state test, but instead parents got a look at those tests and realized the only people lying to them were the reformers. Huge backlash! Uh oh. Because deep down, the reformers aren’t really in it to educate all the kids in urban failing schools — why would their charters have such high attrition rates if that was the case? Nope, the reformers were in it to convince affluent parents to abandon their public schools, using the misleading data from charter schools that weed out low performers to convince them that charters are better. Instead, it convinced those parents that charters’ only cared about teaching kids how to answer a question on a poorly designed state test. Not very appealing, is it?
So now Robert Pondiscio is allowed by the people who fund him to acknowledge that testing isn’t everything! They are starting a new public relations campaign so that charters stop being associated with only being concerned about tests. Ultimately, these reformers don’t really care about what works or doesn’t work. They care about whether their billionaire funders will continue to pay their salaries and rationalize it to themselves that hey, maybe some “unworthy” kids suffer, but look at at the strivers we help! Even though it was NEVER necessary to “help” those strivers by intentionally destroying the psyche of the at-risk kids who didn’t strive enough to get them out of their charter schools because the public relations was far more important than any one child.
The op ed is part of the public relations effort to regain the support of affluent suburban parents.
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the reformers’ effort to defame the opt out movement now consists of claiming they are too white. meanwhile, they spend many hundreds of thousands to advertise the specious claim that taking standardized tests is somehow a civil right. I don’t recall anyone marching for the right to take a standardized test.
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I agree that reformers tried to defame the opt out movement but it backfired, from their perspective. Because those “too white” parents are exactly the parents they have been desperate to get on their side. That’s why Robert Pondiscio can suddenly backtrack on testing. Why now? Because their attacks on the opt out movement didn’t serve their purpose.
If all those “reformers” cared about was helping the kids in failing public schools, whose parents weren’t opting out, they would have ignored it. Instead they went to great trouble to undermine it by doubling down on the importance of testing. Which of course, only took them further from their goal since it turned off exactly those white suburban parents whose opinion they seemed to be concerned with.
The sudden change of perspective by the “reformers” demonstrates how utterly bankrupt their movement is. It is possible that Robert Pondiscio always believed testing wasn’t as important and was just too afraid to say something before now. Or it is possible he is an opportunist. But it is clear that the people who hold the purse strings in the reform movement now approve these new talking points.
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