an interview with Andrés Henríquez

Andrés Henríquez is a program officer in the Education Division of Carnegie Corporation of New York. Henríquez has served as the Assistant Director for Strategic Planning at the Center for Children and Technology in New York, as well as an associate program officer at the National Science Foundation (NSF). HE has served as a Field Research Coordinator at the Children’s Television Workshop and as a senior research analyst at MTV Networks. Henríquez is also a certified teacher and taught for five years at a public elementary school in East Harlem. He is interviewed here by Eugene Hillsman, Carnegie Corporation intern.

EH: The "fourth grade" slumps represents a signification problem in youth education. The term refers to the situation that occurs when children are no longer asked to simply "decode" words, but to read for comprehension and understanding. This transition requires a different teaching strategy. Do you think that there are ways that teachers can make this transition easier for children?

AH: Well, I think there are a couple of issues at hand. First, I think teachers themselves need to better understand that teaching reading is only one step in the process and that comprehension does not automatically come along when children learn how to read. What’s not being made clear to teachers, principals and school leaders is that the whole purpose of learning to read is so that you can actually understand what you’re reading. The whole raison d’être of reading or learning how to read is comprehension. And I think for a long time many of our schools have focused on the basic concept of literacy as getting kids to learn how to read words out of a book, not on learning to actually understand what they’re reading.

I believe that part of the problem is a result of the increased demands on teachers in terms of meeting standardized testing needs. More and more, we’re seeing that kids are taking tests and not really understanding the questions or looking at textbooks and not really understanding what the author means by a certain passage. The fact that this problem exists is something we need to communicate more effectively, not just as a foundation, but also as a community of educators. So, there needs to be a shift away from just the basic building blocks of literacy, which is the phonological awareness and phonemic awareness of learning to read to another developmental level where kids are really beginning to read for understanding.

EH: Do you think that the fourth grade slump is a problem that existed before, or is it a relatively new phenomenon?

AH: A while back, Carnegie Corporation funded the work of Jeanne Chall, a prominent educator and researcher in the field of literacy, who was then at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. During that time, there was a lot of debate around the practice of reading. The debate was mainly divided into two camps: the whole-language advocates versus the phonological camp. The Corporation gave Jeanne Chall a grant to analyze the issues and determine whether there was any substantial evidence tipping the scales in favor of one or the other approach. In doing the research, Chall went around and looked at many schools and interviewed many teachers. This was 1961. In 1967, she published a book based on her work called, Learning to Read: The Great Debate.* The book emphatically supported the assertion that phonological development is absolutely key to children learning how to read. For reading in the early stages to be successful, you need some kind of exposure to phonics.
What she found and reported in her book was evidence that kids were not only gaining an understanding of phonics, but that there also seems to be a slump around the fourth grade. She called the phenomenon the fourth grade slump—so this is something that has been identified for quite a while now.

I also that think with the emphasis in schools around high-stakes testing, it appears that this issue has been re-identified, in a sense, as an issue that is really critical. For many years, people have focused on K-3 education, but have focused very little on what happens to kids’ literacy skills after the fourth grade. I think the schools have done a lot to really get at issues around writing and having kids read and then sort of spewing out the main idea. But I think there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. And not just in reading, but also writing, which is equally important. Writing reinforces what kids have read in a lot of ways and allows them to comprehend material.

So reading and writing are inextricably linked, but I think after the third grade it seems that we have focused more on developing children’s writing but have not paid attention to the quality of their reading for understanding.

EH: In the article, "Moving Beyond Storybooks," which is in the current issue of the Carnegie Reporter, you mention that there’s no magic bullet for improving literacy skills. You are quoted as saying, "There’s no one cure-all solution for this problem." What types of institutions and at what levels are people going to have to get involved with this issue to really effect change, in your opinion?

AH: I think that’s a really good question. The level of change needed may be enormous. First, we need to admit that there is a problem. We have to get a wide variety of people to understand that this problem even exists. I think schools at many levels have known about the problem for a while, but I don’t think there’s been a lot of support for doing much about it.

So at this stage, we need to be working on informing and involving the greater public. Doing so should include some schools that may not be getting at this problem directly; it should include parents, district leaders, school board members, teacher unions and so forth. Teachers, for example, after the fourth grade, are generally experts in a particular area of knowledge, for example science teachers and social studies teachers or geography teachers may know about their specialty but they also know very little about how to teach issues around literacy. So that’s one area where special attention needs to be paid.

Teachers need to understand that there are different ways of identifying where kids are having problems with regard to literacy. So, when—and how—do you begin to know that a child is having a problem understanding what he or she is reading? For example, is a child having a problem with mathematics? Not understanding math could stem from a student not understanding what he or she is reading in a textbook.

So we need to know more about what teachers understand about what kids really comprehend. I think that’s key. In most schools right now, teachers teach English language arts or math or social studies—there isn’t any integration between the subjects. The underpinning of all these subjects is really strong command of the English language and or literacy. Somehow, the subjects need to be combined in a strategic way that allows teachers to collaborate more around some of the subject areas and allows kids to really wrap their hands around content in a much longer period of time than is the norm now in classrooms—about 43 minutes—and then kids go on to the next class, and then change again. Those 43-minute blocks may not work.

Also, there are issues around how to engage kids. This is particularly relevant in the 5th or 6th grade, when it seems that kids are less motivated to read. So, any way in which we can engage kids more in the process of reading and writing and making them activists in their own learning would be really great. The follow-up question, then, becomes, what are the different kinds of materials that you need to have in the schools in order for that to happen? How do you use technology more intelligently so that children are working with their teachers and peers to really get at some of the issues?

Schools and teachers need to understand that kids learn in very different ways. Some kids may need, in terms of comprehension, more visual aids or they may need more oral teaching. Some kids are much more tactile in the ways in which they learn, and so they need to be taught in a tactile fashion. There needs to be significantly more attention paid to the variety of learners.

EH: How do you feel that parents and other support networks should be involved in this process as far as not only being committed to their child’s education in the school but also taking it upon themselves to deliver some of these services at home?

AH: We know from lots of research that the first teachers for children are their parents. I think parents can do a lot by modeling for their children, at least very young ones, by just performing the act of reading. And not just reading, but also asking questions of kids and discussing with kids what they’ve read in the newspaper or in books. And parents should also ask questions in different ways: For example, rather than asking, "How was your day at school?" you might ask, "What kinds of questions did you ask at school today?" Something a little more specific that would allow kids to think that they should be asking questions if they’re not understanding something.

Also paying attention to the way in which kids are doing their homework is important. Does the child understand what he’s doing? You should ask a child questions after he’s read a passage in order to gauge his understanding. You should also look at a child’s writing in later grades to see if it’s coherent. Parents should work closely with the schools to see if there are books or other kinds of materials or opportunities related to schoolwork that kids get excited and motivated about so they can encourage more interaction with these things, which becomes a way to parallel the school curriculum. Having discussions is also important. The process of talking and asking questions engages kinds in ways that show children that parents are really interested in their lives.

I think children like to talk about their day at school. For many of us it appears that school is a social environment, but of course, it’s also one in which there is a lot of teaching and learning going on. That is something we need to focus on as well and allow kids to share with us. It’s a great opportunity and a great space for parents and children to be together and talk about some of the things going on in schools.

EH: This references a larger societal question and maybe you can give us a bit of insight: "Moving Beyond Storybooks" mentions how minority students, poor students and students who are learning English as a second language are disproportionately affected by the fourth grade slump because, in many cases, they’re already starting out from a more disadvantaged position when they begin to read. Is that your observation?

AH: Well, I think research does show that children of color may need a leg up because some of them are already coming into schools at a disadvantage in terms of vocabulary and school readiness, and that continues past second grade. It also seems that, particularly in urban communities, the poorest teachers are assigned to the poorest schools. So the teachers who are poorly prepared are often teaching kids who are coming to schools with phonological deficits and vocabulary deficits. It’s a vicious cycle.

EH: Can you speak about your life and how you’ve dedicated it to education?

AH: For a long time I worked at Children’s Television Workshop doing research relating to children, including research about children’s magazine and children’s television, which was exciting. But what was missing was being part of children’s lives and really understanding them, not from an office perspective, but really engaging with them. So I went back to teach in my old neighborhood in Spanish Harlem, which was incredibly satisfying. What was really important about that experience was understanding how schools work and how school districts work and really understanding the difficult lives that teachers have. There’s a lot of knowledge that you want to impart to children and you only have 180 days to do it. Additionally, when you only have 180 days and you have so many things being thrown at you—different kinds of curriculum, workshops, tests—it’s a very difficult life.

One of the things that really excited me while I was teaching was working in technology because I could see that kids were really turned on by technology. This was in the early 80s and it seemed that it was a really great opportunity and a really great tool for instruction. I went to the Bank Street College of Education to work in a research group called The Center for Children and Technology to better understand the connection between technology and teaching and learning. That experience was a very exciting part of my life. I spent about ten years with the Center, learning about the connection between school systems integrating technology and school reform and the complexities of getting children to learn and teachers to teach in appropriate ways using different technologies.

But it wasn’t just about introducing technologies and teaching with technologies. It’s about the complexities of school systems and the complexity of urban structures. I think that it was really an eye-opening experience for me. Some of the places that were able to bridge technology and learning were very, very successful. I did some work with the Union City School Districts and we got it just right. There was a great deal of school reform going on at the time in that district with the right kind of leadership and the right kind of infrastructure in terms of technology. We had a convergence of good curriculum, good leadership, good technology and a little bit of luck.

In that case we were able to be successful with the school district in terms of getting kids to read and getting kids to understand what they were reading, as well as showing terrific results on statewide tests. One of the most impressive things about this situation is that here it is, ten years later, and they’re still doing as well as they were in the early years. So I consider that a feather in my cap.

EH: You talked earlier about informing the public about some of the major issues in education. Does there need to be a publicity campaign so that people can really understand the difficulties that teachers are facing? Why is there not a groundswell of people clamoring for change in one of the most important jobs in our society?

AH: I think it’s been on many, many public agendas as well as political agendas. And I think Carnegie Corporation is working on ensuring that the public knows that teachers are important but that the quality of teachers is also very important. The Corporation has started an initiative called Teachers for a New Era, which I think is going to make a huge statement in terms of how critical the quality of teachers can be to students’ learning and achievement.

I also think that people are starting to realize—particularly after 9/11—how fragile life can be, and how short it can be. And since life is short, your individual quality of life becomes something that you must reckon with. One of those important quality-of-life issues is the kind of legacy that you want to leave behind. Along with that goes passing on to others the kinds of skills and knowledge that you were fortunate enough to have. Teaching is a great way to do that. I think there’s been a groundswell of concern about teachers and about education, but that’s an ongoing conversation, it seems.

* (McGraw Hill)

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