Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 3, No. 1 | Literacy Coaches: An Evolving Role, page 2 (low bandwidth)

Improving adolescent literacy is a particularly difficult challenge, since what is expected in academic achievement for middle and high school students has substantially increased, yet the way in which students are taught to read, comprehend and write about subject matter has not kept pace with the demands of schooling. American 15-year-olds, for example, barely attain the standards of international literacy for youngsters their age, and during the past decade, the average reading score of fourth graders has changed little. Readers who struggle during the intermediate elementary years face increasing difficulty throughout middle school and beyond.

“We’re losing these youngsters,” says Andrés Henríquez, Carnegie Corporation program officer in the Education Division. “In high schools, a third or more of the entering ninth graders will not graduate; the problem may be exacerbated in urban communities, but it is not just an urban problem, it is also a suburban and rural problem. Our nation needs to focus on the issue of adolescent literacy.”

“It is clear to teachers and principals alike that one-day professional development workshops are not sufficient,” he continues. “Coaches are an answer to a district’s need to provide ongoing professional development for teachers in specific content areas. Literacy coaching can help teachers make the content of their subject more comprehensible to students, so they can truly understand the complex information in their textbooks.”

Tracing Developments
Through the Literature
Rita Bean, an IRA board member and professor at the University of Pittsburgh, says it’s nice to be prescient. With Robert Wilson, Bean wrote a 1981 report for IRA entitled, Effecting Change in School Reading Programs: The Resource Role. Among its attributes, the work clearly anticipates the ascent of the literacy coach, though the authors did not use that term. Now, says Bean, “The extent of the phenomenon is surprising to me.”

In their work, Bean and Wilson trace the literacy coach movement to the 1930s. They write that, “In looking at the evolution of the reading specialist as a support person, it is interesting to note that the early specialists (1930s) were essentially supervisors who worked with teachers to improve the reading program. It was after World War II, in response to the raging criticism of the schools and their inability to teach children to read, that remedial reading teachers became fixtures in many schools, public and private, elementary through secondary…”

For “reading specialists,” the mid-1960s marked a shift from the remedial to the resource role. A 1967 study on the subject (“Standards and Qualifications for Reading Specialists,” Reading Teacher, March 1967), suggested “the need for certain personal qualifications that would enable the specialist to establish a rapport with teachers, administrators, parents, and students; communicate effectively with teachers by listening carefully before evaluation; and encourage teachers to perform their instructional tasks effectively…”

In their 1981 paper, Bean and Wilson cite the then-surfacing “resource” role as one of “colleagueship” with classroom teachers, parents, administrators and other resource workers, noting, “…the reading specialist and the teacher must work as ‘associates and equals’ bound together by a common purpose, the improvement of students’ learning…”

The Literacy Coach: A Key to Improving Teaching and Learning in Secondary Schools, written by Elizabeth G. Sturtevant, also for the Alliance for Excellent Education, calls literacy coaches “key players in the change process” aimed at improving adolescent literacy. The report (November 2003) addresses the need to build bridges between literacy coaches and the middle and high school levels, as well as tie into teacher training in college. When asked about the greatest challenges facing literacy coaches, however, Sturtevant, associate professor and co-coordinator of the literacy program in the graduate school of education at George Mason University, cites “economic issues.” While reading initiatives for younger children receive ample resources, teens in the middle and high school years continue to need literacy support, she points out, but the money to pay for it often is not available.

Sturtevant gives her own description of the history of coaching. “As long ago as the 1920s,” she suggests, “reading educators advocated that secondary content teachers teach students to comprehend their content texts [“An Historical Exploration of Content Area Reading Instruction,” Reading Research Quarterly, 1983, pp 419-38]. Educators of that time found that many children had difficulty transitioning from the children’s stories that were used in the early grades to more difficult content area textbooks in secondary schools.” In a word, there was a disconnect.

Next page: “We don’t know the impact of shifting heavily to technology and what the computer will do to literacy in the long run.” —John Goodlad

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