Carnegie
Corporation
of New York
Summer 2005
In a move to promote policies leading to the improvement
of intermediate and adolescent literacy, the Corporation awarded a grant
to the Alliance for Excellent Education in May 2003. A year later, the
Alliance presented a report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Entitled
Reading Next: A Vision for Action and Research in Middle and High
School Literacy, the report was written by Snow and Biancarosa with
input by five of the nation’s leading literacy experts and researchers.
Drawing on recommendations made by this panel of experts, the report identifies
the fifteen key elements of effective adolescent literacy programs, sorting
them in terms of elements aimed at instructional and infrastructure improvements.
The nine elements aimed at instructional improvements include effective
instructional principles embedded in content and ongoing formative assessment
of students; the six elements addressing infrastructure include professional
development and leadership. Each of the elements is explained in detail
and examples of each are also given. Henríquez points out that
state education departments, a number of schools of education and the
National Governors Association are using Reading Next “as
a template for how to organize adolescent literacy.” In fact, the
National Governors Association has used this template to develop its own
document, A Governor’s Guide to Adolescent Literacy, a
kind of briefing book on adolescent literacy designed for use by governors
and policymakers. The guide outlines “the core knowledge and action
steps required for creating effective statewide adolescent literacy policies.”
“Reading Next is compelling,” says Susan Frost, President of the Alliance for Excellent Education from 2001 to 2004, “because it’s something you can pick up and put into practice.” She adds, “It’s almost a checklist.” If Frost finds Reading Next “compelling,” she is not alone in her judgment. Available for downloading on the web site of the Corporation (http://www.carnegie.org/sns/literacy.html) and the Alliance (www.all4ed.org/publications/ReadingNext/index.html) as well as through links with partner organizations working to advance literacy, Reading Next is in its third printing. Its pass-along readership is huge, says Henríquez. The Corporation grant made it possible to take the issue of adolescent literacy, which Frost describes as cutting edge, to the public at large, including educators and policymakers. The aim, she explains, was to find everyone’s research and practice [on the subject] and put it together in a readable document, and then to use it to influence federal policy. The wide dissemination and readability of Reading Next are not in question at this point; the extent of its influence on federal policy remains to be seen. Too many adolescent readers “can’t comprehend, use information, think critically and write,” observes Frost. “Policy people understand the problem, but not the general public. [The reception of] the Reading Next report is a good example of people being ready to receive this information,” she says. “Carnegie Corporation has taken some nascent efforts and grown them,” says Frost, adding, “Let’s see how we can speed this up.”
A grant to the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning (CRL) in July 2003 certainly has the potential to accelerate the reform. The CRL project, according to Don Deshler, seeks to answer a fundamental question: What are the factors that make some urban secondary schools succeed, while others fail? In an effort to “scale up” successful secondary school reform models that advance adolescent literacy, the CRL project conducted a thorough review of the literature of secondary school reform models and then scheduled visits to targeted sites where innovative work in school reform and literacy instruction is taking place. The goal was to develop “a converging practices model,” explains Deshler.
As with the Reading Next research initiative, upon completing the literature review, a set of “critical components” of urban school reform began to converge, which were identifiable by category, e.g., performance outcomes, instruction and learning, professional development, incentives and accountability, data analysis and leadership—each of which the CRL investigators developed, researched and tested in a variety of school settings and situations.