The Power of RTI and Reading Profiles

A Blueprint for Solving Reading Problems

by

Louise Spear-Swerling, Ph.D.

Southern Connecticut State University New Haven

Baltimore • London • Sydney

The Role of Teacher Effectiveness in Children’s Reading Achievement

When I first began my career as a teacher of reading, my classroom happened to be next door to that of a veteran educator with a sterling reputation for teaching literacy. During spare moments, operating on the theory that a good model can be worth a thousand words, I often lingered by my classroom door to observe this teacher working with her students. Happily, her reputation turned out to be well deserved. Although I had been fortunate to have good preservice preparation in reading, over time, I learned a great deal from observing this teacher’s wonderful model— about how to teach explicitly and unambiguously, provide clear and constructive feedback, and engage and motivate children at different levels of achievement.

This chapter considers the knowledge and skills needed to be a successful teacher of reading as well as how schools of education might better prepare elementary-level educators to teach reading to children from a variety of backgrounds and with a range of instructional needs, including the kinds of students discussed in the past three chapters. No teacher can be maximally effective without the right supports, such as an appropriate curriculum, books, and administrative leadership; furthermore, knowledgeable, well-prepared teachers certainly will not eliminate all reading problems. However, there are good reasons why many researchers and policy makers have focused on trying to improve teacher quality. First, effective teachers matter, especially (though not only) for children with a vulnerability to reading difficulties. Moreover, unlike certain variables that may influence children’s reading progress— genetic inheritance, poverty, and many disabilities— teacher quality is relatively amenable to change through teacher preparation and professional development. Research suggests that there is copious room for improvement in teacher preparation practices, improvement with the potential to help retain capable teachers in the profession and increase many students’ reading achievement.

RESEARCH ON EFFECTIVE TEACHERS OF READING

One recent line of research (e.g., Chetty et al., 2011; Heck, 2009; Hanushek & Rivkin, 2010; Nye, Konstantopoulos, & Hedges, 2004) has employed a statistical measure of teacher effectiveness termed value-added, an indicator of individual teachers’ contributions to the achievement of their students. For example, Chetty and colleagues (2011), who studied math and reading achievement scores of Grade 4–8 students from a large urban district, first calculated predicted estimates of each student’s performance based on the performance of other students with similar background characteristics and prior achievement. They then compared those predictions to students’ actual performance, with differences averaged across a given teacher’s students. They ranked all teachers of a particular subject (reading or math) on these average differences; high value-added teachers were in the top 5% of the teacher distribution in terms of student outcomes, and low value-added teachers were in the bottom 5%. Chetty and colleagues found that when a high value-added teacher started teaching students in a cohort, or when a low value-added teacher stopped teaching (e.g., because of naturally occurring events such as retirements), student achievement in reading improved. Conversely, achievement declined when a low value-added teacher started teaching a particular cohort of students or a high value-added teacher stopped teaching it. Similarly, the results of Nye and colleagues (2004) indicated substantial differences among teachers in the ability to promote students’ reading and mathematics achievement and showed that teacher effects on achievement were especially large in schools serving students from low-SES backgrounds.

The chapter begins by reviewing research on teacher effectiveness, teacher knowledge, and teacher preparation in reading, drawing some practical implications from this research. Next, the chapter outlines the kinds of disciplinary knowledge and competencies involving reading that all elementary-level general and special educators should have as well as how knowledge about common profiles and patterns of reading difficulties can be useful in teacher education. The chapter concludes by considering how teachers could be better prepared to implement RTI/MTSS models, with some suggestions for specific educational policies that could improve preservice teacher preparation in reading.

TEACHERS’ DISCIPLINARY KNOWLEDGE ABOUT READING

Yet another line of work on teacher quality involves studies of teachers’ disciplinary knowledge for teaching reading (e.g., Brady et al., 2009; Carlisle, Kelcey, Rowan, & Phelps, 2011; Cunningham et al., 2004; McCutchen et al., 2009; Moats, 1994; Moats & Foorman, 2003; Piasta et al., 2009; Spear-Swerling & Brucker, 2004; Spear-Swerling et al., 2005; Spear-Swerling & Cheesman, 2012), sometimes termed pedagogical content knowledge. Early studies of teachers’ disciplinary knowledge, following the seminal work of Moats (1994), focused on teachers’ understanding of English word structure and phonics— for example, teachers’ abilities to count phonemes and morphemes in words, identify phonetically irregular words, classify words by syllable type (e.g., closed, magic e, or r-controlled), or explain common spelling generalizations. More recent studies (e.g., Brady et al., 2009; Carlisle, Kelcey, Rowan, et al., 2011; Spear-Swerling & Cheesman, 2012) have attempted to use measures of teacher knowledge that encompass all five components of reading as well as classroom scenarios requiring the application of disciplinary knowledge. The results of these studies are very worrisome. In general, they suggest that even experienced, credentialed teachers often have great difficulty with tasks measuring phonics knowledge or understanding of phonemic awareness. For example, in the studies that my colleagues and I have done, licensed teachers have repeatedly confused phonemic awareness with knowledge of letter sounds. In one study (Spear-Swerling et al., 2005), less than 10% of credentialed teachers could correctly answer the question, “What is phonemic awareness and why is it important?”