The documentary is entitled: “Lost in a Reader's World”. It is a harsh and eye opening look at students who are unable to read. I have watched this video several times and yet I am still amazed that these students made it through school without the ability to read. It is sad that the schools these people attended were unable to offer them some kind of assistance in learning to read. I question the integrity of each school involved. My other question is to the people themselves. Why didn't they ask for help or assistance? If they knew they couldn't read, then why didn't they tell someone? Better yet, where were the parents? They must have had an idea that these students could not read. As you can tell, this is a very frustrating concept for me.
In terms of instructional supervision, there was a lack of assessment somewhere along the way for these students. Teachers continually passed these kids along year after year without any remediation or intervention. That also means that the principals, or instructional supervisors were also at fault for allowing this to happen. Why weren't they in the classrooms observing instruction and learning more closely? If they new of weak teachers, why didn't they offer assistance to them? There is not just one sole person to blame for these children to be unable to read as adults.
If there were children like this in my school, and I knew of their difficulties, I would seek any means possible immediately to give them assistance. I would go to resource teachers for help and guidance. I would also set up some one-on-one time with the student and a teaching assistant to go back to the basics in learning to read. Basically, I would tap into as many resources that were available at my school, to get these children reading. It may even take after-school programs, or summer remediation. Whether or not retention would be used is debatable.
Depending on when the reading problem would be first diagnosed in a student would help make my decision in retention or not. I believe that if a kindergarten, or first grade student has shown developmental difficulty in reading, then they should be held back in order to reintroduce the basic concepts in reading. On the contrary, a student is diagnosed with a reading problem in the upper elementary grades, I am not sure if retention would be of great help. I have had two experiences in retaining students. I teach fifth grade, and I held my first student back two years ago. It was a mutual decision between the mother and myself; even the student felt retention would help. The student was basically behind his peers academically and physically. He was even a year younger than his peers.
After his second year in fifth grade, there was little change academically in the child. He did experience a little more success that the year before, but many of his habits and traits I had seen the previous year, his new fifth grade teacher had also seen this in his second year. I recently talked to his sixth grade teacher and not much has changed. I wonder now if I just wasted a year of his school life?
The other student I am retaining is from this school year. The idea of retention was brought up at a parent-teacher conference. The student was not putting forth much effort in her work, continually late on work, and so on. I told the mother that maybe if she told the student we had discussed retaining her, maybe the idea would motivate her to do better. Her mother stated that it wouldn't motivate her to do better because the student had already expressed interest in retention to her mom; stating that she didn't think she was ready to go on to the sixth grade. After doing a profile on the student, and looking at standardized test scores over the last three years, it was recommended that she be retained in fifth grade for the upcoming school year. It will be interesting to see if it makes a difference in her, since she (the student) was the one who wanted to be retained. If she hadn't brought it up, I would have promoted her on to sixth grade.
I am not sure exactly what the solution is for students who are academically low achievers and whether or not we should retain them. As stated before, I do feel in the primary grades, retention can serve a meaningful purpose. However, in the upper grades I am not convinced how effective it is. I think more than anything a school needs to have some kind of intervention team in place to work with these kids at the onset of difficulties. The principal would need to work closely with counselors, classroom teachers and special education or resource teachers in putting together a plan that would leave no child behind. It would help to incorporate continuous yearly (or more frequent) reading assessments at every grade level to make sure students are at or close to their ability level in reading. If they are shown to be below level, the intervention team can then put their action plan into place and begin working with these students to help raise them to the level of their peers.
This is of course my own thoughts and opinions. This is a situation where there is no on cure-all solution. What may work for one school, may not work for another. As a principal, you will just have to see what works best for you, your staff, and your school. With help from the resources you will have at the building level, or even the community level, fighting illiteracy can be done without holding children back.
