Letter to the Editor

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Friday, April 13, 2007

Dear Editor,

The controversy over the reading program at McCook Elementary has been unfortunate. One of the concerns of citizens has been about the reading assessment that is being used.

I urge your readers to educate themselves about a related approach that all schools in our area and across the nation are encouraged to use. This approach is called Response to Intervention or RtI for short. 

I recently found a webcast on assessment and reading success titled: "Assessment: On Track to Reading Success." The presenters, who have each authored many publications, are: Dr. Mary Ruth Coleman, President, Council for Exceptional Children and Senior Scientist at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Dr. Roland Good, Associate Professor, School Psychology Program, University of Oregon; and Dr. Michael C. McKenna, Thomas G. Jewell Professor of Reading, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia.

 Dr. Coleman makes the following suggestions for assessing the reading skills of students with learning disabilities:

* Use timed tests only when you truly need to know how long it takes for a?student to do a task, such as when you are evaluating reading fluency.

* Be very clear what you are assessing. Are we looking at reading?comprehension, or is listening comprehension what we really care about?

* Use targeted error analysis to determine why the student is having?trouble reading. Is it phonemic awareness, word recognition, or visual?perception?

I encourage your readers to view this webcast online at 

http://origin.eastbaymedia.com/~weta/presentations/webcast-2006.htm

 Sincerely,

George Young,

McCook

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