RM Winter 2016 FLIP

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Reading Matters
Commentary
Reading Matters | Volume 16 • Winter 2016 |75|
Abstract — In this article, the authors explore how the South
Carolina Read to Succeed Act can shape the development of
pre-service teachers (PSTs). First, they look at how the national
landscape of education policy and reform affects the state
development of reading policy, specifically exploring the
relationship between high stakes testing and reform initiatives. They
then describe how the changing definition of literacy, particularly
disciplinary literacy, and data-driven reform align and diverge.
Finally, the authors offer recommendations for how to use the goals
of Read to Succeed and a focus on disciplinary literacy to shape
preservice education for the sake of adolescents in South Carolina.
We live in an age of data, and that data drives conversations
about success and failure. Many assessments show adolescent
literacy in South Carolina lagging behind most states in the
union. In a 2011 release, the Education Oversight Committee
(EOC) of South Carolina reported that South Carolina ranked
42nd in the country for eighth grade reading scores (Education
Oversight Committee [EOC], 2011). According to the 2012 NAEP
assessment of reading, South Carolina’s eighth graders scored
an average of 260, lower than the 262 average of regional
counterpart Florida but slightly higher than Alabama’s average of
258. All of these are lower than the national average of 264 (EOC,
2012). Although recent publications have critiqued the limits of
using literacy achievement data for understanding competency
in reading (Au & Tempel, 2012), these snapshots provide an
urgent image: over a quarter of South Carolina adolescents
struggle to demonstrate academic literacy proficiency. To learn
and obtain high levels of academic literacy, adolescents in South
Carolina, including those in this image, need access to the ways
knowledge is produced—through reading, writing, reasoning,
and discourse--in academic disciplines (Moje, 2008, p.103).
At the same time Read to Succeed legislation became law
in spring of 2014, Margaret, a preservice teacher in social
studies education, completed her final year in our program.
To teach well, Margaret, and other PSTs, must develop
knowledge of students, knowledge of literacy, knowledge
of pedagogy, and disciplinary knowledge comprised of both
driving concepts and literacy practices (Manderino, 2012).
Given the urgency surrounding adolescent literacy, the
requirements of Read to Succeed (R2S) legislation in South
Carolina, and her own proclivity to view literacy as discrete,
generalizable skills instead of discipline-specific literacy
practices used to create knowledge, how can Margaret be
prepared for this challenge? We offer guiding principles
for preparing PSTs for the daunting task of supporting
adolescent literacies within secondary school disciplines.
Read to Succeed as state policy in a
national conversation about literacy
Since the Coleman report (Coleman, Campbell, Hobson,
McPartland, Mood &Weinfeld, 1966), discourse and policies related
to equality of education have shifted towards an output model
with a common, widely accepted premise: improving teachers
improves student literacy. The literacy education of teachers
has historically been viewed through input and output models
where pre-service programs input “highly qualified teachers”
into classrooms, and where “effective teaching” is measured
and now evaluated by student output. The current climate of
high-stakes testing and teacher evaluation models has thrown
this into overdrive by narrowly defining both ends. Within this
larger historical and political context, literacy achievement gaps
and dropout rates provided the impetus for the adoption of
the 2014 South Carolina Read to Succeed (R2S) legislation.
Ratified by both the Senate and the House in 2014, the
crafters of Read to Succeed see the act as a contract with the
youth of South Carolina to guarantee access to effective literacy
instruction stating “the true goal of the Read to Succeed Act:
ensuring that every South Carolina student has an opportunity
to acquire the grade-appropriate ability to read, write, and
speak the English language” (South Carolina Department of
Education, 2014, p. 2). Key provisions require that secondary
school classroom practice include literacy assessments,
reading interventions and the use of “evidence-based reading
instruction” to provide every student with “targeted, effective,
comprehension support from the classroom teacher” and, if
needed, supplemental support from a reading interventionist
so all students can comprehend grade‑level texts (p. 4).
To this end, the law states “classroom teachers receive
pre‑service and in‑service coursework which prepares them
to help all students comprehend grade‑level texts” (p. 4). The
intentions of the act are weighty—yet too narrow—while placing
the responsibility on the shoulders of teachers and teacher
preparation programs to develop courses and instructional
activities that will culminate in meaningful change in classrooms
and improved adolescent literacy in disciplines. By 2016-2017,
programs licensing teachers at the secondary level must offer
a six-credit hour sequence in literacy that includes a course in
the foundations of reading and a course in content-area reading
and writing. These courses should address the elements and
assessing competencies in the appropriate set of South Carolina
Literacy Competencies for Middle and High School Content
Area Teachers. Through two courses, pre-service teachers
must garner a foundational understanding of reading and
Guiding Principles for Preservice Teacher Literacy
Education in Light of Read to Succeed
Susan Cridland-Hughes, Clemson University
PhilipWilder, Clemson University