Time to Evolve
By Maryann Manning

Though I am very outspoken about what I consider to be inappropriate reading assessment, my critics believe I don't want accountability. Nothing could be further from the truth. We must assess our students' reading so we can determine how to support each student's continued literacy growth. The term "assessmen" is used to describe the information we gather, and "evaluation" describes the process of analyzing data from several sources to form assumptions that help us plan instruction. Though we now know more about proper reading assessment, there still are nearly as many dinosaurs in that area of teaching as there were in the Cretaceous period.

Vital information
Knowing how each student is maturing as a written-language user is vital information. We value different information about the reading process so we use different instruments and techniques. Assessment should be focused on the strengths of our students' reading because knowing what a student can do helps me understand what cannot be done. My biggest question is: How well is the student comprehending the text that is being read? I'm very concerned about a student's interest in reading because negative feelings don't result in a large volume of independent reading. I also want to know if the student is reading age-appropriate text.

Normodon
This dinosaur could also be named Highstakesasaurus because the results of norm-referenced tests are being used to determine the futures of students. Also, students who do poorly on normed tests often endure a test-preparation curriculum rather than the rich one they should experience.

The assessments I receive the most information from are not normed reading tests. Each summer I test a couple of hundred students and I don't use one formal reading test. That doesn't mean that I don't look at any available standardized achievement scores for students who are in the third grade or above, only that I most value the assessments I personally administer.

Many days I use only four assessments. For emergent readers I use Marie M. Clay's Running Records for Classroom Teachers (Heinemann, 2000) and an eight-word spelling assessment that informs me about phonics and phonemic awareness abilities. For students who can read connected text I use Reading Miscue Inventory: From Evaluation to Instruction by Yetta M. Goodman, Dorothy J. Watson and Carolyn L. Burke (Richard C. Owen Publishers, 2005) and Qualitative Reading Inventory by Lauren Leslie and JoAnne Caldwell (Allyn & Bacon, 2005). Most educators consider all of them to be informal measures. There are many more assessments that I respect and could use. All of them have similar characteristics: They ask students to read real text, miscues are analyzed and the focus is on comprehension.

Bubbleosaurus
There are students who can read but can't figure out which bubble to darken on the test. Filling in little blanks is not parallel to real reading. When a car mechanic wants to learn more about how a car engine is working, the motor is turned on and the person listens to the motor or drives the car. Reading a paragraph and then bubbling in the best title for the paragraph, or a detail, isn't analogous to actual reading.

Asking students to read and retell what has been read is the best way to discover if meaning is being constructed. We need to influence decision makers to assess how a student is really reading and not whether one can bubble.

Stopwatchiraptor
Not long ago when I began testing a child, he asked me where I hid my stopwatch. He proceeded to tell me that he could only read 120 words per minute and his teacher wanted him to read l80 words per minute. When I recovered from my indignation concerning the emphasis of the teacher on speed and not comprehension, I explained that I didn't own a stopwatch. I didn't tell him that I thought only athletes and nurses needed stopwatches and that reading teachers and parents didn't.

I don't need a timing device to know if a student is reading too fast or too slow. You can hear if a student is reading like a house on fire, and you know that the student should slow down if the retelling is limited. A student who is reading in a laborious manner may be reading text that is too difficult and needs easier text.

I also don't want parents spending valuable reading time timing how quickly their child reads. I want families to enjoy discussing what is being read with the emphasis on understanding and not speed. My prediction is that our current obsession with reading speed will have a harmful effect on students' future comprehension scores. I want my students to be thoughtful readers who take the time to reread the passages they don't understand. Instead of speed reading, I want fluency to result from the volumes of silent reading the student does in and out of school.

Isolatedskillotops
Reading has been chopped into too many isolated skills that don't fit together when practiced in parts. Not only is all the skill practice harmful, but there are also so many minute skills that I often can't differentiate the right answer from the wrong answer.

A parent of a six-year-old phoned me recently to talk about problems she was having with her daughter's reading instruction. I knew the little girl could read because I had heard her read unfamiliar text when she was about four-and-a-half years old. I had also used some of her advanced early invented spelling as examples in presentations. It seemed that the teacher felt it was necessary for her to learn and practice all the skills in the preprimer and primer curriculum. Although the little girl was reading text that was several grade levels above what was expected, she had much difficulty with phonemic awareness and phonics activities. I doubt that this teacher would agree with me that if the girl could read at a high level, she must know the skills and practice wasn't necessary.

I sometimes scratch my head when I hear about a new reading skill that some author considers very important. Isolating too many skills and insisting on so-called mastery is confusing to students and doesn't make learning to read any easier.

Let us all try our best to make Normodon, Bubbleosaurus, Stopwatchiraptor and Isolatedskillotops extinct. We also need to insist that the policy makers who make the decisions about what reading assessment we use support us in providing information that is meaning focused. It's time to evolve!

Maryann Manning is on the faculty of the School of Education, the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

May, 2007, Vol.37, No.8