Research in Washington State

<p>Every year thousands of students fail state reading tests and every year policymakers and educators search for strategies to help these students succeed. In this study, we probed beneath students' failing scores on a state reading assessment to investigate the specific reading abilities that may have contributed to student performance. We found that scores on state tests mask distinctive and multifaceted problems having to do with word identification, fluency, and meaning. Our findings are a caution to policymakers and educators who may be tempted to treat the same all students who score below standard on statewide reading assessments that now proliferate the education landscape. To do so is to miss the different instructional emphases called for by the underlying skills, strategies, and needs of failing students. Such a practice not only limits individual student progress; it may lead to an oversimplification of reform efforts and evaluation. This report presents reading profiles of failing students and discusses five areas-instruction; multiple indicators; alignment among standards, assessment, and instruction; allocation of resources; and evaluating reform-as potential policy levers for improving student performance in reading.</p>

<p>This analysis considers what role district policy environments play in the lives of beginning teachers. As part of a longitudinal study of teacher learning in the language arts, the authors followed 10 teachers from their final year of teacher education into their first three years of teaching. In this paper, they examined the role that policies concerning curriculum, professional development, and mentoring in two reform-active districts played in shaping the experiences and concerns of three first-year language arts teachers. The questions asked in the study locate it at the intersection of two distinct literatures—the literature on beginning teachers and the literature on the relationship of policy and practice. Whereas other studies on beginning teacher concerns have taken a psychological perspective, focusing on the individual teacher as the explanatory factor, this study employs a more sociocultural view, looking at the broader contexts in which individual teachers work. The authors found that the two districts served powerful roles as teacher educators. The tasks the districts assigned the teachers, the resources they provided, the learning environments they created, the assessments they designed and the conversations they provoked proved to be consequential for what the teachers came to learn about language arts teaching and teaching in general.</p>