writing which will be made part of the permanent record readers researchers have documented a fourth grade reading for years federal investment in reading programs for grades four through minimal in order to reverse the chairman and thank you very much for hearing what i consider to be a very important subject and i thank all the witnesses and all the other individuals who attended here today i think hopefully we can learn a lot i am i am pleased that the committee is examining current federal literacy initiatives in ways ways to improve comprehensive skills of all children from birth through high school today fourteen percent of americans over the age of teen about thirty million people have trouble with basic reading and writing skills they cannot read well enough to fill out a job application follow a prescription or even read a simple children's story too many adults do not have the skills to find and keep a job to support their child's education or or participate actively in civic life reading is a fundamental skill and many of us take it for granted yet we know that reading is a skill that does not come naturally for children who do not learn to read an early educational stumble can easily translate into a lifelong learning disability fortunately children who are at risk for reading failure can learn to read at average levels or above if they're identified early and provided with intensive instruction in two thousand and two the no child left behind act was signed into law the sought to address some of these literacy issues for children in pre k through the third grade by authorizing the early reading first in reading first programs in two thousand and five congress created the striving readers program which focuses on middle and high school students as part of the fiscal year two thousand and five labor h h s education appropriations act within no child left behind the success of the first seven years of the scientifically based reading first program in particular has been astounding nationally percentage of third graders scoring proficient on state reading assessments is go nearly a percent much faster than overall growth in addition state reported performance data release last year indicates impressive gains in reading comprehension with improvement seen by nearly every grade and subgroup of students during despite the clear success of the reading first program however congress has cut funding for this important program over the last two years and recently eliminated funding for the program i am hopeful that we will reconsider this elimination and restore funding for this program which continues to produce strong results for children in a few moments dr sandy meyerson of delaware department of education will discuss the work my home my home state is doing in the area of literacy p with in the early reading first and reading first programs delaware has long recognized that what children experience early in life has a direct impact on their future success in school and life and i am pleased that the state is addressing literacy skills with several early literacy programs such as reach out and reading is fundamental dollar read aloud and growing together portfolios as well as various adult literacy services each of these literacy programs have demonstrated success in helping students develop their literacy skills however as we all know education is not just a responsibility or a federal state and local governments it is our collective responsibility whether it is a parent reading to a child or a business reaching out to those in need in their community we all have a role to play in helping people who lack literacy skills overcome their difficulties and i want to thank all of you here today and our witnesses in particular of course for your interest and efforts in drawing the public's attention to the problem of something that was instrumental in improving our show i don't want to make you nervous but this is a very very important hearing this is a very very important issue and leave ash the people around the country who are the expert professor at rutgers university she was formerly of the arthur gates professor of education teachers college columbia university former classroom teacher and learning disability specialist dr strickland is past president of the international association and the hall of fame currently serves on two national academy of science panels one on teacher preparation and the other on recommendations a native daughter of your home state mr chairman she is from the redford michigan suburb of detroit she graduated from the paul university in indiana with a bachelor's degrees and sociology and a minor in education she has been involved special education since she since she was in high school when she worked at a summer camp for special education she then attended graduate school at michigan state university where in four years she got a bachelor's degree in elementary education and a masters degree in special education after finishing her graduate program she moved to breckenridge colorado and began her work as a special education teacher in summit county school district during her thirteen year tenure with some at schools she's worked at the elementary middle and high school now at the administrative level positions have included resource national education teacher needs special education teacher district special education coordinator and now as a district student support services manager during her time in breckenridge summit county is becoming increasingly diverse school districts around the time she started summit county was about three percent of our students and it's now about twenty two percent well students adding a new dimension to the literacy challenges in the district she's played a significant role with curriculum development and response to instruction system planning and implementation and all other district initiatives as well as working cooperatively with the mountain board of cooperative educational services of a cooperative agency that delivers  educational specialized services in our state and the colorado department of education as well during which time i happened to be on the board of the state of colorado state board of education while and on our staff there spoke very highly of reference an outstanding hispanic serving institution we call h s i in my congressional district that serves over seventeen thousand five hundred students dr go research has focused on instructional practices affecting language minority students he has been involved extensively in the development the implementation and  way dual language programs dr gomez is the co author of a dual language enrichment model that is being successfully implemented in over sixty school districts representing over four hundred forty elementary schools across four states which include texas washington state nevada and kansas in texas alone this model is being implemented in four hundred seventeen elementary schools as a nationally recognized scholar in this area dr gomers has an extensive list of publications they include  articles and monographs doctor has also made hundreds of conference presentations in texas and across our nation as a prominent educator mischa's taught in public schools and continues his teaching assignments at the university while serving as the assistant dean for the college of education his entire career has been disciplinary studies from you t p a dr gomez also earned a ph d and curriculum and instruction from texas a and m university at college station dr gomez we are fortunate that you found time in your busy schedule to be with us today we welcome you to this very important hearing and  programs such as reading first for the state prior to working at the department dr myers worked in dollars clonal school district from nine hundred ninety one to two thousand and three during her twelve year tenure with the colonial school district dr meyer served as a program coordinator for the extended summer time program a title on reading teacher and reading resource teacher university dollar instructor of the graduate level course preventing reading failure and a coach for clinical teachers being trained in reading success from the start dr myers is a member of the association for supervision the international reading association and the diamond reading association dr myers graduated from westchester university with a bachelor's degree in elementary education he then attending graduate school temple university where and co founder of wireless generation and education company that has pioneered the adaptation of emerging technologies to improve pre k through twelve teaching and learning prior to launching wireless generation mr berger is president of entered dimensions a web solutions company he also serves as the educational technology specialist at the children's aid society mr berger serves on the carnegie institute for advanced study joint commission on mathematics and science education and on the  and it's and the five minute rule everyone including members of congress is limited to five minutes of a presentation or a question in the light is green when you begin to speak when you see the auto light  doctor strickland welcome doctor morning and thank you for the opportunity to share some of the current thinking about literacy learning during the early childhood years i've done a fair amount of research over the years my primary contribution to the field has been as translator of research practice classroom teacher learning disability specialist and teacher educator also a mother and a grandmother so i bring many perspectives to the table before i begin however like to state that although i believe that greater attention to literacy is extremely important i also believe that early leaders should never be or an isolation from the other domains child development in fact all of the domains of early childhood development physical social emotional cognitive language and literacy are interrelated and interdependent i've organized my comments around four questions the first to provide the research and background information kind of early experiences that research shows are linked with academic achievement grade retention higher graduation rate and enhance productivity and adult life we know that literacy learning start children learn from listening and talking contributes to their ability to read and write and vice versa we know the children's experiences with the world and with their ability to comprehend what they read true reading involves understanding what children bring to a text whether oral or written text the understanding they take away my second question is what is needed to support young children's language and literacy development and i want to offer just a few examples so that you will see these are not extraordinary experiences certainly not drill but the kind of experiences found middle class home for example young children parents and talking with them about what is ordinary maybe but too many children are denied these opportunities my third question is how can we improve existing early childhood programs to better support early  development both my knowledge of the research and my experience suggests that we have come a long way in providing quality education but there is much more to be done following are some ideas for your consideration and recommendations for policy and practice first we do need well conceived standards for child outcomes for curriculum content and for teacher caregiver preparation to establish clarity of purpose and a shared specify fourth early literacy assessments should be age appropriate and imply multiple means of collecting and making use of information if program outreach should reflect respect for the diversity of cultures and linguistic backgrounds of children and their families parent involvement programs with a strong early component perhaps most important highly early childhood professionals are needed to implement today's more challenging early literacy this involves knowledge of how young children learn and how they are best taught knowledge and respect for diversity of children and their families ability to foster all domains of developmental work collaboratively with a variety of professionals and effective use of technology all of these are important and we need to keep in mind that the context in which this would be done for example many early literacy professionals have implications for their own development as well and this is a fact that we have come to grips with my final point has to do with my work as an early reading and the implications for a federal effort that work largely confirms the recommendations already offered by the most part i saw exceptionally effective preschool programs with a high degree of emphasis on early literacy my hope is that we might learn from the past learn from early reading especially in the areas of assessment family letters and professional development including attention to coaching thank you thank you very much  time support services manager in summit school district located in frisco colorado i'm honored to share some of the work that we've done in summit school district over the past three years and we're going to improving instructional practices and achieving positive gains for students in literacy and learning summit county as a role resort district located seventy miles west of denver in the ten mile range of the rocky mountain are year round population has approximately twenty five thousand and during high tourist season the county's population because upwards of one hundred thousand the county has experienced growth in the past decade and an increase in diversity of our resident family in one nine hundred ninety five there were forty students whose native language is not english in two thousand and nine we have eight hundred sixty four students who speak twenty four different languages the predominant first language for these students is spanish poverty has also increased in two thousand three hundred fifty four students qualified for either free or reduced lunch in two thousand and nine nine hundred forty nine students qualified for the system as we experience growth in our community and diversification our district saw decline and as standardized test scores as school district officials examined new data they realized the need for change in some of their long held practice they refused to attribute lower test scores to students who didn't speak english well enough or whose parents were struggling financially it wasn't the child's fault it was the school's practices that needed to improve in two thousand and one we formed a district instructional team or i g m which included the district staff in areas of literacy e l a gifted and talented special education and technology to focus on students who continue to struggle academically even with parent involvement in school support services we were inspired to challenge our own status quo and develop a summit county system of multi tiered support for students following several years of internal fine tuning across departmental process planning we established a new system with four components we believe hold the key to improved instruction and student achievement number one use informative and some of the assessment data to drive instruction and intervention number to focus collaborative time for teachers to discuss data instruction and student number three discrete progress monitoring of student achievement and number for professional development that's linked to that identified student need this system called response to instruction instead of response intervention emphasize the importance of instruction the team worked with the schools teachers to create a framework and mechanism for responding to student needs once every quarter the staff reviewed a body of evidence on each student regarding their academic been assessed at grade level and who needed further conversation the principal carved out time during the school day for grade levels of teachers to work with their building specialists for an hour a week rotating through all grade levels preschool through press grade and a three week rotation cycle during this grade level collaborative time universal screen data was reviewed and results from formative and the thumbs have assessment this gave the team the opportunity to look at students beyond their label and flexibly group students by need even across grade level this cross departmental approach matched the professional with the best skills for addressing each student's need data from benchmark assessments are critical elements of this process teachers learn how to use the data with confidence when discussing a student progress with their parents and help their parents better understand their child's literacy skills and what parents could do at home to help teachers use the data with their students to show their progress and buy into their learning literacy research teachers also develop a document that house all literacy data for a class that was easy to reference as shown in appendix that the school shifted to a culture of problem solving teachers began to load their tool boxes with research based literacy strategies and supplemental programs that address student needs through universal targeted and intensive levels of instruction and results were continually monitored determining a progress had been sufficient and if interventions need to be continued or altered this collaborative time in multi tiered system of support structure has helped the staff continue the educational practices that were effective and allowed them to let go of programs that didn't reduce that didn't produce results as shown in appendix b began upper blue elementary in two thousand and seven the school has consistently seen results on the colorado reading assessment that outpaced the district and state average as we continue today's discussion on literacy skills of children i want to leave you with a few reflections based off my work in the field first i want to applaud you and thank you for your focus on literacy and letters the instruction i know that we need to work with teachers and preparatory program teachers new to the field need to understand systems of multi tiered support principals of the problem solving process and be well versed in the five components of literacy including our language development and it's effective instruction third schools need to shift to a systems way of thinking beginning with a strong universal tier of instruction that is linked to state standards and just curriculum teachers need time to look at data discuss students and planet or vengeance or extensions to track their effectiveness in a continuous improvement cycle the system must be able to discuss many competing topics teachers have more to complete with less time we need to make the time they have more effective finally i've also learned that just having three ring binders on how to do something does not change the system leadership that supports cultural changes and a strong instructional focus are essential for continuous improvement with looming budget cuts in the state of colorado the already limited amount of time we have currently for teacher professional development and collaborative work time will become an increasingly difficult practice to support we need to provide a setting that works for children one for time and support to schools and districts that they can focus on instruction particularly in the area of literacy we need to make changes a for going to chairman killed ranking member mike castle and members of the subcommittee thank you for inviting me to speak today my name is andrea and i serve as a program officer at carnegie corporation of new york which is a philanthropic organization established in one thousand and eleven by andrew carnegie to deal with real and permanent good in this world i am particularly proud to be serving a carny cooperation of the foundation nears its one hundredth year as a philanthropy carney corporation's name has been practically synonymous with literacy for all for close to a century the foundation's legacy includes over two thousand free public libraries established by andrew carnegie we also funded the development and initial production of the p b s television series sesame street now celebrating its fortieth anniversary today i will say week two about our recent initiative called advancing literacy which is working to expand knowledge and practices in literacy beyond third grade our work has shown that strong literacy skills beyond grade three is the cornerstone for success in high school and for college readiness and beyond this insight grows out of an earlier initiative to revert to reform high schools which we funded with the bill and melinda gates foundation the high school reform work which was aimed at promoting systemic and district wide reform in seven urban communities produced a critical if unexpected finding almost half of the entering ninth graders were reading several years below grade level it became clear that the kinds of outcomes we wanted to achieve from this initiative higher graduation rates more students going on to college more students taking advanced placement courses were going to be difficult to achieve because of students low literacy levels the problem was not livered limited to these seven districts in fact i learned that eighth grade reading scores had not improved in more than thirty years and seventy percent of entering ninth graders were reading below grade level simply put these high school students were not understanding or engaging with text we discovered that struggling readers represent a substantial proportion of students who are dropping out of our high schools as fourth graders their scores are among the best in the world by eighth grade their scores are much much lower by the by the time they get to tenth grade us to and score are among the lowest in the world the surprising conclusion from this work was that good literacy early literacy especially instruction does not inoculate students against struggle or failure later on and let me just say while this issue is exacerbated by poverty and it's particularly previn prevalent in pour urban districts the comprehension problem is also common in middle class suburbs x serves and rural areas throughout our country this is a problem in every single one of your districts it is there from our nation's report card that too few students are reading at the most advanced level and many students who do graduate from high school are not prepared for college coursework this lack of strong literacy school is so widespread that many colleges and universities have introduced for medial reading programs for the large numbers of freshman unable to cope with the quantity and complexity of college level work seventy percent of students who take one or more college remedial reading course do not attain a degree or certificate within eight years of enrollment and this handicap extends into our work force private industry estimates that it now spends as much as three point one billion dollars per year to bolster the writing skills of entry level workers president obama has pledged that by the year two thousand and twenty we will have the highest percentage of college graduates in the world we've done a great job convincing nearly every high school student in the land that with a college degree comes the promise of career success but it is all meaningless of the if those high school graduates don't have the fundamental literacy skills to succeed so where does this leave us we had thought or hoped that if you work to get a student to read with proficiency by fourth grade you could call it success and move on if they weren't proficient by fourth grade you'd prevail upon that hope and that they would catch up in later grades yet it is after its fourth grade that far greater demands are placed on students literacy skills and far less time is spent teaching literacy proficiency at this point students are no longer learning to read but they're reading to learn and that's what led us to create the advancing literacy initiative the goal has been to target reading for young people in grades four through twelve since then we have established and built research policy and practice specifically in adolescent literacy our reports and their studies have created a body of work to better understand the literacy needs of our students so why do we have this problem that was literacy to begin with made in high school students must decipher much more complex passages and synthesize information at high level and learn to form independent conclusions based on evidence they must develop special skills and strategy strategies for reading text in each of the different content areas including science math and history the demands of literacy change and intensify quickly after fourth grade texts are longer and more complicated in vocabulary as much as more specialized additionally students must grapple with the increasing importance of comprehending graphic representation particularly in science and mathematics there's also infrastructural issues there's a shortage of qualified literacy experts to coach and teach students and teachers in middle grades and high schools teachers will argue that they are not literacy teachers but teachers of content so it is difficult for content area literacy instruction to take place there's a decrease in student motivation to read as children progress from fourth grade through twelfth grade and middle and high schools are not accustomed to using assessments to identify and target students who need literacy assistance so what can we do over the last forty years our nation's adolescent literacy rates have been stagnant recent success in improving early literacy is a very good start but good early literacy is only a foundation not the whole structure we must really engineer our main our nation's schools to support adolescent learning and ambitious goals for literacy for all and this is how we can get the first increase title one support for middle schools and high schools at the moment only five percent of federal title one funds go to middle and high schools if the nation is to remain competitive we must increase our high school graduation and college going rates among our most disadvantaged students and infusion of resources at the secondary level focused on higher levels of literacy is critical to making this happen second establish fewer clear higher common standards this will help to increase attention to reading and writing especially focus on comprehension that can be imbedded in other areas third fully funding expanded a comprehensive pre k through twelve literacy continuum with specific support support for allocated for grades four through twelve last week the learn act was introduced and was the first critical step to meet recommendations at the federal level we acknowledge the work of chairman miller representative polis in yarmouth for introducing this promising piece of legislation fourth investigate the costs and benefits of linking the nation's report card to international literacy tests while nape has been indispensable in tracking america's educational progress it provides no sense of how america stand in relation to other nations funding long term nay trend tests with international literacy test such as pisa and pearls would allow us to get an instant snapshot of how our young people are performing visa v the rest of the world and finally increase federal funding for evidence based research for adolescent literacy we need to intervene in individual lives instruction which students as soon as they begin to lose ground we need increased government funded research it and i c h d n and i a s that could demonstrate how best to assess adolescents and order to determine their need for intervention and support and conclusion the status quo in middle school and high schools in america is no longer acceptable it is based on a twentieth century vision of the literacy skills which no longer guarantee success after high school high school graduates today face higher expectations in the new global economy than ever before i thank you for your time the gentleman's time for this invitation this opportunity to discuss this very important of literacy as we strive to achieve equity in our schools it is more important than ever that our educators are well informed and understand the diversity they face i have seen first hand how quality instructional programs have made a difference for children and how they have achieved twelve and how the dropout rate has been reduced i am going to speak specifically to the issue of limited english proficiency children or often referred to as english language learners personally i'm also going to share that i think we need to change that label research demonstrates that literacy development in the child's first language literacy development in the second language bilingual learners are more academically successful in school did they receive formal former school in their first language as as discussed by mr and it is at the elementary level our problems in high school are challenges or about literacy at the elementary level kids are not art leaving elementary more or less ok but the gap begins to widen as they leave elementary school and that's very consistent across most minority children so it is rooted at the elementary level i'd like to do  intuitive to think that a child learning to read in a language will learn to read in a second language but this is exactly what happens and i'm going to share five points to make this point first of all literacy comes in many languages kids are literate across the world in many different languages and they learn to read of course in their native languages are english dominant children learn to read in english and therefore that is their native language and it's a very natural progression so kids that come to school speaking a language other than english need to have the same opportunity because you learn to read only one and you want to learn to read at a high level as possible simply put my first point literacy transfer reading and writing is a skill that's common across the world and especially in the majority of a minority join our spanish speaking children those two languages are very similar so literacy transfers reading skills comprehension skills are transferable from one language to another mathematics science the water cycle multiplication all that transfers the important thing is for kids to receive that content grade level literacy grade level learning and at the same time are learning and developing their second language english the second point is that we change the term limited english proficient to bilingual learners because it does not does not reflect what children are doing it continues to promote iranians believe that english is the purpose for these children and therefore we abandon academic instruction and focus on the language kids learn the language at the sacrifice the academic content a lot of it was shared previously so how do we do this i proposed language programs we've seen doorway education across the country beginning to explode it's beginning to grow exponentially because of the success of closing the academic gap because of the reduction of the dropout rate among many many of these children as they are educated in their first language and english through alimentary education so these children essentially become by literate children by the end a fifth grade door language programs are both english and spanish or english and dominant children and children from another language together or they can also serve as the instructional model for bilingual learners by themselves and that's what's been happening across the country and certainly in texas where one out of four schools in texas is now a dual language school serving a lot of our children the   english assessments of course or part of the accountability system and their effect the move toward more first language learning or door language type of education and we recommend the federal role can be to provide incentives incentives to states for the development of native language assessment my last point is teacher education is really important that a that all our teachers have an understanding of the diversity that they will inherit in the schools a become teachers and therefore that every teacher education teacher preparation program provides teachers with course work or preparation on second language acquisition and understanding the benefits and advocacy for dual language education as a global opportunity for all children and that we begin to focus on an extensive recruitment of certified teachers in bilingual education and india so as delaware's department of education's director of reading first i am honored to present testimony about the work we are doing to create a seamless comprehensive literacy program for all children in delaware we have benefited from federal support especially for early reading first and reading for our early raining first projects have made a difference for very young children who experience high levels of risk of literacy failure the university a dollar was awarded to early reading first grants and data for their first  students indicated that these children performed as well or better than the general population of children their age in language and early reading and kindergarten children were at risk when they began preschool many were not only low income but also came from homes where the english was not the primary language spoken the systematic explicit instruction in oral language and beginning reading skills allowed these children to enter school prepared to succeed in the reading first curriculum reading first in delaware has not been just a paradigm change in teaching reading but is a model that requires systemic changes at the school and district level for delaware these i'm included increase daily instructional time for the teaching reading design of assessment systems that include screening progress monitoring diagnostic assessment and evaluation of outcomes differentiated instruction based on these data additional intensive intervention for students at high levels of risk comment planning time for teachers to review data and plan instruction full time literacy coaches to support teachers to improve their instruction in acting these components in reading first required extensive professional development for the teachers coaches and principals as well as continuous monitoring and reflection are literacy coaches are comfortable and competent working in classrooms alongside teachers provide informative feedback they also have strong partnerships with building principals as instructional leaders  accomplishments in this area are extensive but they have been a hard one our professional development has evolved each year we began with letters training for all teachers which is a professional development program developed by dr louise we moved to book studies  formal training for coaches which were then redeliver to teachers we then brought teachers and coaches together in teams for intense study of differentiated instruction along the way we evaluated our efforts our state team works school by school each year with dr shar walpole university a dollar professor who has had extensive experience in reading first we learn together to analyze data set goals and design ongoing professional support for teachers we now have thirteen schools from six districts in the program unfortunately this is the last year of funding but we have made good use of these federal dollars evidence based instruction became the catalyst for ongoing change in delaware we have preschool grade level expectations the early learning guidelines that have been nationally recognized and that are aligned with our kindergarten grade level expectations we revised three literacy standards so that they were consistent with the research that underlies the reading first many districts increased their attention to coherent professional development in early reading in two thousand and seven the state chose to require response to intervention model and based the state regulations on lessons we learned from the reading first program implementation of the r t i model is now occurring in every elementary building the reading first team was instrumental in the planning and much of this professional development bringing first a ministry toure's and coaches presented at these training sharing their expertise in areas such as scheduling and staffing this year the training is available on d v d to reach more schools and teachers we are offering technology based support so that a broader group of teachers can ask questions and have their turn concerns addressed we are now working to include middle and high school to an administrator we are offering trainings in an instructional framework which inform are part of all lessons delaware is a small state but the challenges of bringing teaching in line with current research of evaluating the effects of teaching on student learning are large early reading first and reading first provided an opportunit design and provide professional support for teachers and administrators that is coherent and ongoing we have leverage federal dollars well our current focus on professional support for all classroom teachers in delaware to have the knowledge and skills to design and evaluate differentiated instruction is the direct result of opportunities that federal support for high quality research based professional development have provided we hope that you will consider ways to continue to support our professional development efforts thank you thank you very much mr berger chairman kill the congressman castle members of the committee good morning thank you for your leadership and on this important issue and for the opportunity to speak with you my name is larry berger and i'm the c e o and co founder of wireless generation we are an educational technology company that is helping to invent the future of literacy instruction more than two hundred thousand teachers are teaching three million children to read with the help of our software i would like to share three ideas about where the breakthroughs are in reading instruction and how enlightened public policy can accelerate all over the country right now elementary teachers are using mobile computers like this to conduct scientifically valid formative and progress monitoring assessments and to record precise data about how each of their students are learning to read this technology is much more efficient than the paper records the teachers used to keep and teachers like it because it cuts out the paperwork and lets them focus on teaching the breakthrough that my company and others are working on is that the data that teachers collect using this technology can now be put to use instantaneously to personalized teaching and learning to the needs of each student the software that we build crunches through all the diagnostic data about a given student or a class and all that researchers know about reading instruction and then immediately shows exactly where the kids are in the process of learning to read what the teacher needs to know to reach them and then it sends the teacher what we call a burst burst as a ten day mini curriculum that is assembled automatically to differentiate instruction for what a group of students learn needs to learn next so instead of teaching from a big textbook that was written with no knowledge of my particular class i'm now using a personalized packet of lessons at the end of ten days the system will send me a new burst for each group in my class so we still have the magic of a human teacher working with young children the computer isn't doing the teaching but computers in the background have done all of the paperwork paperwork and all of the analysis that makes teaching more precise and more fun with tools like this the prior debates about reading practice fall by the wayside it's no longer a matter of basic skills versus comprehension now children who are struggling with basic skills will get them along with bridges to comprehension that  personalized to how that child learns children who are already reading on level will be challenged and accelerated so my three points are we have entered the age of technology driven personalization in every other sector of society it's now time for our reading assessment and instruction to get there too i have attached to my written testimony several quantitative examples of the breakthroughs and student outcomes that this sort of personalization enable to this personalized instruction model could pay for itself by preventing unnecessary referrals and special education instead of falling through the cracks in the in the instructional tracks in the early years and eventually being classified with a specific learning disability many children can thrive in general education if they receive early interventions that responds to their progress and their needs this could save the billions to save the system billions in special ed costs and has enormous implications for the long term success student three tools like this mean we can raise the evidence standards in education the new technologies have in common that they capture a steady stream of data about how students teachers school systems and instructional programs are doing instead of data from one test at the end of the year these tools capture potentially thousands of data points per year about how each student is progressing interventions should therefore demonstrate that they are based on scientifically valid research that their foundations are sound and should be able to demonstrate significant outcomes in student learning this virtuous cycle of using the data to do more of what works but also to remove invalid assessment and effective curriculum creates continuous improvement in the products we build as an education company and in the school systems and classrooms that we work with the next generation of reading policy can insist on a high standard of scientific evidence of effectiveness but also on a process of continuous improvement that means products and practices that may be experimental have a chance to keep getting better members of the committee literacy is the foundation for all academic success and innovations of the  with the question and answer portion of this hearing and i recognize myself for five minutes the language is basically an in that period when the person the child is stilled an oral or all part of language that is not yet made a transition to the symbol part well you're absolutely right we're a language or are all of its foundational is no question about that but while children are developing their listening and  and writing and vice versa and then there comes a time when the reading vocabulary and writing vocabulary are larger than our everyday  to written and reading skills which means that you go from language you've developed that you speak to that you understand then you begin to see that language in print and that's where the reading and of course in writing and that's why it's so important when we think about this process and of course we know that children are are reading at the age of two when they see the mcdonald's sign the m is reading a natural progression to go from your to do it from the oral into print but if you do it in a language you have not developed yet you don't have the oral skills you don't have there were those receptive and expressive then it's very difficult to move toward the point and that's the point i guess from the value of literacy in the child's first language because that's a natural progression for all children well  that students have problems because of not having early preparation or whatever you don't often hear that there's a fall down between say fourth grade and tenth grade and i'm just wondering how those  results and what we could be doing what are what we're not doing now what we could be doing to make sure that we continue literacy programs perhaps between fourth and grades or whatever in this country  do very well in fourth grade and we see those very frustrating stagnant scores at the eighth grade and even worse a twelfth grade what's happening is that nothing is happening in the between great four to twelve in terms of literacy  i think we we have i managed to think as a nation that once you teach children to read their readers for life but in fact we see that youngsters are struggling with a tory difficult academic texts and middle schools and high schools and different than elementary schools where you have single one single teacher teaching to a class of students you can imagine a middle school high school students that have four or five teachers and these teachers want to teach their students their content and want to teach those to those students how to comprehend their content but they lack the sort of the skills around how to how to embed strategies around literacy that would allow those students to to enrich their experiences with that text in addition there is there seems to be given the structures of middle schools and high schools it's very very difficult to know if a kid is having difficulty with the content or if they're dead having difficulty with the language of reading within that language was so there's no there's no making sense of for say science teacher whether that student is having difficulty with the biology the subject or whether he or she or the student is having difficulty with basically basic vocabulary within that text or where they're having fluency problems much more serious problems some of the some of the strategies that i believe are suggested by a comprehensive literacy bill that was introduced last week our get get at some of these issues we've started doing some of that work in the striving readers act where we are beginning to embed literacy coaches that are helping content area teachers to try and train them to embed literacy instruction within within their with their domains as as well as really looking at youngsters who are in the ninth grade way behind and doing something for them during ninth grade and doing some kind of boot camps and sense that would allow those students to do the kind of catch up that's really really necessary and there are number of models around the country that we need to learn from that are currently taking place that i think are are excellent examples that we need more research on them so that we can make those kind of choices   as a compound interest problem which is to say that we are already that we do see a gap it's not as dramatic at fourth grade and then and then some of those children who are in fourth grade seem profession are falling off by eighth grade the question is is that only because of instruction that they're not having between fourth and eighth grade or are there in fact characteristics that we could tease out that would begin to predict that this is a kid who's who's at risk despite meeting the standards of proficiency in fourth grade and i think there evidence on both sides there is exactly the phenomenon that andre says discussed in which the falling off in the focus on literacy in the upper grades means that kids who haven't become readers don't don't get the support they need but i do think that there are characteristics that we can see although in the early grades that would begin to show that and it just worsened when that when that falling off of attention happened and so i think that the same idea of personalization that we've been able to do in the early grades because the science of what might what are the precise things they're going wrong are quite well developed that's beginning to happen now and in the upper elementary and middle school grades as well so we need to keep pushing on that one other thing that is not a silver bullet but i think it's it's this is probably the most promising area of new research is this close connection between writing and the development of more advanced literacy skills in upper elementary and middle school and so i think that what we're finding is that upper elementary and adolescent kids want to be able to express themselves and see language as as much a tool for expressing themselves as a tool for taking information in and developing those writing skills is almost synonymous with developing the skills they need to become better readers and i think we're starting to tap into deeper motivations that young kids have and so i think i've been happy to see that policy recommendations recently have seen reading and writing in those upper grades as mutually supportive and i think that's a big success story of upper blue elementary it's wonderful to hear that this year many of some a school some of district schools are implementing the school wide systemic reform that's produced such great results and hold such promise the improvements in student rating performance on the colorado comprehensive local literacy initiatives to ensure that children from birth through twelfth grade have the reading and writing skills necessary for success in school and beyond and their learning act includes or language and as mentioned also writing as part of developing literacy competence and approach providing high quality instruction in both reading and writing from early childhood through grade twelve can you please describe how the legislation if enacted would help you and educators across the country implement  secondary but i often hear from educators in my district and across the country there's not enough time and resources available for meaningful professional development collaborative teamwork so recognizing this the learning that focuses on providing high quality professional development staff including literacy coaches and teachers of students with disabilities in english language learners out in bad ongoing research can you please discuss the needs of any comments on the significance of effective professional development programs for improving literacy teachers impacted student learning one of the things we funded was the rand corporation to do a study of literacy coaches in the florida state of florida which at that time had the largest number of literacy coaches  statewide and what they found was that the literacy coaches who used data to instruct their teachers were the ones who were able to best have the kinds of results that we want for our students so it's absolutely essential that we just not just have blind literacy coaches but that they have the tools necessary to understand the data systems and also that they're using that data as a way of g interesting mr berger you know coming from a generation where we didn't have computers and all the software and all these things and i can remember going to the library riding my bike and filling up the basket with books and writing home to reading for the week and then the process continued on and i with your software where are books involved in this as well as i  into the picture as we have such a change in technology to it's a really important question i think part of the reason why we have focused on small devices like this is that whereas in the early enthusiasm about the role that computers could play in technology a lot of what people did was to insert the computer between the teacher and the student and to sometimes spend too much time leaving kids alone with computers and i think our philosophy and the class of lots of in classrooms that really works is that kids need a lot of time alone with books i don't know how much time they need alone with computers and the other thing that we need to think about is what are the ways that we can design a classroom where technology is humming behind the scenes to extend the reach of a human teacher to extend the different kinds of interactions kids have with each other in the classroom but maybe not so so central to our teaching happens or let's let the computer teaching happen in after school or in special class times that allow freeing up teachers for professional development but to see teaching as a really human process that technologies can support and we've made a point of in every one of the intervention programs that we've done having the program come with a basket of additional books on top of whatever else teachers have to just keep reminding teachers that even when you're teaching very basic skills like what are the letters that one of the most important ways to do that is to find the letters in a book so that you keep connecting to kids the reason we're teaching you these basic phonics skills is because someday you're going to be able to read a book in your backyard but what about the older it seems like there's such a drop off as they get towards in the middle school and then to the high school and of course now research is done so much on the whether the medium is paper or a computer is less important than our kids struggling with difficult tasks that are at their reading level and starting to push beyond their reading level and are they having to have situations where in addition to struggling individually they're forced to talk with teachers and with their cars with with fellow students about about big ideas that they're pulling out of texts and there's precious little of that happening in classrooms and the question of what we can do to focus teacher time and student time on what it takes to grapple with the different difficult taxed and and technology there can support student attention can support student focus can help explain difficult vocabulary words continue in the program but if not what well what would you do to you know to keep the teachers you know the professional development will you be able to are there other teachers then that can take that role and help new teachers as they come into the district i think from what i've seen in just the reading first school districts will take on that responsibility and they will use their funding for instance in one of our districts they use their  funding to provide additional coaches and schools put in the reading first program so that each one of their buildings had a reading the reading or literacy the state does not have a plan at this point  to take care of any kind of funding we're certainly struggling with cutbacks ourselves so it will be up to the individual school but as we go along and put in in all our schools as required in the regulations i personally don't see how it will happen with our literacy coaches because that's the type of professional development you need you cannot have these one shot deal if you have got to keep it moving build your capacity up and you've got to go in those classrooms and give them feedback teams plan with the teachers but i think those coaches are essential and they've been essential to our programs and they are your instructional leaders as we bring on our principals to be you about the fact that research as you've mentioned demonstrates that substantial achievement gaps and literacy developed early life experiences influence reading ability we know appropriate levels of family involvement and focus on family literacy because we know that's where well one of the things that the final thing that you mentioned is something that i think we stressed enough here assembly programs and not much of anything else so many of us were pleased to see that as a part of the learned legislation one piece of research that is  very important for the comprehensive look that we're addressing today is the fact that about fifty per cent at the end of high school already exist catch up once you have problems and during those initial years the benefit of what i believe is being proposed here is this notion of a comprehensive approach t addresses young children and their families and all of the things that are attendant need to address children's wellbeing children who aren't well fed who don't have a good social emotional status these kids aren't going to learn as very hard to teach and they are not going to be able to take advantage of the teaching but we've got to need to what we've learned and use that to make legislation really as good as it can be and i'm very excited because i've been working with so many different administrations i was kidding with andre is that i've worked with every president since abraham lincoln and sometimes i feel that way we have learned a great deal our children deserve a lot better than we're giving them right now but i am hopeful for everything that you are doing and the senate is doing at this point in time and the notion of coach has been address you said in reading the data on our early reading first it was amazing to me to see that the majority of children were well and the majority of them did succeed and perform  in first grade as well as children who did not come from the low income families or families were english was not their primary language and that their scores actually increased in first grade as they got good instruction in reading for school where we were doing the essentials and doing the coaching so it's to me and then when i look at the reading first schools who do not have that type of preschool experience is coming to them and do not have full day kindergarten those children start in kindergarten with approximately twenty percent at benchmark as they pose to those in our high poverty schools as opposed to the children who would come out of an early reading first program so i support this comprehensive idea because i know that we're in bad shape as far as our adolescent literacy but it does start in the preschool and we have got to  even in infancy but we've got to work it out but it is amazing what that can do and the technology piece i would like to add is crucial to our children who have been lacking in background experiences we have got to have ways in the classroom that we learned to read because as a sickly child i was not able to go to school and i learned to read primarily with library books and read starting with a very simple dick and jane this hearing and if that has not already been entered into the record i would like to see this placed in the record we will make sure that is in your record thank you librarians are professionally trained information oftentimes the individuals within schools particularly in middle schools and high schools that can really reach out to the youngster and engage them in a whole nother world of books and reading that sometimes in the school building when there is a lack of professional expertise around adolescent literacy a librarian can be a real anchor within that community that said there are also other issues that librarians could be trained to  do around how to work with youngsters around very difficult a lot of our youngsters are struggling with and that's something that we really need to get under could you recommend what do you think congress should do doctors love that question i would love to see library media specialist in every school they really help coordinate literacy c kinds of opportunities where they're learning content but it's in the best interests of the content because after all children can access the text that they're reading in biology or physics or anything else that they happen to be studying then they're going to learn to better and act on it more responsibly and better in many places where they have these kinds of people working together with t opportunities the better our scores seem to  data about each child what level they read what they're interested in what things they find challenging because of the nature of laws around privacy in our country the transfer of that information to a librarian who's not a school  librarian but is quite difficult and almost never happens and the power of that data for a certified librarian could be really effective in their ability to match kids with books which is a fundamental task that they do and so what whatever we can do as we look not only at reading legislation but at online privacy edging legislation to clear that path for certified librarians would be most helpful if you were referring to the believe we only have time for one more member to ask questions and i'm next on the line so after i ask my questions we will adjourn but come right back after the votes my question is going to be the first one to dr gomez but before i ask that question i wanted to reiterate a great interest in early reading and writing program that we're discussing here today and say that in my area of deep south texas we have literacy programs that have been started in the last two or three years by bringing a coalition of thirty members of congress with adjoining districts to carry out this initiative and it is working and so i want to say that i heard earlier in the panel discussion that the art of learning can be learned in so many different languages and i served ten years on the texas state board of education and our commissioner of education told us that this is between one nine hundred seventy a that the art of learning can be learned in any language and then trends in transfer on to the english language but we didn't learn that lesson in texas and we certainly didn't learn in washington and so if we look at the number of children who are who are in need of this literacy program look it's greater than fifty percent the hispanic the asian american the native american and the immigrant children and you'll see that it's way over fifty percent of the children who need this literacy program all children needed but especially those who come from families where english is not the first language so i ask you dr gomez what do you recommend that we in congress and the federal government do to increase the number of highly qualified by lingual teachers and educators in our nation's classrooms w think that it is really important that there be an incentive supporting states for the recruitment of bilingual e s l certified teachers that understand educating children whose primary language is not english always in high school because these kids although we know that we've been talking about early literacy there were some discussions about secondary middle school high school literacy and of course literacy is relative to grade level but we're talking kindergarten literacy then we're talking high school literacy those are two very different levels of literacy be specific on what you think would help to move the ball forward and score i we if we provide it we require in essence teacher preparation programs that every teacher every public school teacher that is certified in every state somehow has the preparation coursework one or two courses where they are now they understand second language acquisition they understand the academic value of first language literacy and how that benefits second language literacy and they become advocates right now we have rescind our schools bilingual certified teachers and nonviolent what sort of i'd teachers that don't understand what these folks are all about and why they're doing what they would you give me something in writing show that you're very specific on the strategies that are critical and necessary to improving had a lesson literacy for african american latino native american a nation american students as i said in my testimony is that while kids of color are certainly affected by this the most it's not only an issue of children of color it's many many students however there are it's exacerbated in issues around english language learners in particular one of the things that we see specially in middle schools is what we called double the work meaning that our youngsters are acquiring their first language in a sense which would be english another language english at the same time acquiring another language which is academic language so all of the work that they're doing in middle schools and high schools in terms of acquiring knowledge around chemistry and biology that's not written in their language so we call that double the work they have to do twice as much work as the average student and in my extended testimony that i gave this morning the report which is called double the work actions to do with english language learners for adolescent literacy outlines a whole host of recommendations that we can do for those youngsters who are way behind in reading and who are english language learners the presentations that you all made were extremely interesting and informative and looking for to the second part of the dialogue that we're going to have with all of you i personally want to thank you because this is one of the most important initiatives and things that i work on on my education committee and i thank you for that i now say that we are recessed for a few minutes to the sociological context of early childhood and and doing what we could to see that everybody started off on a sound footing and a lot has been talked about kind of become a disciple of that as well but the question i have is because there have been controversies in the past with reading first about proprietary systems and it's great that you're doing the work that you're doing the government have a role here in supporting research into technology education or just basic research as to how kids learn and all the techniques that we're talking about here absolutely i think  one of the statistics that i believe is in disrupting classes interesting comparison between the amount of funding we do for basic research and the amount of funding we do for basic research through  yes and it's a one hundred to one ratio and so the question of why we don't have the basic research foundation for some of the kinds of things we want to get going and literacy maybe find a ball in that one hundred to one and i think that  connection between the tools of technology and the kind of data that they can gather about student performance and that research agenda may be the place where there is a bit of a disrupt in the way things work it used to be that  study was a three to five year endeavor with graduate students running around trying to get data out of a classroom that was otherwise hermetic what we have now are steady streams of data about how kids are progressing down to individual samples of work down to particular developmental skills and the exact day they show up in a child's development and i think that becomes a really found fascinating foundation for new research and so as money is made available for research and as  and the key thing to understand about this sort of legislation is the level at which you set the standard of what counts as valid research drives a whole marketplace of investment in serious r and d if there isn't a standard of research then it's easy for the publishing industry to just use marketing as their way to decide which one to sell as soon as there's a standard of what ethical and the higher it is the more pressure you put on the forces of supply and demand which have more money then then the research agenda ever well to invest in real gold standard research to prove what works and doesn't work with mr generously my times i just like to make one other observation that occurred to me in listening to some of the testimony earlier that is the observation we may have made a mistake all these so it really is helping schools so that everybody gets to the kids get what they need and we support them through that and we bring their families and we work with their families to how they can support children at home it really is changing and i keep calling it changing how we do so we hope that we can shift some resources to go to older grades so that we can actually have a knowledge base as to what we need to do we have some evidence that that i said and  others are doing in terms of researching this but we need much more and we need a lot more doing the research while we're doing the practice well we really need to  a little too late we've dropped the ball for these kids so the idea of doing this early literacy identifying the strategies that work with these kids early working with families and understanding that literacy comes in different languages will close will allow for making sure that no gap begins early which is where the gaps really begin we fix high schools and middle schools and elementary for the most part studies continue to show longitudinal studies that follow kids over time show that the kids are somewhat ok and elementary but they're not ok the same kids in middle school and high school and of course for many many kids either from poverty issues or language differences cultural differences and so on so it's really an elementary discussion that we need to really focus on so that we do not we eliminate the need to focus on the intervention which means it's already the problem is already there we need to go to the root of the problem thank you mr chair my question is for dr aleo gomez for first of all i want to a commend you for your recommendation to change the name of limited english proficiency or or english language learners students to bilingual learners in california we call them english language learners students but to use such terminology terminology only points to limitations and not just a state of being now in california which had a really stormy history with bilingual education including initiative to end it totally in addition we've had a state board of education that is in essence implementing a one size fits all curriculum focus just on the basics however there are many including me that  advocated for curriculum with alternatives for bilingual learners do you believe there are consequences to a one size fits all type of curriculum and if so what are they yes i think i think we need to look at education or what we many times refer to as mainstream education a little differently than we have twenty thirty years ago because the mainstream is changed the type of children and the do and what children bring to school in the past and we still continue to some extent we look at their differences whether it be language cultural as as deficit as problems we need to overcome so that they can become like the mainstream and i think we are at a point now in our history where we are a diverse by diverse america and we need to rethink how we address  differences and look at childrens assets as opportunities for to enrich other children and of course properly educate them i believe just to try to answer your question more directly  there is no one size fits all but there are some basic tenets that we must follow when educating children regardless of the situation there are some fundamental pieces that we must not veer away from and one of those as we've talked about is of course children learn more effectively if they understand the lesson  they learned their skills they learn to read more effectively if they're understanding what's going on in the classroom while they learn and develop that second language it is not a coincidence that for over forty years now our english population outperforms our non english speaking population it is because we're treating our non english speaking population like our english speaking population and we have to look at this issue and say ok this is not the same so we and saying you know just learn english and everything will be fine that has been our approach and as we've shared every strategy shared here today are excellent strategies excellent ideas for literacy development  huge study that was conducted looking at the same results that they found in the carnegie results that are that the kids look at all these minority children they look fine and elementary but the  gap widens in secondary in middle school and high school because they really were not literate they were english speaking you know they learned the language but they really were not literate if you look at our high school dropout rates there are studies out there that look at children that are dropping out and ninety two percent are english proficiency speak english what they are not is academically proficient on grade level in that language so their academic suffered along the way and of course as we said it started early so it's about getting that academics and english development at the same time to reach that goal for these kids and a quick question how to texas fund the dual language programs where monolingual english children when they're educated to languages and of course other countries in the world have known this for years they've been educating children through two or more languages for many many years a lot of the funding is  funding from traditional bilingual funds from the state and federal and federal government the state is just now beginning to provide specific funding for door language implement or for door language schools right now districts like the dallas independent school district the fort worth independent school district are implementing dual language district wide for all  non english speaking children specifically their spanish speaking children and as one way door language but at the same time they're offering something over three thousand english dominant children door language but what's really interesting numbers results with that group as well which we hope would happen in dallas so it's this kind of forward thinking you know and moving away from traditional approaches and looking at our our our diversity as assets that we should be embracing as opportunities for all ki he became chairman later and i've seen the program operation in saginaw so we've always said he's been bipartisan education generally is bipartisan just particularly literacy is so so we thank you for all you do in it we thank you for your testimony today and as previously ordered members will have fourteen calendar days to submit additional