John Wills Lloyd beat me to the punch with his response to The Atlantic’s “America Is Sliding Toward Illiteracy: Declining Standards and Low Expectations are Destroying American Education”. He captured what my brain’s been chewing (with fewer words than I could ever manage), so I’m riffing on his work instead.
You can read John’s full take, “Running around the wrong tree…and barking again” over at Special Education Today. He unpacks the idea that “declining standards and low expectations are destroying American education.” I agree with his take and want to tack on a different culprit: outsourcing reading instruction.
When Districts Outsource and Students Pay
A sixth-grader who has Dyslexia was reading on a third-grade level but had somehow passed every state reading exam. The next year, the school placed him in Language Live, a “comprehensive reading program” licensed from Voyager Sopris. The student lost an elective to make room for it.
The school started him at Level 2, Unit 7—an entry point the publisher later stopped using after that school year.
In internal emails between Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) and Voyager Sopris (obtained via FERPA and FOIA), the company’s account representative admitted:
“After we got some initial feedback and data from past implementations, it became clear that if students needed Level 2, they needed all of it. Those students who would have placed in the second part of the level really didn’t need an intervention like LL and could perform pretty well in their core. Thus, we now only have 3 entry points for new students: L1U1, L1U5 and L2U1.”
Translation: students either received a program they didn’t need, or they needed more of it—and instead became data points supporting the elimination of a previously-endorsed entry point.
By year’s end, the student failed the state reading exam for the first time and data indicated the student regressed to a point worse than where he started the school year—even though he’d been enrolled in a full-year reading elective. The school’s response? It offered another reading program for the next school year, which would take up another full-year elective. Meanwhile, the district kept using and paying for Language Live.
The Legal and Ethical Problem
When a district contracts out reading remediation, it doesn’t contract out responsibility. Under IDEA and Section 504, interventions must be individualized and benefit the student. If the chosen program fails—or isn’t implemented with fidelity—that’s a problem.
In the case of the student mentioned above, both the publisher and the district knew the placement point had been eliminated. They didn’t tell the parent or student. Instead, the student lost a year he didn’t have to lose and an elective that could have been spent on a career/technical course or something else that would count toward graduation requirements. In addition, he wasn’t alone. How many other students nationwide were started at the same point, only to have the publisher eliminate it later?
Not a Broken Toaster
You can’t return a lost school year. Kids aren’t appliances and don’t come with warranties.
In most areas of life, if a product fails, we return it. If the manufacturer identifies an issue, the product is recalled and replaced. Not in this case. It took FOIA/FERPA to find out that the publisher eliminated the entry point the student started at, within months of the student finishing the elective. Nothing was offered to address the lost year.
When an intervention program fails a child who has a disability, there are no do-overs. Lost time can’t be refunded—and our children can’t wait. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only program the district was using that didn’t address the needs of its students.
Districts should stop clinging to contracts once data shows regression.
In addition, publishers should require districts to meet minimum training and fidelity standards. When programs aren’t implemented correctly, the result expected is difficult to achieve.
The Real Issue?
Like John, I’m not sold on the idea that America is sliding toward illiteracy because of declining standards or low expectations. Instead, I’m thinking a piece of the literacy problem has to do with contracting away Responsibility and calling it Intervention.