I know that Halloween is over, but I’m in a perverse mood so I guess it’s time for me to share some Aimsweb horror stories. Beware, they are very scary.
When a student doesn’t meet early literacy benchmarks in first grade, it’s time to take some action. In Highland Park, when at least one first grader I know of did not meet benchmarks, the parents were told not to worry. Why? Because there were many other children in the class who did not meet the benchmarks either. WHAT? Note to self, do not necessarily move to Highland Park, Illinois for the great education.
Also in Highland Park, I attended an IEP meeting for a second grade girl. With confidence, I shared some Aimsweb data showing steeper gains when we upped the intensity of the intervention. The school team, however, apparently did not want to admit that the outside services were working. Their creative solution? Telling the parents that there is no possible way to measure the student’s gains in oral reading using oral reading because she has a word finding problem. I don’t know, I have trouble finding the word I want to use on occasion but it never happens when I’m reading BECAUSE I CAN READ. These people were 100% against listening to this child read out loud and would only watch read silently then ask questions. I can certainly see the benefits of this method of accountability; you can’t hear what the child is reading and then you get to make up anything you want about how she reads. I know where these people got this nonsense; from Dr. Diane German, an SLP who teaches classes at National Louis University. Dr. German gives talks and writes articles about word retrieval. Her assertion is that reading problems are overdiagnosed. Support for her assertion consists of an experience where a student could not read a particular word but could point t0 it among several options after hearing the teacher speak the word out loud. You see, the kid really could read the word! They could read it but just couldn’t retrieve it. One of the first things I learned in Speech Therapy 101 was that receptive skills come before expressive skills. Maddening! But an effective way to sell more of your your word retrieval materials, I guess.
More, Oh I Have More!!
How about a school in Lake Forest that changed the grade level of the passage they were monitoring on every six weeks or so.They ended up having bits of data on this girl’s “improvement” but nothing consistant or continuous enough to show the truth which was that she wasn’t improving. After some time at RRC this particular student began to make quantifiable progress for the first time in her life. Until a self-serving tester from Lutheran General Hospital told the family to quit because it “wasn’t Wilson.” That same tester declined my invitation to visit the clinic and see what I actually do. And of course the family quit.
I just can’t figure this one out. We just began working with a high school freshman. At the middle school in Northbrook, Illinois the student was monitored all year using Aimsweb. I saw the progress report with my own eyes, and the trend line showed steady and ambitious gains. By the end of eighth grade this student had improved so much that on average he was reading eighth grade text at 130 words per minute with near zero errors. Why RRC? Well, that’s because the staff at Glenbrook North High School (perhaps using these results to back them up) was thoroughly unwilling to continue working on this child’s reading skills. I’m not sure why they think 130 words per minute is so great, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make here. Well, at RRC, we listened to this student read three Aimsweb benchmark passages (at the same level, since 8th grade is as high as it goes) and he read nothing at all like the 130 words per minute with one or two errors that the school had reported. Rather, he read more like 98 or so words per minute with 12 errors. At first, we thought the kid was scamming us or not trying or something like that. But no, it happened the next week too. And the next. Were the eighth grade teachers not counting errors? Were they administering the probes incorrectly? Were they outright lying? I may never know. The student is doing better now, of course. For real.
Here’s the latest. A bright dyslexic fourth grader started with us recently. We’ve got documented steep gains for the school year so far. He attends school in Glencoe, Illinois where they use Aimsweb too (their scores look a lot line mine, as they should). By any reasonable person’s estimation, this child was making ambitious progress. The problem? The parents walked into the reading teacher’s room at November conference time and and saw some grave faces. After they sat down, the teachers reported that they had seen no change in this child’s reading skills (based on what, I’ll never know). They told the parents that they were extremely worried, and that they were going to abandon whatever program they had been using and were going to change to a new one. Okay, here comes the really good part. That their strong recommendation was that the child should quit Ravinia because now that they will have this new program, Ravinia would just confuse him. Quit Ravinia. Okay. Deep breath, Holly. I tried to listening to this worried mom relay her experience without interruption. It wasn’t easy. As calmly as I could, I asked her to tell me anything she knew about this new program. Turns out, she didn’t know much about it. Because the teachers had just ordered it and it had not yet arrived.
When all else fails and your students still can’t read, Do what my son Jason’s teachers at Ravinia School in Highland Park. Just put Aimsweb passages in the kids’ backpacks and tell the kids to practice them at home.
