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THE IMPORTANCE OF EARLY READING SKILLS:INTERNATIONAL TRENDS & EXPERIENCES

Luis Crouch

Research VP and Senior Economist

ASER CENTRE TALK

November 10th 2010

India International Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi

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Outline

1. Motivation “programmatic/bureaucratic” Pedagogical

2. History/process

3. Assessment tools; results

4. Improvement efforts; results

5. Bureaucratic interest, global indicators

6. Ongoing debates Do basic skills preclude or potentiate the more complex ones? Uses and abuses of assessment and improvement

7. Proposed discussion: Where does India (Pratham, others) fit in this context?

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Motivation – Bureaucratic/programmatic

Many countries “doing the right thing” (Chile, South Africa, Mexico, etc.) But see no impact on learning

Education’s MDGs (less so EFA but still) pale in comparison with Health (internationally, nationally)

In consequence, Health gets more “respect” (and funding) from the forward-looking private donors

Click for branch-out

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Motivation – Pedagogic

Huge amount of evidence of “cumulative effects”: “Matthew effects”

Unless serious intervention happens early, children are essentially locked into their class of origin

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“For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”

Christian Bible – St Matthew

Matthew effect:

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6In Heckman, SCIENCE,30 JUNE 2006, VOL 312

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Research from Senegal by Glick and Sahn

Factors predicting permanence in school, in multivariate model (all factors controlling for each other)

2nd grade achvmt

Girl HH wealth Mother ed Teacher exp

School supplies

School infra

-0.1

-0.05

0

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

2nd grade achievement

Controlling for all other factors, what happened to the childin 2nd grade mattered most (note: relative to all others, incl HH Wealth, thus, using controls)

In other words: if children doing badly by end of grade 2, other things you can do (more inputs, better infra, good teachers) has a hard time coping with early disadvantage.

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Wo

rds

pe

r m

inu

teMatthew Effect in reading

Data from the US

Good, Simmons, Smith (1998)

Grade in years and months (thus 1. is 6 months into Grade 1)

Children below a certain level by the end of Grade 1, stay behind forever, and the gap widens

And, if they cannot read, they fall behind in everything else

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10 20 24 28 32 36

200

600

1000

1400

Professionals

Workers

Welfare progrecipients

age in months

Vocab by social class of parents

Hart and Risley (1995)

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Post-secondary participation rates by reading proficiency level at age 15, Canada

Knighton and Bussiere, 2006, in McCraken and Murray (date?).

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So, early achievement predicts later achievement, and later achievement is key to social and economic growth…

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12Hanushek & Woessman, Journal of Economic Literature 2008, 46:3, 607–668

Relationship economic growth and learning, across regions

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South AfricaMoroccoKuwaitQatar

Indonesia

Iran

SloveniaSlovak Rep.FranceDenmarkItaly

PIRLS 2006 Results

Per

cent

of

lear

ners

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Lowest Medium HighestReading competency levels

But this is done by creating a cognitive middle class: eliminating the worst off performance

Keep your eye on this

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Outline

1. Motivation “programmatic/bureaucratic” Pedagogical

2. History/process

3. Assessment tools; results

4. Improvement efforts; results

5. Bureaucratic interest, global indicators

6. Ongoing debates Do basic skills preclude or potentiate the more complex ones? Uses and abuses of assessment and improvement

7. Proposed discussion: Where does India (Pratham, others) fit in this context?

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History: many streams come together

Key NGOs in S. Africa such as Molteno, Read Trust since late 1990s

Pratham Key intellectuals such E Schiefelbein of (Min Ed of Chile

and also official at UNESCO) Specific alarm (“but the kids are not reading!”) and also

evidence that improvement can be swift In 2005 or so, big international agencies started taking

note; WB and USAID funded research to put early assessment tools in public domain Research- and consensus-based; public domain: “EGRA”

Then also fund fast-results methods similar to Pratham

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Outline

1. Motivation “programmatic/bureaucratic” Pedagogical

2. History/process

3. Assessment tools; results

4. Improvement efforts; results

5. Bureaucratic interest, global indicators

6. Ongoing debates Do basic skills preclude or potentiate the more complex ones? Uses and abuses of assessment and improvement

7. Proposed discussion: Where does India (Pratham, others) fit in this context?

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Assessment tools – 1: features Many have developed

Molteno very early Pratham also Later, EGRA

In common: oral only, no pencil-and-paper, focus on very earliest skills but do include some comprehension

Some have specific interesting features ASER: classifies so clear remediation implications and utility EGRA: uses fluency explicitly, specific adaptation to countries

but international framework, expert-panel-validated Applications

Some 40-50 countries, gov’t and NGO, both EGRA and others See clickable list

Applications Tracker

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Assessment tools – 1: features Different components

EGRA typically: Pure listening (sounds, story comprehension) Book awareness Letter sound and fluency Familiar words and fluency Passage reading and comprehending Writnig

ASER Letters Words Two levels of stories

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Assessment tools – 2: some results

Training EGRA: about 1 week; great emphasis on inter-rater reliabiliy;

95% or so: why? Reliability obtained

Around 0.9 or higher; never lower than 0.7 Concurrent validity with comprehension: poorly measured but

no lower than 0.5 Principal components analysis: there IS a skill called “early

reading” Interesting correlations ASER – EGRA

They track each other very well Question for us: why bother with fluency? Discussion topic?

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Assessment tools – 2: some results

Training EGRA: about 1 week; great emphasis on inter-rater reliabiliy;

95% or so: why? Reliability obtained

Around 0.9 or higher; never lower than 0.7 Concurrent validity with comprehension: poorly measured but

no lower than 0.5 Principal components analysis: there IS a skill called “early

reading” Interesting correlations ASER – EGRA

They track each other very well Question for us: why bother with fluency? Discussion topic?

Assessment tools – 2: some results: children are NOT learning to read

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Outline

1. Motivation “programmatic/bureaucratic” Pedagogical

2. History/process

3. Assessment tools; results

4. Improvement efforts; results

5. Bureaucratic interest, global indicators

6. Ongoing debates Do basic skills preclude or potentiate the more complex ones? Uses and abuses of assessment and improvement

7. Proposed discussion: Where does India (Pratham, others) fit in this context?

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Improvement efforts

1. Many key local and international NGOsa. SA: Molteno, Read Trust

Went continental in some cases, MoltenoZambia, Ghana

b. Peru: Solaris

c. Pratham

d. Save the Children

e. RTI

f. Many others

2. Also governments: go nationala. The Gambia

b. Nicaragua

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South Africa results in half a year

Pre- to Post-Treatment Gain scores

Treatment Control

Letter-naming 22.93 8.79 >100% improvement in all of these is possible in

less than 1 year (if base

is low!)

Familiar word fluency 7.14 2.53

Connected text fluency 11.2 3.91

Comprehension 0.13 0.04

Source: Crouch and Gove (2009), from Piper (2009).

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Grade 2 Grade 3

Group Boys Girls Boys Girls

FluencyControl 2% 70% 32% 66%

Treatment 205% 306% 105% 139%

Comprehension

Control -5% 41% 17% 48%

Treatment 200% 225% 102% 144%

Liberia improvement of results in 1 ½ years

!!

!!

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Improvement efforts: lessons

The Five T’s

1. Time: set time aside to EXPLICITLY teach reading

2. Tongue: start with mother tongue; faster; more solid; transfers easily

3. Teaching: teach teacher to teach reading: explicity, direct, scripted lessons if need be, free if can be:“As much freedom as possible, as much scripting as necessary”

Focus on comprehension from day 1, but do the phonics

4. Texts: flood villages with materials; create “instant literate environment”

5. Test: assess, communicate, agitate, advocate, get policies changed; locally and nationally

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Outline

1. Motivation “programmatic/bureaucratic” Pedagogical

2. History/process

3. Assessment tools; results

4. Improvement efforts; results

5. Bureaucratic interest, global indicators

6. Ongoing debates Do basic skills preclude or potentiate the more complex ones? Uses and abuses of assessment and improvement

7. Proposed discussion: Where does India (Pratham, others) fit in this context?

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Bureaucratic global interest, indicators

So far no wide adoption of a learning outcome internationally

FTI made first start All children should read with enough fluency and comprehension

to “read to learn” by end Grade 2 USAID likely to copy Countries considering Donors funding larger and more serious RCTs and other

improvement efforts At scale Support to countries that want to go national (beyond

pilots, beyond regions)

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Outline

1. Motivation “programmatic/bureaucratic” Pedagogical

2. History/process

3. Assessment tools; results

4. Improvement efforts; results

5. Bureaucratic interest, global indicators

6. Ongoing debates Do basic skills preclude or potentiate the more complex ones? Uses and abuses of assessment and improvement

7. Proposed discussion: Where does India (Pratham, others) fit in this context?

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Ongoing debates (just a few of them!)

Fluency: proxy or instructional strategy? Does the basic displace the more complex, or does it aid

it? See Finland curricular example: basics AND complex. “Hold the pencil right” but also “Analyze the text.” See clickable Finnish curriculum

Setting goals for fluency Use correct words per minute? If not, how Do we need numerical fluency measure? Goal-setting, yes; teachers, no??? What is useful?

Scripting lessons versus freedom: how compromise? How to get politicians to make it a goal to go national

Finnish curriculum with highlights

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Outline

1. Motivation “programmatic/bureaucratic” Pedagogical

2. History/process

3. Assessment tools; results

4. Improvement efforts; results

5. Bureaucratic interest, global indicators

6. Ongoing debates Do basic skills preclude or potentiate the more complex ones? Uses and abuses of assessment and improvement

7. Proposed discussion: Where does India (Pratham, others) fit in this context?

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Education Maternal Health

Target

Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling

Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio

Indicators

Net enrolment ratio in primary education

Maternal mortality ratio

Proportion of pupils starting grade 1 who reach grade 5

Proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel

Literacy rate of 15-24 year-olds

Goals: Education: coverage; Health: resultsIndicators: Education mostly coverage again: ?, Health: coverageHow silly is the ed sector?

Health has an actual outcome as a target, and access is only an indicator.

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Education Infant Health

Target

Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling

Reduce by two thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate

Indicators

Net enrolment ratio in primary education

Under-five mortality rate

Proportion of pupils starting grade 1 who reach grade 5

Infant mortality rate

Literacy rate of 15-24 year-olds Proportion of 1 year-old children immunized against measles

Same with infant mortality: target is an outcome, coverage only an indicator

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CIDA Health CIDA Education

USAID EducationUSAID Health

Some examples of how much better-focused the health sector is, in some donor statements.

Not just USAID, also CIDA (just to pick an example)