2004 Annual Report, Commission on Reading

At the 2003 NCTE Convention, the commission continued work on documents begun the previous year. All have been completed since then and submitted to the Executive Committee.  They are:

• On Reading, Learning to Read, and Effective Reading Instruction: An Overview of What We Know and How We Know It (submitted May 2004); working group: Margaret Moustafa, Michael Shaw, Steve Kucer, Yetta Goodman, and Ayanna Brown
• A Call to Action: What We Know About Adolescent Literacy and Ways to Support Teachers in Meeting Students’ Needs (submitted April 2004); working group: Jane Braunger, Stephanie Carter, Linda Miller Cleary, Terry NeSmith. (This statement was included in a briefing book on adolescent literacy prepared by NCTE for use with policymakers and the public).
• Features of Literacy Programs: A Decision-Making Matrix. Working group: Margaret Phinney, Ruth Rigby, Penny Silvers, and Connie Weaver. This document was revised only slightly, based on feedback from the teachers who attended a workshop at the convention in which they used the matrix.  The final version is accessible on the NCTE website.

The commission discussed preparation standards for the teaching of reading and especially NCTE’s role in influencing NCATE standards.  We recommended a process for contributing to a dialogue on this as part of NCTE.  Steve Koziol and Pat Shannon drafted the recommendation and sent it on to the Executive Committee. Commission members agreed that reinstituting the position of IRA liaison on the commission was desirable.  Our request to so designate Michael Shaw, currently a member of the commission and a state-level IRA officer, was subsequently approved.

Following the convention, Jane Braunger and Linda Miller Cleary responded to a request from the Committee on Teacher Preparation for recommendations to improve the current guidelines for the preparation of English/language arts teachers.  The recently completed documents on learning to read and on adolescent literacy were particularly useful in providing suggestions.

Joanne Yatvin and Prisca Martens began work on a collection of annotated research on key topics in literacy that could be used as easy reference guides by teachers and teacher educators. 

Proposals for commission-sponsored sessions at the 2004 Convention

• Penny Silvers drafted a double-session proposal that will introduce participants to the key documents developed by the commission in the past two years (part I) and provide more in-depth exploration of one document and its potential use (part II, roundtables)
• Ayanna Brown drafted a proposal for a session revisiting Brown vs. the Board of Education on this upcoming 50th anniversary of the legislation.  The presenters will be African-American teachers who were themselves students in newly integrated schools during the Brown era.

Recommendations of new members to the commission

We recommended the following new members: Arlette Willis, Chris Iddings, Kathleen McCord, Caryl Crowell, Robert Rozema, and Jeff Wilhelm.

Jane Braunger, Director