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About Nancy Salvato
Nancy Salvato is the President and Director of Education and the
Constitutional Literacy Program for
BasicsProject.org, a
non-profit, non-partisan 501(c)(3) research and educational
project whose mission is to re-introduce the American public to
the basic elements of our constitutional heritage while
providing non-partisan, fact-based information on relevant
socio-political issues important to our country, specifically
the threats of aggressive Islamofascism and the American Fifth
Column. She serves as a Senior Editor for The New Media Journal.
She received her BA in history from Loyola University and her
M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education from National-Louis
University. She is certified to teach in grades K-9 and 6-12
and as a teacher has worked with students in preschool, 1st,
5th, 6th, 7th, 8th,
9th, 11th, and 12th grades. She
has also worked as an adjunct instructor at the graduate school
level. She continues to augment her education and areas of
expertise by taking college courses and participating in a
variety of workshops. |
Recent Articles
Letting the Evidence Speak for Itself
The Right to Defend Sovereignty
Undermining Our Sovereignty from Without & Within
Risking Our
Nation’s Sovereignty
True
Patriots Put Country First
The Oath of a Citizen
The
Constitution, Two Candidates & An Election
Article II,
Section 1: Just Words |
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Nancy Salvato, Senior Editor
Letting the Evidence Speak for Itself
January 26, 2009
In a letter
recently submitted to Education Week
(Stephen Krashen, 2009) Stephen Krashen, Professor Emeritus, Rossier
School of Education, University of Southern California, draws attention
to the Reading First final impact study which showed that
children following an intensive decoding-based curriculum do well on
tests of decoding but not on measures of reading comprehension when
compared with regular students. He reminds readers that the National
Reading Panel, the foundation for Reading First, came up with similar
results.
From
these two studies, Dr. Krashen draws the following conclusion. A high
level of proficiency in decoding is not necessary in order to learn to
read. Yet, he has employed fallacious reasoning to confirm his obvious
bias against Reading First.
What
these studies actually confirm is precisely what the authors of Reading
First already understood; Phonics is not an end in itself. Phonics is a
critical step in supporting reading development. With this in mind, The
National Reading Panel recommended explicit and systematic phonics
instruction. By this, it is meant that teachers should be provided
precise directions for modeling and for leading students through the
process of using letter-sound relationships to read words; letter sound
relationships should be taught in a clearly defined sequence; and
students should be provided extensive practice in reading stories with
many different words to decode. Phonics is most effective when
introduced in Kindergarten and first grade.
In my
2006 interview (Salvato, 2006) with Dr. Reid
Lyon, former Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch within
the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at
the National Institute of Health and one of the architects of Reading
First, he elaborated on the following ideas.
1) No
one program is equally beneficial for all kids.
2) Combinations of programs frequently work better than one program
alone.
3) The value of any program is data driven and based on its impact on
kids.
4) The teacher is one of the most critical factors in how well kids
learn.
He
explained that his research and others found that there are particular
characteristics of good programs; they’re comprehensive and based upon
substantial converging evidence that learning to read is complex and
requires the learning and integration of phonemic awareness, phonics,
vocabulary, reading fluency, and reading comprehension strategies.
Furthermore, effective programs nurture the kinds of instructional
interactions that develop these skills with professional development
provided to teachers so they can monitor response to instruction (RTI),
modify instruction if needed, and implement the programs with fidelity.
For
Dr. Stephen Krashen to malign, through faulty reasoning (or perhaps
opportunistic), Dr. Reid Lyon’s good name and suggest anything other
than the truth about Reading First is irresponsible and serves to impede
the progress Dr. Lyon has made in helping kids learn to read.
Unfortunately, this type of propaganda confuses those without the skills
to discern between good research and bad, which proliferates the poor
pedagogical methods that continue unabated in our nation’s schools.
I’m
disappointed with Education Week, a publication that as a status
quo usually researches the facts surrounding any submission before they
publish it. Sadly, this time they have failed their readers, falling
prey to Dr. Krashen’s agenda to advance one avenue of thinking above all
with the goal of destroying all others. To borrow a quote from Al Gore
–one that has now been recognized as pure folly, Dr. Krashen would have
us believe the debate is over. It is over, but in favor of Dr. Lyon.
Those
in the Educational Establishment, who jumped on the bandwagon to
criticize Dr. Lyon, a man whose impeccable research methods have
benefitted millions, and will continue to benefit children all over the
world if Reading First doesn’t get thrown into the Junk Science trash
heap bin instead of what passes for scientific methodology and for too
long influenced the training of our children’s teachers and the
education schools from which they graduated, should be ashamed of
themselves. The Educational Establishment should stop following
political agendas and focus on what replicable evidence based research
reveals if we truly want to give every child a chance to read.
Bibliography
Salvato, N. (2006, January 24). Effective Reading Programs Share
Common Characteristics. Retrieved January 24, 2009, from New Media
Journal:
http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/nsalvato/2006/01242006.htm
Stephen
Krashen, P. E. (2009, January). Retrieved January 24, 2009, from
Education Week:
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/01/07/16letter-2.h28.html
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