Discouraging News on Reading and Math

The National Center for Education Statistics just released the report Mapping State Proficiency Standards Onto the NAEP Scales: Variation and Change in State Standards for Reading and Mathematics, 2005-2009. This report compares the standards that states use in reporting 4th- and 8th- grade reading and mathematics proficiency using NAEP as a common metric. 

Here's the gist of the report and why I use the word discouraging in the title of this post.

There is wide variation among state proficiency standards.

• In 2009, using NAEP as common metric, standards for proficient performance in reading and mathematics varied across states in terms of the levels of achievement required. For example, for grade 4 reading, the difference in the level required for proficient performance between the five states with the highest standards and the five with the lowest standards was comparable to the difference between Basic and Proficient performance on NAEP.

Most states’ proficiency standards are at or below NAEP’s definition of Basic performance.

• In grade 4 reading, 35 of the 50 states included in the analysis set standards for proficiency (as measured on the NAEP scale) that were lower than the scale score for Basic performance on NAEP and another 15 were in the NAEP Basic range. 

• In grade 4 mathematics, 7 of the 50 states included in the analysis set standards for proficiency (as measured on the NAEP scale) that were lower than the Basic performance on NAEP, 42 were in the NAEP Basic range, and one in the Proficient range.

Are you interested in seeing where your state fell in this mix? Here are some graphics of the fourth grade results to help you better understand. Click to enlarge.

Reading

Math

What Math Skills in Early Years Are Key to Later Success?

Here's some interesting news on the research front that has tremendous implications for teachers of young children.

Psychologists at the University of Missouri monitoring a group of 177 elementary students from 12 different elementary schools since kindergarten have identified the math skills students should have in the first grade to have success by the fifth grade. After factoring out intelligence, working memory and other abilities, researchers were able to determine the most critical beginning-of-school math skills.

Researchers found that beginning first-graders that understand numbers, the quantities those numbers represent, and low-level arithmetic will have better success in learning mathematics through the end of fifth-grade. They also found that first-graders who understood the number line, how to place numbers on the line, and those with some knowledge of basic facts showed faster growth in math skills than their peers during the next five years.

The results of the study will be published later this year in the journal Developmental Psychology. Look for the paper entitled “Cognitive Predictors of Achievement Growth in Mathematics: A Five Year Longitudinal Study.”

Research Report - Families That Read

This from the November issue of Journal of Research in Reading (Volume 33, Issue 4, 2010, pp 414–430). **The highlighting here is mine.**

Article Title: Families that read: A time-diary analysis of young people’s and parents’ reading

Abstract: Parents can play an important role in assisting their children to learn to read, and can act as good role models in promoting reading behaviour. While there has been a raft of research on the impact of parents as teachers, there has been little empirical analysis on the impact of parents in modelling reading. Addressing this gap in the literature with time-diary data, this paper presents a study of the association between parents’ and young people’s reading in the United Kingdom. The paper finds a strong association between parents’ and young people’s reading concentrated in households where parents are observed to read for more than 30 minutes per day. In addition, mothers’ reading is associated primarily with girls’ reading (especially in lone- mother households), while fathers’ reading is strongly associated with boys’ reading. Some implications for campaigns to encourage young people’s reading through increased parental reading are discussed.

Here are some things you should know about the method and data set.

• This was a secondary data analysis from the UKTUS 2000–2001 that surveyed 6,414 households in the United Kingdom.
• All individuals in the household aged 8 years and over (N 5 14,423) were asked to provide information about their activities, the other people they were with and their location in 10-minute intervals for a weekday and a weekend day.
• This study looked at the reading behaviors of the parents as well.
• The young people included in the sample resided in 981 households. There is information from 981 mothers and 749 fathers in the sample. (This means about one-quarter of these households are single parent, lone-mother households.)

Here are some of the more interesting results, some of which are not surprising.

• Girls average significantly more reading time than boys.
• There is no significant difference in the average reading time of young people in lone-mother households compared with those in two-parent households.
• There is a difference in the average reading time of young people whose parents have a degree (20 minutes) compared with those whose parents do not have a degree (9 minutes).
• Young people whose parents were observed to read for more than 30 minutes themselves average significantly more time reading than young people whose parents were not observed to read.
• There is a relatively strong and statistically significant correlation between the proportion of time young people are at the same location as their parent and the time they spend reading. This shows that being in proximity to parents is an important factor in young people’s reading.

I'll say that the gender correlation bothers me a bit. What about households where single parents or same sex parents don't share the gender of their children? Regardless of the family configuration (single dad and daughter, single mom and son, two dads with a daughter, or two moms with a son), I would like to think that modeling and encouraging the habit of reading transcends gender.

Overall, this is one more set of data points that speaks to the importance of modeling and making time for reading at home.