Reading Response 7- Gallagher, Chapter 1

Answer these 2 questions:

Is our quest for higher test scores harming our students' long-term reading prospects?

Why is it that the higher the grade level, the higher the chances that students are turned off to reading?

I think these two questions have answers which are tied together. Gallagher's research shows that if we as teachers teach our students to read and write well, the students will perform well on standardized tests; if we focus too much on the test scores, however, then the students will have very little ability to do well on these tests. Why is this? Because learning to read and write well develops transferable knowledge that students can use not only on tests but in other relevant areas of their lives as well.

Because we focus so heavily on improving scores, we drain the creativity and originality out of reading. Reading at the very earliest school level becomes tedious and mundane--sectioned into repetitive drills that cover width but not depth, knowledge but not evaluation (if we want to use Bloom's terminology).

Literature, then, is seen as no longer alive with any prospect of being explored; it has been scanned for gold over and over and over and has become dead and useless to the typical bystander. (because someone else has already taken the valuables, so what point is there in repeating the success without the successful results?) We as teachers are to blame for this; instead of encouraging depth, encouraging exploration, encouraging students to get down and dirty and PAN for gold rather than cast a naked eye around the flowing river, we have told them everything they need to know for the test. We have taught them the material but not how to think critically about such material.

Gallagher, K. (2009). Readicide: How schools are killing reading and what you can do about it. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.