ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: LITERACY Volume 4 ADOLESCENT LITERACY ADOLESCENT LITERACY What Works and Why JUDITH DAVIDSON AND DAVID KOPPENHAVER First published in 1993 by Garland This edition first published in 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1993 Center for Early Adolescence, Judith Davidson, and David Koppenhaver All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. 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ADOLESCENT LITERACY lVhat Works and lVhy Second Edition Center for Early Adolescence The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Judith Davidson and David Koppenhaver GARLAND PUBLISHING, INC. • NEW YORK & LONDON 1993 © 1993 Center for Early Adolescence, Judith Davidson, and David Koppenhaver All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Davidson,Judith, 1953- Adolescent literacy: what works and why I Judith Davidson and David Koppenhaver. -2nd ed. p. em. - (Garland reference library of social science : vol. 828) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8153-0877-9 (alk. paper} ISBN 0-8153-0920-1 (pbk. alk. paper) 1. Project on Adolescent Literacy (U.S.} 2. Reading (Adult education)-United States. 3. Reading-United States-Remedial teaching. 4. Literacy-United States. I. Koppenhaver, David, 1956- . II. Title. Til. Series: Garland reference library of social science; v. 828. LC5225.R4D38 1993 428.4'071'2-dc20 92-13812 CIP Printed on 250-year-life, acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America CONTENTS Foreword vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction to the Second Edition xvii ADOLESCENT UTE.RACYTODAY 3 METHODOLOGY 39 THE KENOSHA MODEL: ACADEMIC IMPROVEMENT THROUGH lANGUAGE EXPERIENCE 53 STAR: STRUCTURED TEACHING IN THE AREAS OF READING AND WRITING 85 HILT: HIGH INTENSITY lANGUAGE TRAINING­ AN EFFECTIVE MODEL OF SECOND-lANGUAGE llTERACYINSTRUCTION 113 AFTER~SCHOOL UTERACY PROGRAMS FOR YOUNG ADOLESCENTS 141 SUMMER UTERACYPROGRAMS FOR YOUNG ADOLESCENTS 173 SPECIAL FINDINGS 209 WHAT WORKS AND WHY 221 TRANSlATING WHAT WORKS INTO PROGRAMS AND POLICIES 245 Appendix: Test Instruments Cited in This Book 259 An Annotated Resource List 261 General Bibliography 277 Index 313 v FOREWORD In schools across the country, adults are playing a game of make­ believe with young people. They say, in effect, "We will make believe we don't know that you can't read, if you will make believe that you can." Motivations for maintaining this mutual deception range from apathy to cynicism to despair. Lacking training, tools, and, too often, vision, the adults charged with preparing our youth for enriched and enriching futures condemn them to a game of chance more cruel than the classroom charade: a life spent impoverished by functional illiteracy. In this second edition of Adolescent Literacy: What Works and Why, the authors remind us that our concern about unmet literacy needs must not rest with "how many adolescents are at risk of illiteracy" but must be expanded to the more daunting question, "How many young adolescents will acquire adequate literacy skills?" Asking this ambitious question thrusts Adolescent Literacy into the public-policy arena, considering issues of poverty and race and of their powerful interrelationship. As the authors say, "By and large, the majority of those who are not gaining these critical literacy skills and the positive attitudes toward literacy that accompany accomplishment are young adolescents living in poverty. Low literacy achievement is part of the web of problems economically disadvantaged youth face, and it is both a cause and a consequence of many other problems they encounter." In its 1987 report, Children in Need: Investment Strategies for the Educationally Disadvantaged, the Committee for Economic Development (CED) warned its fellow corporate executives that: [d]emographic trends dramatize the need to address seriously the plight of the disadvantaged; the sheer numbers and the growing proportion of the U.S. population that they represent are staggering. The percentage of both poor children and minorities ln the United States has been rising vii viii Fureword steadily in recent years and will continue to climb in the foreseeable future .... In 1985, minorities represented about 17 percent of the total U.S. population. By the year 2020, this proportion is expected to rise more than one-third; if current demographic trends com. le, a larger proportion of this group will be children from disadvantaged homes. (p. 9) CED sounded an alarm that "the demographic imperative" required aggressive intervention because our schools perform least well with exactly the children whose numbers are rising: Mrican-American and Hispanic children living in poverty. Likewise, this second edition of Adolescent Literacy: R'itat Works and R'ity presses its readers to take vigorous action in both policymaking and program implementation. This book results from an investigation of reading programs that refuse to tolerate acquiescence to the inevitability of reading failure. This rich but readable, optimistic but wary book is utterly pragmatic. It lives up to its title. It tells us what works and why, through case studies and through observations gleaned from hundreds of days of exhaustive literature searches and exhausting site visits. The authors' message is deceptively simple: "Prominently characteristic of each of these successful programs is a firm belief by teachers and administrators in each young person's right and ability to learn to read, an emphasis on the importance of literacy, and a large proportion of instructional time devoted to actual reading and writing." They derived this message by asking deceptively simple questions: "Are the students reading and writing? What are they reading and writing? Can they talk about the books they have read and describe the kinds of writing projects they have completed? Are the teachers instructing, not just managing or evaluating? Are the students learning, not just complying? ... How do the participants feel about the program?" Preceding the articulation of those questions were months spent combing research on reading in early adolescence, numerous conversations with the nation's leading literacy experts, and discussions among members of the Center for Early Adolescence's literacy team that acknowledged few time or physical limitations. The mission of the Center for the past fourteen years has been to alert adults to the quality of young adolescents' lives as they Foreword zx negotiate the various challenges of their development and to strengthen the institutions established ostensibly to ease and enrich that development. As a result, the Project on Adolescent Literacy looked not only at schools but at nonschool and summer literacy programs as well. Some children spend their days in homes and schools filled with people who read for pleasure and livelihood, surrounded by book-filled rooms sending visual messages about the centrality of reading in their lives. For youngsters in literacy­ impoverished homes-and in some cases schools--out-of-school programs can become a critical factor in decisions to stay in school or to learn in an alternative institution. These investigators found out-of-school literacy programs that are changing the lives of young adolescents, who become eager readers rushing to find new books, to read to younger children, and even to serve as reconnectors to the schools they have rejected. A sampling of several excellent programs reveals, once again, a simple, underlying goal: to help students have a good experience with a book. Adolescent Literacy: What Works and Why is an optimistic book, assuring us that "good early adolescent literacy programs can make readers and writers out of students who school and community have despaired would ever learn." It urges us forward: "The results of these successful programs can be replicated, and the techniques and methods for doing so can be learned and shared." It presses for the adoption of a variety of policy recommendations that would help young people make the transition from beginning-level to proficient readers and writers-and thus would help break the stranglehold relationship between poverty and reading failure. Some of the authors' conclusions are sobering. For instance, the Project on Adolescent Literacy team found no successful after­ school literacy programs or summer-literacy programs designed specifically for the early adolescent age group. They also found communities mired in the debate about whether schools should provide services to beginning English-speakers, or who in the community is responsible for doing so. Even in some of the best programs, they found ardent people engaged in a complex endeavor, hampered by staff uninformed about theory and practice, lacking access to expert guidance and inspiration, too often hearing the sirens of packaged materials or computers that can never substitute for the expert instruction of an inspired teacher. They X Fureword were sobered by a flagging federal commitment to compensatory education at a time when increasing numbers of children live in poverty.