The Impact of Fluency Tutor on Student Reading Scores

Diane Ravitch, an “educational historian”, answers four questions in her book, Reign of Error. Is American education in crisis? Is American education failing or declining? What is the evidence for reform being promoted by the government and adopted by many states? What should we do to improve our schools and the lives of our children? According to Ravitch, the “crisis” concerning American education is actually a myth. In this book, she addresses myth after myth providing adequate clarity and information. She looks deep into the facts and brings to light what is actually happening in education in America in the following areas: test scores, achievement gaps, graduation rates, teachers and test scores, merit pay, charter schools, virtual school, government involvement of failing schools. In the latter chapters she offers specific solutions with detailed plans and recommendations to preserve and improve American education. Ravitch’s thesis is that American public education must be protected against government privatization and that we must work together to improve our schools. I couldn’t agree more with Ravitch. Government involvement in education has negatively impacted education since the passing of NCLB. Our focus has changed from being innovative teachers to cookie cutter teachers. Government officials should not make decisions without advice from educational professionals. We must all work together to make education work.

Education in the United States is in an abysmal state. It continues to spiral downward as students and educators fail to meet standards. The standards are then altered on a patchwork basis throughout the states. The goal is no longer to have a high standard educational system. The goal now is to maintain the status quo, allowing students and educators to strive for the minimum. There is no common approach to achieve success. Incipit Tragoedia, in comes the Common Core, agreed upon by educators, politicians, and

According to my findings from unit 1, use of technology in lessons must not be a goal unto itself: the purpose is not to teach children how to use computers; they can do this as they get older, just as they can learn to drive a car later in their lives (Wardle, 1999).Successful technology integration is achieved when the use of technology is routine and transparent, accessible and readily available for the task at hand and supporting the curricular goals, and helping the students to effectively reach their goals.

The education system has been the cornerstone of freedom and equity for economic success in The United States. However, the history of education has never been so crucial to the collective future of our nation and to the young people. The public schools must struggle to provide equality in educational system as never before. The demand for education has become necessary and growing to provide education for all students to comply with the rigorous academic standards on a global scale (Baker, B. D., Sciarra, D. G., Farrie, D. (2010, p. 1).

For the past decade, our country’s education system has reached a flat line in results. Studies show that the United States is the number one country in education spending in order to improve our results, but standardized test scores have plateaued. During President George W. Bush’s term, he initiated a program titled “No Child Left Behind.” No offense to President Bush, however his educational initiative is the most ironic title due to its produced results. So far, no state in our country has reached one hundred percent proficiency in mathematics and language arts and the system has gotten deficient and is failing the millennial generations. Education is a key component to success in our fast-paced society and our system needs to change, for

George Eastman once said, “The progress of the world depends almost entirely upon education.” By its public school system, the United States of America exemplifies this. Federally denied to none and paid by all, United States citizens have the opportunity to attend public school, should they choose. Over the past fifty years, America’s education system has undergone multiple changes. It began with President Lyndon B. Johnson signing into action the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) as an extension of his “War on Poverty” plan. ESEA funded primary and secondary education, encouraged equal access to schooling, established lofty standards and accountability - all done with the intention of closing the achievement gap

Education in the United States has long been a concerned issue for teachers, parents, and communities. It is a major political topic, in which government has shown continuous efforts to compare and evaluate standards from state to state by creating and monitoring various programs for overall academic improvement across the country.

For decades educational reform has been a top priority in the United States. For years, federal and state governments have been working together on legislation that would improve education standards. Many systems have been created in that time period with President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) being one of the most recent reforms. NCLB seemed insufficient over time and led to the most recent reform in education, Common Core Standards that were released in 2010 by state governors and superintendents. Since its origination, Common Core Standards have been a controversial implementation across the nation.

Odden et al. note that a reform strategy has been developing over the last five years as a policy approach to support the attainment of the ambitious goals of their own analysis. In particular, they note that the reform strategy includes having the top of the education system create goals, set curriculum standards, and develop tough tests that indicate what students know and can accomplish in core academic subjects. However, the responsibility for accomplishing the stated objectives will reside with each school district. Thus, each school district will have to undergo significant changes in its government,

Repeated Reading is a data-based strategy to increase students reading fluency. It helps build word recognition skills, and allow the reader to spend more of his or her energy on comprehension and less on decoding. Meanwhile, this builds fluency in how they can orally communicate the reading.

Rasinski explained his findings in lame mans terms by saying “repeated practice in reading, better known as repeated readings or rehearsal, improves automaticity, prosody, and comprehension. This practice has terrific potential for improving students' proficiency in reading (Fluency First).” Rasinski sees fluency as the key unlocking untold reading skills, however the difficult part is putting his theoretical teaching methods into actions. Rasinski’s theory breaks down into six key teaching aspects. The first key to teaching his fluency concept is Modeling fluent reading for students, reading passages smoothly and elaborately (Fluency First). Second, is Directing instruction and feedback in fluency, the key is not allowing children to practice bad habits that become hard to break (Fluency First). Third, Providing support for the reader, not allowing children to get to the frustration point. Fourth, Repeating readings of one text and fifth, cueing phrase boundaries in texts (Fluency First). The sixth is the largest challenge engaging, students in readings and performance to promote students’ word recognition and comprehension. These six keys are hoe Rasinski’s puts his fluency theory into the classroom.

Armbruster describes fluency as student ability to read quickly and accurately (Armbruster 2001). Often times both educators and students are misunderstood at what it truly means for a student to be a fluent reader. In many cases there is emphasis on the quickness, nevertheless a neglect on the accuracy required for students to be fluent readers. Fluency may be one of the most essential stages in aiding students to grow and develop as readers. There is a large gap that must be bridged between Phonics and Comprehension. Repetition is a key feature in allowing students to develop the skills to bridge the gap. Tomkins says “Students become fluent readers once they recognize most words automatically and read quickly and with expression” (Armbruster 2001). Effective instructors facilitate students to become more fluent by focusing on decoding, using content clues, and teaching comprehension.

The United States is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, yet due to many disparities in its primary and secondary school system, it lags behind many of its economic peers, educationally. In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE) was chartered to review and synthesize the data and scholarly literature on the quality of learning and teaching in the United States. The resulting NCEE report titled, “A Nation at Risk,” showed alarming results and called for great changes. For the United States to be competitive with other industrialized nations, it has had to transform its educational system, and thus politicians have been trying to raise the bar through various laws, policies and reforms, especially during the last

The Timed Repeated Reading method provides the reader the opportunities to read a short text multiple times. Accuracy and comprehension are not the initial goal of this method. The main goal of the repeated reading method is to improve fluency. Fortunately, the multiple reads of the same text ultimately addresses accuracy and comprehension. Through the implementation of the timed repeated method, word decoding accuracy is developing, therefore improving automaticity. One-minute timings encourage students to read at appropriate rates. The students read short texts for one–minute; record scores on a graph, and discusses the data with the teacher. Providing a visual of the reading progress and verbalizing successes is rewarding and motivating

Public education in the United States is perhaps one of the most critical issues we face as a nation. Once pronouncing the United States as a “nation at risk”, the educational institution began to implement one reform strategy after another. In efforts to improve schooling for K-12 students, education reform has fiddled with class size, revised graduation requirements, and created standardized testing just to name a few. Unfortunately, traditional public schools are still failing to provide students with a quality education. This is disheartening as we learn that the United States lags behind in math and science compared to our international counterparts. It is safe to say that educational reform has spent billions of dollars over the