Using Research to Create More Literate Students

The National Reading Panel: Using Research to Create More Literate Students
From The International Reading Association - http://www.readingonline.org/

by Timothy Shanahan - professor of urban education and director of the Center for Literacy at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Controversies over reading education -- the so-called reading wars -- have raged for most of the past decade. In 1997, in response to these disputes, the United States Congress asked that a National Reading Panel (NRP) be established. (Click here to go to an excerpt from the Senate Committee on Appropriations report that accompanied the bill.) The panel was charged with determining what research has shown about the effectiveness of instructional approaches, the readiness of these approaches for translation to practice, and the need for future research. In other words, the panel was asked to decide what works in reading education on the basis of a formal review of research. I am a member of the panel.

P. David Pearson (1999) recently reviewed a series of historical, authoritative reports about reading education, including Learning to Read: The Great Debate (Chall, 1967), Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print (Adams, 1990), Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, 1985), and Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998, online document). One could easily assume that the NRP will just develop another report similar to these. Making that assumption would be a mistake, however. The National Reading Panel is unique, and the report that it develops will have several qualities and characteristics that will set it apart from the others in this litany.

The fundamental idea behind the federal government's establishment of a review panel is something along these lines: A major controversy is compromising the commonweal (in this case, children are not being taught to read as well as they should be) and undermining public confidence (i.e., trust in schools is declining). To ensure a reasonable standard of quality and to protect respect for public institutions and professions, an authoritative group is appointed to carry out an objective review of the research and to decide upon a standard of practice. The federal government then endorses this standard and benefits are provided to those whose professional practice is consonant with it. For example, in medicine, once such a standard is set, private insurance companies and U.S. government programs such as Medicare will only pay for procedures that are in keeping with the established standard. Physicians also gain some protection against liability if their practices match the standard. Although scientific review panels have a long history in medicine, this approach to resolving an empirical controversy is extraordinary in the annals of reading education -- and, indeed, review panels have never before been tried in any area of education. READ MORE