General Advisory Committee

Member Organizations
Newsletters
Minutes and Photos
Charter

NARAP Update

June 2005

• Focus Groups
• DARA Technical Advisory Meeting
• GAC Meeting in September

Focus Groups

NARAP continues to hold focus groups at meetings and conferences throughout the spring and summer to discuss the draft definitions of reading generated by our Definition Panel. Sessions have been held at the following conferences:

• Council for Exceptional Children Convention and Expo
• AERA//NCME Annual Meetings
• International Reading Association Annual Convention in San Antonio

Participants in the focus groups have included individuals and professionals interested in reading, including professors, teachers, students, administrators, researchers and specialists. Two more focus groups will be held at the end of June at the meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers (June 19), and the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (June 24). If you would like to attend focus groups at either of these conferences as an observer, please contact Teresa King at tking@ets.org. In order to ensure that all viewpoints are represented, we will also conduct teleconference focus groups in June. These teleconference focus groups are to target particular disability issues that were not represented in the face to face focus groups.

The definitions used in the focus groups are:

Definition A

Reading is decoding and understanding written text. Decoding requires translating the symbols of writing systems (including Braille) into the spoken words they represent. Understanding is determined by the purposes for reading, the context, the nature of the text, and the readers' strategies and knowledge.

Definition B

Reading is decoding and understanding text for particular reader purposes. Readers decode written text by translating text to speech, and translating directly to meaning. To understand written text, readers engage in constructive processes to make text meaningful, which is the end goal or product.

Definition C

Reading is the process of deriving meaning from text. For the majority of readers, this process involves decoding written text. Some individuals require adaptations such as Braille or auditorization to support the decoding process. Understanding text is determined by the purposes for reading, the context, the nature of the text, and the readers' strategies and knowledge.

Participants in the focus groups have looked at the three draft definitions generated by the Definition Panel to compare how well they 1) define reading, 2) define reading for students with disabilities, and 3) support the development of a fair assessment for all students. Broadly, the responses to the three definitions have emphasized the following points:

• Most people preferred having the main emphasis placed on understanding as opposed to decoding.
• The term decoding was viewed by many as too restrictive to represent the technical process of reading fully, and others felt it represents too low-level a skill for many readers.
• Many were concerned that students with Learning Disabilities in particular could show skill in decoding without understanding, or conversely understand the text but appear not to read well.
• Many participants expressed concern about “spoken words” and “speech” in the definition in relation to the impact on students who are deaf or hard of hearing.
• The inclusion of Braille was supported, though some questioned classifying it as an adaptation. Auditorization got a mixed response: some felt that it undermined the basic concept of reading, while others argued that if understanding is the main goal, it may be appropriate in some instances.
• Overall, all three definitions were viewed as incomplete, but C was chosen as the top choice.

These comments are only a sample of the information gathered in the focus groups. NARAP will produce a final report on the focus groups later this summer with a more nuanced treatment of these and other issues.

Top of page.

DARA Technical Advisory Meeting

The Designing Accessible Reading Assessments (DARA) project held a Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) meeting on June 3 rd in Washington , DC . This was the first meeting of the DARA TAC and committee attendees were Bob Dolan (CAST), Rick Wagner (Florida State University), Hollis Scarborough (Haskins), Karen Barton (CTB/McGraw-Hill), Steve Sireci (University of Massachusetts), Sue Bechard (Measured Progress), Francis Butler (Language consultant). Lynn Fuchs (Vanderbilt) was unable to attend. Other attendees included Dave Malouf, Jerry Tindal, Laurie Cutting, and project staff from ETS. The TAC provided valuable feedback on the research designs for three studies that the DARA project will conduct between now and April 2006. These studies include two studies using operational state test data (a factor analysis and examination of differential item functioning) and an experimentally designed study to determine if students with learning disabilities receive a differential boost in test score from read aloud testing accommodations when compared to students without disabilities who receive the same accommodation. The presentations from the entire meeting are available on the DARA website.

Top of page.

GAC Meeting in September

The next GAC meeting is tentatively slated for next September in Washington, DC. We will contact you very soon to probe for preferred dates.

Top of page.