REJOINDER TO THE INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION

MA IN READING PROGRAM

ROLE 6:  READING SPECIALIST

Submitted by:
The Reading Program Faculty

Teacher Education Department
College of Education
Eastern Michigan University
Ypsilanti, MI

Introduction:

The Reading Program Faculty at Eastern Michigan University has been very proud of its past national recognition from the International Reading Association.  Consequently, we were very dismayed to find that we did not receive this recognition at the last review.  A close examination of the IRA review, however, pinpointed several program weaknesses that we have been working very hard to remedy.  There were also some extenuating circumstances that contributed to these weaknesses.  The reading faculty at EMU feels that it is important to discuss these circumstances before giving our response to cited program weaknesses. 

The Michigan Department of Public Education radically changed its reading endorsement program beginning in the fall of 2002.  It essentially created a two level endorsement system.  The first level, “Classroom Teacher of Reading” was available to undergraduates who had completed a major or minor in reading and passed the endorsement test.  The second level, “Reading Specialist” required 24 hours of graduate reading coursework and the completion of the MA degree in addition to the endorsement test.  Additionally, new state standards for both these endorsement levels were developed.

These changes had an enormous impact on our program in many ways, particularly at the Master’s level.  After a careful examination of these new standards, the reading faculty felt that it was necessary to develop a completely new MA program.  During the year 2001, we developed 7 new reading courses to meet the new reading standards.  Before these courses could be offered, the program paperwork needed to proceed through the elaborate committee structure at Eastern Michigan University.  The program was officially approved at the university level for a start up during the academic year 2002-2003.  At the same time, we were trying to prepare the paper work for the NCATE/IRA review, which was due September, 2002.  Since it seemed absurd to submit paperwork on a program that was being phased out, we based our program review on the new program.  In order for our NCATE/IRA program review to go through the appropriate committee approval process, it needed to be submitted by March 1, 2002.  In essence, we were submitting a program review to IRA on a program and courses that had not even been taught yet.  They were mere gleams in our collective eye.

We feel that this timeline contributed to the most glaring of the weaknesses cited by IRA:  lack of performance assessments.  Since the submission of the initial review document in September of 2002, all courses have been piloted along with newly developed performance assessments. We can now point to specific assessments in each course that are aligned with standards.

The second weakness most often cited by IRA was a lack of evidence for certain standards.  When we first developed the course outlines, we used the standards provided by the Michigan Department of Public Education.  This document stated that the state standards were aligned with the standards of the International Reading Association.  However, a closer look at the two sets of standards reveals that there is not a perfect match in the language used.  Consequently, we did not meet certain standards because we used the language of the MDE document not the IRA.  For example, Standard 5.5 for the International Reading Association reads that the reading specialist will “provide opportunities for creative and personal responses to literature, including storytelling.”  The comparable standard for the state of Michigan (3.4.1.4) reads that the reading specialist will “provide opportunities for creative and personal responses to literature.”  The standard omits the phrase “including storytelling”. Consequently, the IRA reviewer failed us on this standard, citing lack of evidence for storytelling.  In order to alleviate this problem, all course outlines were rewritten using the exact language of the IRA standards.

The reading faculty feels that we are much better prepared for this rejoinder/review.  All courses have been taught and we have begun the fine-tuning of the performance assessments that accompany these courses.  In summary, we have made four major changes in the documents that accompany this rejoinder since the last review:

1.                  All course outlines and objectives have been rewritten using the language of the International Reading Association’s Standards.  These new course outlines appear in Appendix Two.

2.                  Performance assessments were developed to meet each standard.  These assessments can be found in the course outlines.  The standard that is met is designated in the notation following the assessment description.

3.                  A three-part capstone performance assessment was developed and is in the process of being piloted during the current academic year. This three-part assessment will take place in RDNG 678:  Literacy Assessment, RDNG 686:  Designing Literacy Intervention Programs and RDNG 695:  The Reading Professional.  These courses are limited to Reading MA students only. This assessment will be described in detail later in this document.

4.                  The Programs Standards Matrix has been completely redone to reflect the changes in the course outlines and the addition of the performance assessments. 

The remainder of this document will be divided into parts required by the IRA for a rejoinder;

1.            Response to Unmet Standards, pp. 4-7.

2.            Response to Cited Program Weaknesses, p. 8.

3.            Update of Performance Assessment Transition, pp. 9-12.