Cooter, R.B. (Ed.). (2004). Perspectives on rescuing urban literacy education: Spies, saboteurs and saints. Reviewed by Irene Rosenthal, The College of St. Rose

	Cooter, R.B. (Ed.). (2004). Perspectives on rescuing urban literacy education: Spies, saboteurs and saints. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. $69.95     ISBN 0805842896 Reviewed by Irene Rosenthal The College of St. Rose September 7, 2004 Many educators believe that if there were but money enough and time, reading deficits could be eliminated. This book, edited by Robert Cooter points out that this might be a wistful assumption. It is a description of what happened when Dallas businessmen decided to invest $50 million dollars in a bid to raise the literacy levels of children in the Dallas Independent School District so that 90% of third graders would be reading on grade level in 5 years. The initiative was, by and large, successful but the problems enumerated in the book are a testimony to some of the harsh realities confronting educators committed to systemic reform. When the initiative began in 1996, Dallas was a prime example of an urban educational system in need of change. With 163,000 students it was the 10th largest school district in the U.S. Ninety-four per-cent of these students were minorities; seventy-five percent qualified for free lunch; 50,000 students entered school with a native language other than English. What needed to change was clear – only 25% of third graders were reading at grade level; by the end of 9th grade, 70% were reading three years below grade level. There was a 50% drop out rate. This book is a case study of what happened in Dallas from the perspectives of various stakeholders. The book’s subtitle, Spies, saboteurs and saints, aptly describes the roles played by various people involved with the initiative. Simply put, this book represents the perspectives of spies and saints. The spies were the professionals hired to deal with the Dallas rescue effort from outside the school system. One of the strongest voices heard in the book is that of Robert Cooter, the highly recognized literacy specialist who was hired as the district’s “reading czar” and who spearheaded most of the reform effort. The saboteurs were people who knowingly and unknowingly presented obstacles to the success of the program. Among the saboteurs in Dallas were central office administrators who regularly made wrong decisions based on greed, power and genuine ignorance. The saints were and are the hard-working people in the trenches. Judy Zimny, a Dallas elementary principal whose “saintly” perspective is included, contends, “Excellent public education and effective school change are each forms of missionary work” (p. 224). This framework is one of the most valuable aspects of the book. It combines the research of scholars analyzing systemic change so that it may be generalized to other situations with the first hand reports by participants experiencing, reacting to and modifying the change so that it dealt with their particular situation. There is no one blueprint for reform that will work everywhere. But this book does accurately detail the issues, problems and solutions specific to Dallas and we can learn much from this. A logical place to begin learning from the Dallas experience is in Katherine and Robert Cooter’s chapter, “Challenges to change.” Here they clearly delineate the challenges they faced in Dallas including, fragmented instruction (majority of the teachers in Dallas were emergency or alternatively certified with little knowledge of literacy instruction dearth of teaching materials power and political jockeying at the top that led to flawed decisions and wrong agendas turnover of superintendents (5 superintendents in 5 years in Dallas) student mobility (nationally 31% of eighth graders change schools 2 or more times since first grade) teacher mobility (nationally 50% of teachers leave the profession in the first five years weak teacher/administrator preparation at the university level (a one size fits all approach that views education from a middle class lens) subterfuge by vendors and consultants promising cure-alls and quick solutions The two most common responses to these challenges have been the adoption of scripted program interventions and/or the implementation of aggressive teacher development programs. Scripted approaches can quickly stabilize instruction, especially in urban settings where under-trained teachers and teacher turnover are major problems. There are drawbacks, however, to an over reliance on scripted programs. Veteran teachers agree that no one reading program will meet the needs of all children. Teachers who are limited to teaching from a script are at a loss to adapt instruction to meet the range of needs demonstrated by struggling readers. There is also a “glass celing effect.” Students perform well on standardized tests teasuring the decoding and phonics skills emphasized in the programs, but fail to develop the comprehension and higher cognitive skills required in the upper elementary grades. In Dallas, a decision was made at the outset to analyze exactly what needed to change before adopting any widespread plan for change. They decided to conduct a “failure analysis” study. Based on a process created by NASA, it identified the critical elements of literacy that had to be addressed if the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) was to achieve its goal of 90% of all 3rd graders reading at grade level by 2001. The failure analysis identified five key areas related to reading instruction that had to be in place to achieve this goal. They were: Teachers must know the basic reading skills to be taught Teachers must know how to assess each student’s knowledge of the basic reading skills Teachers must know the best ways to teach each reading skill Families must be included in their children’s education Learners with special needs require an appropriate education Based on this information, a decision was made to base the Dallas Reading Plan on a commitment to develop knowledgeable and effective teachers and principals. For teachers, a 90 hour long Reading Academy was created providing the 2,000 teachers who participated (voluntarily) the deep learning, practice and coaching(the capacity building model) necessary to insure implementation of the researched based practices they were learning. A Principals’ Fellowship taught 140 participants how to support teachers in implementing comprehensive reading programs. Cooter reports that the students whose teachers graduated from the Reading Academy “were doing significantly better in reading as measured by the state’s high stakes test (TAAS) than their counterparts in other Dallas classrooms” (p. 23). The impact of the Reading Academy and its potential for instigating systemic change is best described by a graduate (laureate) who stated: The Reading Academy empowered me as a teacher because it made me think and problem solve consistently for a year. I felt like the Reading Academy recognized and valued creative teachers and it allowed me to create, analyze synthesize and evaluate my own teaching. ATHE Reading Academy gave me knowledge and confidence. When I finished that year, I knew I could go anywhere with nothing but a set of leveled books and teach reading. Clearly, Cooter’s approach to achieving systemic change was based on crating well-informed, skillful teachers. The question is, “did it work?” did the Dallas Reading Plan succeed in getting 90% of third graders to perform at grade level in reading? The answer is a bit difficult to ascertain from this book. A chapter devoted to a discussion of student outcomes was disappointingly absent. We are told, “As of spring, 2001, approximately 2,000 teachers had completed the voluntary Reading Academy. Student performance in reading has improved significantly as measured by the Standford 9 Achievement Test (SAT 9) and the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (Cooter, pg. 42). Incidentally, E.F. Baskin, in his chapter on change management reports. “Grade 3 student test scores under teachers who were RA (Reading Academy) graduates from the Year 2 cohort showed over 60% of their students reading at grade level (compared to 26% only 3 years before). Likewise, Year 3 RA teacher graduates showed over 55% of students reading at grade level and were expected to improve further as the teachers from this cohort further implemented the concepts and techniques. The rest of the system was at about 50%” (pg. 28). Obviously, the goal of 90% grade level literacy scores by 2001 was not met. A chapter devoted to an analysis of what grade level literacy scores were met would have been instructive. Instead, the reader must search through much descriptive information about the impact this plan had on teachers to piece together the impact it actually had on students. At the time the Dallas Reading Plan was underway, Texas was administering the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills in reading to grades 3-8.This has since been replaced by the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills which is generally considered to be a much more difficult assessment that displays more accentuated differences in performance between various ethnic and socioeconomic groups. The Dallas Independent School District, on its web-site (www.dallasd.org) reports that in 2003, 73% of all student groups passed the reading section of TAKS in grades 3-8. How much this gain can be attributed to the five year, 50 million dollar initiative has not been determined. In 2001-2002, a decision was made to adopt the SRA-Open Court basal series district wide. Of course, the Lead Reading Teachers trained at the Reading Academy clarified Open Court implementation and provided demonstration lessons and focused training throughout the district. Cooter does come to the conclusion that putting a satisfactory basal program in place in severely dysfunctional districts is a necessary stage for reform. His message, however, is that sustainable change is only achieved through comprehensive, individualized teacher training. When one considers that he was declared the “Texas State Champion for Reading” in 1998 by then Governor George W. and First Lady Laura Bush, while advocating teacher empowerment, one can only conclude that perhaps prospects for literacy instruction in 2004 will keep getting curiouser and curiouser. ~