Barone, Diane M. (2006). Narrowing the Literacy Gap: What Works in High-Poverty Schools. Reviewed by Christine Baker-Smith, Columbia University

Barone, Diane M. (2006). Narrowing the Literacy Gap: What Works in High-Poverty Schools. NY, NY: The Guilford Press. Pp. xi + 195         ISBN 1593852770 Reviewed by Christine Baker-Smith Columbia University April 20, 2007 Techniques of teaching literacy have grown and changed over the course of education in the United States; particularly in the last 25 years as new standards-based initiatives have encouraged practitioners to find way to both keep students at “grade-level” as well as teach students falling behind. Recently experts have come to agreement that different techniques may be required to work with high-poverty and minority students and investigation into what exactly these techniques entail has pursued. Unfortunately, although many exemplary and non-exemplary techniques are demonstrated in Barone’s work it is also clear, though unspoken, that such techniques are heavily dependent on the policy that governs. This volume aims to summarize the data Barone collected in her longitudinal study of one group of students and their teachers in a high-poverty school. Barone presents an in-depth look at one school and its students’ through the literacy trajectory of elementary education. She takes the reader step by step through the individual literacy learning process with a few specific children using these cases to illustrate variables that may be related to the trajectory of literacy success and failure. A multi-year study on a single school and its students, this work has the flavor of Annette Lareau’s work Home Advantage (1988) in both its focus and its scale. Barone provides a different part of the picture by examining the literacy training of students and, following Lareau’s lead, allowing familial influence to be a part of the picture. The book’s first chapter sets the stage for Barone’s long-term study based on the seven years that she followed these students. A solid literature base is established from which exemplary techniques for the various grade-levels are highlighted, then followed by a clear description of her well-thought out choice of subjects. Barone, here, clarifies her focus as one as one of exploration, one in which she attempts to understand the link behind literacy instruction and true literacy achievement among high-poverty students. The next two chapters take turns in spotlighting both the specific children that were followed and the teachers they experienced. Specific student trajectories through each grade are both explained and charted for the reader. Next the teachers are examined; their years of experience, style of teaching, theories of literacy learning and general outlook on both high-poverty children and teaching in general all become relevant as the progress of students through these teachers is followed closely. Barone effortlessly leads the reader through teachers and their effect on student literacy after providing significant detail describing the student pathways through Howard Elementary. Here she also gives an interesting assessment of assessment itself, namely spotlighting the current concern about teaching to the test. The variety of assessments, simply with regard to literacy, these teachers are expected to prepare for and their lack of association both in terms of intended purpose and actual results is a topic of concern for Barone as well as the educators themselves. Barone notes in this section the danger of using assessments whose correlation to the desired results have not been proven and how this use may artificially affect schools’ success particularly in regard to NCLB requirements. Although these chapters include much qualitative detail they do not provide a clear link from instruction technique to literacy achievement. It is not explicitly clear whether these lenses are a result of inductive research or simply an explanation of the theory in which the data collection was grounded. The following theoretical chapter would be much more effective as an introductory piece to the book providing a theoretical backdrop from which to view the progression of students through literacy. The transition to theory from intricately described qualitative data disrupts the flow of the book as well as contorting the focus from literacy techniques to the larger sociological meaning of these techniques. Fortunately, regardless of theoretical perspective this section does prove a useful tool in understanding the way in which the data was gathered. Barone’s theoretical basis is explained with three sociological lenses through which literacy learning can be seen; which, taken together, do provide a thorough and detailed theoretical perspective of what is happening at Howard. Social constructivism (pp. 115) gives credence to the power of community building both among school faculty and within classrooms among students. This theoretical framework helps the observer to view the classroom relationships’ effect on student knowledge construction. Then using positioning theory (Dillon 2000) she tries to explain the various behavioral interactions between students and between the teacher and a student or group of students. Barone uses this theoretical perspective to explain some of the ways that the behavior of not just the student but also the teacher may actually enhance or inhibit literacy learning. Using her subjects as an example she shows how a teacher’s response to a student challenging his or her power that allows shared power often not only gives the student power in that interaction but expands that student’s perception of intellectual or academic power, thereby increasing their self-perceived literacy ability. This theory seems particularly applicable to the high-poverty students who often seem to be very much in need of power and control somewhere in their lives and often find it at school (Willis 1977, Foley 1990, Dressman 1997). Finally Barone moves to the newly coined resilience theory (Waxman, Padron & Gray 2004) perspective in which she uses her own previous work (Barone 1997) to show that poverty and the difficulties it engenders are not enough to keep children from learning. The most important aspect of this theory is a mindset of educators in which students, regardless of color, socio-economic status or home language, are all capable of academic success. Using actual teachers, Barone points out the difference in literary success between students whose teachers believe poverty is a quagmire from which students never escape as compared to the students of educators who do not see it as an explanation of failure but a surmountable detour. She finds high-achieving poverty students and teachers who strongly subscribe to this theory to be closely correlated. This final perspective is one that, together with Barone’s examples, seems to hold the most weight as an effective tool for teaching high-poverty students literacy. The other two theoretical perspectives are excellent ways to approach classroom management and literacy techniques however the resilience theory is one that may finally provide the key to educating disadvantaged students. Unfortunately, a teacher’s perception of poverty and its affects is not something that is easily changed, especially on a large scale. As Barone concludes with her book by pointing out some of the unexpected discrepancies between teaching styles and results she offers both theoretical and individual explanations of literacy teaching and classroom management. Not only does she achieve this but also gives readers an opportunity to see how these approaches affect individual students in different ways. Nearing the end of Barone’s work it becomes clear that although there were several common themes of “successful teachers” these themes often came with caveats. For example, a teacher who followed strict row-formation of classroom design (something often discouraged in favor of a more modern group formation that encourages community and individualism) was very successful both at test scores and classroom community building. Therefore, the lines become blurred in this study between what is effective and what is not based on many subjective factors from the individual student’s interest and motivation to the teacher’s personal opinion about students in poverty. Like these examples, many of Barone’s recommendations are both reasonable and difficult to achieve in most high-poverty schools because they are subject to so many variables. It appears that this book is intended for practitioners such as teachers and yet some of the academic language may be out of their realm of expertise. Positively, the detailed approach gives a very clear picture of specific good and poor practice. Although Barone presents so many specific examples of teaching it does not seem that this book will be especially useful for teachers and school staff. Many of the examples of positive literacy instruction are based on individual policies set by school boards, unions, districts, cities and states. For example, the support provided for literacy at Howard seems extraordinary for a high-poverty school. Or alternatively, the choice made by the fifth grade teachers to team teach is one that would be nearly impossible without the support of all of these entities for flexible programming. This is not the case in most high-poverty schools as these schools are often without control over policy due to their advocacy bodies or lack there of. For these reason, it is my hope that this book makes its way to policy makers as I feel this is the audience for which it would be most constructive. Policy makers, with the more personal and intricate knowledge provided by Barone’s detailed observations, may be able to make new, well-informed policy decisions with an eye toward how they will affect actual practice, something not often directly affected by policy. References Barone, D. (1997). Turning it around for youth: From risk to resilience. (ERIC/CUE Digest No. 126). New York: ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education. Lareau, A. (2000). Home Advantage: Social Class and Parental Intervention in Elementary Education.. Second Edition. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield. Dillon, D. (2000). Reconsidering how to meet the literacy needs of all students. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Willis, P. (1977). Learning to labor: How working class kids get working class jobs. New York: Columbia University Press. Foley, D. (1990). Learning capitalist culture: Deep in the heart of Texas. Philadelphia: Univeristy of Pennsylvania Press. Dressman, M. (1997). Literacy in the library: Negotiating the spaces between order and desire. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Waxman, H., Gray, J., & Padrón, Y. (2004). Promoting educational resilience for student at-risk of failure. In H. Waxman, Y. Padrón, & J. Gray (Eds.), Educational resiliency: Student, teacher and school perspectives (pp. 37-62). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc. About the Reviewer A graduate of Stanford University’s School of Education (M.A. Sociology/Policy of Education) and Whitman College (B.A. Sociology), Christine Baker-Smith is both a researcher and a program coordinator of QMSS, a graduate program for quantitative social science research, at Columbia University’s Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy. Working with Dr. Christopher Weiss, her research interests are focused on sociological issues of inequality and stratification, a focus that has led to significant inquiries into the national system of education today in America.