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Unfulfilled Expectations: Home and School Influences on Literacy PDF

259 Pages·1991·6.411 MB·English
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Unfulfilled Expectations Unfulfilled Expectations: Home and School Influences on Literacy Catherine E. Snow Wendy S. Barnes Jean Chandler Irene F. Goodman Lowry Hemphill HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 1991 Copyright © 1991 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 This book is printed on acid-free paper, and its binding materials have been chosen for strength and durability. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Unfulfilled expectations : home and school influences on literacy Catherine E. Snow ... [et al.], p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-92110-0 1. Literacy—Evaluation. 2. Home and school. 3. Reading—Parent participation—Case studies. 4. Education—Social aspects. I. Snow, Catherine E. LC149.U49 1991 90-4814 302.2'244—dc20 CIP Contents Chapter 1. Determining the Sources of Literacy 1 Chapter 2. The Children, Neighborhoods, Schools, 13 Classrooms, and Families Chapter 3. Methods of Data Collection 44 Chapter 4. The Family as Educator 59 Chapter 5. The Resilient Family 87 Chapter 6. Parent-School Partnership 116 Chapter 7. Reading Comprehension and the Relation 143 of Home to School Factors Chapter 8. Implications for Practice and Research 163 Chapter 9. Epilogue: Four Years Later 179 Appendixes 216 References 229 Acknowledgments 241 Index 245 Unfulfilled Expectations ~ Chapter 1 ~ Determining the Sources of Literacy The most basic expectation for children attending school is that they will learn to read and write. Sadly, this expectation is not always fulfilled for schoolchildren in the United States, far too many of whom fail at the basic school task of literacy acquisition. Although few children leave American elementary schools com- pletely unable to read, an alarming proportion enter and ulti- mately graduate from high school with the ability to read at only a late elementary level. At this level of literacy, they cannot comfort- ably read newspapers or popular magazines. They do not know the meanings of many words used on nightly newscasts or in pop- ular adventure fiction. On the job, they may be unable to read equipment manuals, file reports, or understand the vocabulary of technical instructions. Students with levels of literacy this low on entry to high school are at risk of dropping out because the school- work they are expected to do is too hard for them. Even if they manage to graduate, they are, while not technically illiterate, in- sufficiently literate to participate fully in American economic and political life. Why do some students fail to achieve these sorts of literacy skills while others succeed? A substantial proportion of those who fail to achieve adequate levels of literacy are students from financially disadvantaged families. It was estimated in 1977 that fewer than 50 percent of adult members of families with incomes under $10,000 per year were competent in literacy skills (Adult Perfor- mance Level Study, 1977). Eight years later, the National Assess- ment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reported that less than 50 percent of young adults from disadvantaged urban backgrounds had acquired reading skills to the intermediate level (Applebee, 2 ~ Determining the Sources of Literacy Langer, and Mullis, 1988; National Assessment of Educational Progress, 1985). The findings are doubly troubling: they suggest that the literacy deficits of adults in poor families are being repli- cated among the children. Furthermore, the children who fail to learn to read today can hardly aspire to more remunerative jobs or to higher levels of education than their parents have achieved. While children of poor families are at greater risk of literacy failure, some children from financially disadvantaged families do well in school and in acquiring literacy. We cannot, then, invoke income or social class as a simple explanation for failure of literacy development, though the existence of social class differences may suggest some hypotheses about the causes. The study reported here was undertaken in order to develop our understanding of the factors that relate to achievement in literacy among children in low-income families. On the basis of this understanding, we can seek better ways to help low-income children who achieve less than they should. Our study's primary objective was to study the effects of experi- ences in low-income children's lives, at home and at school, on their literacy achievement. Many studies have been conducted to answer the question of why some children fail to learn to read and write as well as others their age. Conclusions of these studies have implicated inappropriate teaching methods, low academic stan- dards in schools attended by poor children, insufficient language stimulation at home and at school, and a variety of individual child characteristics. Books previously written on this topic have ranged widely: from endorsements of quick-fix teaching methods to in- dictments of schools for failing to maintain standards, reproaches to families for failing to stimulate, enrich, or discipline their chil- dren, and condemnations of society for replicating inequality of access to resources through institutionalized discrimination and cultural insensitivity. While many of these studies have succeeded in explaining some aspects of poor achievement among low-in- come children, the problem is still far from solved. Why do we feel we have anything to add to this long-studied and still unresolved issue? The study which forms the basis for this book differs from pre- vious research in a number of important ways, both in its basic theoretical framework and in the resulting decisions about what

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