Is In-School Free Reading Good for Children? Why the National Reading Panel Report is (Still) Wrong

INDIVIDUALIZED READING

Shanahan also dismisses results of individualized reading programs published in the 1950’s and 1960’s because, he claims, they did not necessarily use SSR and also included "a great deal of reading instruction" (p. 249). These programs did indeed include some direct instruction, in the form of brief student-teacher conferences. What is crucial is that students in these classes certainly did in- school free reading, far more than students in the comparison classes (Duker, 1965).

BOND AND DYKSTRA’S STUDY

Shanahan claims that I failed to cite Bond and Dykstra’s study (Bond and Dykstra, 1997) which, he says, also compared individualized reading and skills and failed to find a superiority for free reading. Bond and Dykstra did not compare skills and free reading in any of their comparisons.

LET’S INCLUDE OLIVER (1973)

Shanahan concludes that the NRP really missed only one study, Oliver ‘s 1973 study which found no difference between SSR and comparisons. As Shanahan notes, the duration of this study was only one month. Shanahan once again ignores my conclusion that SSR effects are more positive with longer-term studies.

Shanahan (p. 249) concludes that if Oliver (1973) were added to the tally, it "would have given the NRP 15 evaluations of methods for encouraging reading with only 3 of these coming out positive." He does not point out that the NRP did not find any studies in which SSR was worse than comparisons.

ARE THE "BEST STUDIES" CORRELATIONAL?

Stahl (2004) also comments on research on in-school free reading and my criticisms. He states that "In this area, the best studies are not experimental but are correlational (see Krashen, 2001)" (p. 206). I did not discuss correlational studies in the paper Stahl cites. My entire paper was devoted to experimental studies, with some case histories mentioned briefly at the end of the paper. My claim was that the experimental studies present a strong case for the efficacy of free reading in school.

Stahl claims that the NRP report on fluency shows that "nonmonitored reading, in the form of sustained silent reading (SSR) or similar approaches, was not shown to be effective in the experimental studies the panel reviewed" (p. 205). The official view of the NRP, however, is that the NRP "had no findings" about these programs, because of a what the NRP considered to be the low quality of the research (Shanahan, 204, p. 245). This is not the same as "not shown to be effective."