Reading Comprension Tests, IQ, and 4th grade slump

Some interesting exceprts from Geraldine E. Rodger's "The Case for the Prosecution, in the Trial of Silent Reading Comprehension Tests, Charged with the Destruction of America's Schools."

Geraldine Rodgers is an amazing lady, much of what I know about phonics and reading, I learned from her. I'll let her quotes speak for themselves (plus, I've been sick, so anything I write myself is likely to be off a bit.)

“All those silent reading comprehension tests are a massive fraud. Back before 1911, when Binet of France originated the FIRST real intelligence tests, he used oral reading comprehension to test native intelligence, which is itself un-teachable. Binet’s reading comprehension paragraphs are STILL used to test intelligence. So reading comprehension scores are really IQ scores!” (p.1)

“The point remains: the phonic-trained reader is FREE when he is reading. Whether he pays attention or not depends on his training – AND on his mood, just as it does at home when his mother tells him to close the front door when he goes out. He may or may not leave it swinging. But the sight-word trained child can only read BY paying attention – divided attention, it is true. He will score lower than the best phonics children but higher than the phonics child who is not interested. This, I am convinced, is the reason school systems still buy sight-word basal readers. They may yield more consistent “reading comprehension” scores. A large sales job needs to be done to convince administrators that “reading comprehension” does NOT test reading but only intelligence plus attention, once the children know the high-frequency words.” (p. 206)

Most people do not realize that only about 250 common words of the highest frequency compose more than half of anything written in English (as determined by J. McNally and W. Murray in Key Words to Literacy, London, who said that 100 of the very-highest-frequency words make up just about half of the words used in juvenile reading, and a total of 300 would cover three-quarters). With the knowledge of about 250 of the highest-frequency sight words, with the sound of the first letter or so of unknown words, and with the use of the MEANING of the context of a written selection, it is possible for a child to guess his way through “reading comprehension” tests up to about the fourth grade level, even if the child cannot read in the true sense at all, which means to HEAR print. That ability to guess the meaning of a selection, even when many of its words are unknown, is what accounted for Simon’s remarks about stumbling, inaccurate readers in France being able to pass reading comprehension IQ tests….As a primary-grades school teacher for 18 years, I have found many children who know all these 250 common sight words and who pass reading comprehension tests nicely but who cannot read “hard” unknown words like “frog” or “splash” if they are in library books without the controlled vocabulary of the school readers, which readers are carefully written to assure correct guesses. (p.33 – 34)

You can read a portion of Chapter 1 online at Amazon, it is the excerpt when you "search inside". In these pages, she talks about the deaf-mute origins of sight word teaching, syllables, Locke, Basedow, and how “Two currents of educational thought flowed from his teachings. One supported TRUE progressive education, and its respect for human will with its corollary, personal responsibility. The other supported the philosophy which eventually resulted in materialistic psychology and its denial of the existence of the human will. The two wires crossed in Columbia Teachers College in the early 20th Century. That short circuit has almost destroyed American Education.”