"The education community expects people to be just like they are, that they're there because they want to help kids. If someone comes in with a motive to make money, you've got the most gullible population in the world just eating out of your hands." -Former senior employee of School Renaissance InstituteOppenheimer's description of Accelerated Reader makes apparent that educators can easily be manipulated by testimonials and self-serving research. Educators want to believe the hype because they want to help their students and AR is all about the hype. I visited their website; sure enough there was the claim that it is The world's most widely used reading software. Can fifty million Elvis fans be wrong? Hopefully teachers can judge for themselves whether or not a program has any merit. But seldom does the classroom teacher get the opportunity to pick and choose the programs that they get.
We have AR at my school site, I use it, but I wouldn't describe it as reading software. It doesn't teach reading. It's an easy ten question quiz that kids take after reading a book. The information it gives is purely summative and does not help me teach reading. I had one student that would regularly get 4 out of 10 correct. AR didn't show me how to help this kid. For our purposes, it was simply a way to hold students accountable for independent reading -- that's all.Last year at my school, we were in a "spend it or lose it" mode and we had several brand new computers that the PTA purchased sitting unused in classrooms. Our principal decided that with no teacher training it was best to go a software based approach. So he purchased three different software programs: Acelerated Reader, ST Math, and Ticket to Read. Accelerated Reader only cost us $1500 because we had it several years before and the re-start up was slightly discounted. AR was recommended by our CIO (my principal's boss). My principal admitted that he didn't read any research on it, but the research around independent reading as an indicator for success was extensive. 55 minutes is the optimum time for students to read independently on a daily basis, which is the crux of the AR program. Kids who read this much test off the charts in comparison groupings, AR or not.
I asked my principal about how he came to purchase the other two programs. He explained that the math department had looked at a bunch of computer programs for Extended Day Math and really liked ST Math, but it was too expensive. Noteworthy is that ST MAth is produced by Mind Research Institute which is a non-profit organization. Hmm... We paid $40,000 for a site package! My principal explained his thinking:
"The kicker was my coach, Dr. Ward, had been contacted by a school principal in LA who was using ST Math and getting phenomenal results. With this testimonal in hand I felt confident we should purchase it. Again I tend to trust testimonials from people I know versus "research" posted in software sales literature. It is interesting to note that almost every software program has some sort of research to back them up. Usually it's pointing to schools doing well on standardized testing. Not sure that it is trustworthy research."
Ticket to Read, which is produced by Voyager, was included with an intervention program and was chosen for similar reasons.
I used all three programs last year, and the only one that I felt was not very effective was Accelerated Reader. So why is it The world's most widely used reading software? It does have some things going for it. It is motivational for some kids and now the program is web-based and has just about every children's book there is. However, the designer in me has several ideas that could make AR much more of an instructional tool. It could be much more formative. Rather than it being a quiz taken at the end of the book, there should be a quiz after every few chapters. That is assessment information that would be useful to me. Also, instead of simple comprehension questions, there should be a variety of questions that address different reading skills (inference, character analysis, etc.).
It seems that no program is going to be perfect; there will always be things that could be better. Also it seems that the research will never completely prove that whether a program truly works. There are just too many variables. But certainly software designer should be using research to help them make a tool that works. It will be up to educators to evaluate them.
I used all three programs last year, and the only one that I felt was not very effective was Accelerated Reader. So why is it The world's most widely used reading software? It does have some things going for it. It is motivational for some kids and now the program is web-based and has just about every children's book there is. However, the designer in me has several ideas that could make AR much more of an instructional tool. It could be much more formative. Rather than it being a quiz taken at the end of the book, there should be a quiz after every few chapters. That is assessment information that would be useful to me. Also, instead of simple comprehension questions, there should be a variety of questions that address different reading skills (inference, character analysis, etc.).It seems that no program is going to be perfect; there will always be things that could be better. Also it seems that the research will never completely prove that whether a program truly works. There are just too many variables. But certainly software designer should be using research to help them make a tool that works. It will be up to educators to evaluate them.
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