Supporting Students’ Literacy through Data-Driven Decision-Making and Ongoing Assessment of Achievement

Abstract

We often take reading and writing for granted. There was a time, not so long ago, when literacy was not available to everyone. Louis Braille recognized the importance of access to information, and his simple but ingenious code has had an impact on the lives of generations of people who are blind. Two hundred years after the birth of Louis Braille, parents and educators must still work to ensure that students with visual impairments receive appropriate literacy instruction and access to information. Children who are visually impaired learn to read the same way as children who are sighted. The five key components of a reading program identified by the National Reading Panel (2000)--phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension--are as important for children who read braille as they are for children who read print. In addition, the overall goals of reading for children who are visually impaired are exactly the same as for children who are sighted. These goals include success in academic pursuits, but also development of the joy and excitement of allowing reading to transport the reader to a different place and time, and participating in writing to communicate with a broad audience on a diverse range of topics. With this in mind, the value of reading through braille is equal to the value of reading through print. Adults with and without visual impairments use a wide range of literacy tools (hard copy materials in braille or print, computers, and personal electronic devices) to accomplish communicative tasks. Access to a variety of literacy tools is more critical today than ever before for professional and personal success. In order to become proficient users of a variety of literacy tools, adults must possess strong, efficient basic reading and writing skills (Koenig, 1992). These skills are built through a home-school partnership that values and recognizes the life-long importance of literacy. Children who are sighted and have no physical or cognitive disabilities develop basic literacy skills through reading and writing print. Children who are visually impaired have two media options for developing basic literacy skills: braille and print. The challenge facing parents and teachers of these children is to determine the most effective literacy medium or media for each individual child, especially as they develop strong basic literacy skills. In many instances, the decision of the most appropriate reading medium is clear. At some point in a child's life, typically as the child enters school, a decision is made to begin basic literacy instruction in braille, print, or both, which is also known as dual media. The process by which many educational teams gather pertinent data that documents the decision-making process for selecting a young child's literacy media was outlined in the mid-1980s and is called learning media assessment (LMA). Prior to LMA, literacy media decisions were made by teachers of students with visual impairments who used their best professional judgment in deciding whether braille, print, or dual media would be most effective for a particular student to learn how to read and write. Although these teachers had a great deal of knowledge and experience in working with children with visual impairments, without gathering critical data to support the learning media decisions, students and teachers were often put in precarious positions related to their confidence that learning media decisions were based on appropriate, individual information and not on convenience or preconceived attitudes or opinions on literacy for this population. LMA was designed to support teachers, parents, and students in both the initial and ongoing learning media decision-making process, allowing for the most effective use of literacy tools for basic and functional (applied) reading and writing according to individual need. LEARNING MEDIA ASSESSMENT LMA is a general term that applies to all assessments designed to provide support for literacy media decisions. …