Accelerating reading inequities in the early years

Souto-Manning, Mariana. (2010). Accelerating reading inequities in the early years. Language Arts, 88(2), 104-113.


Here is an indictment of the Accelerated Reader (AR) program, purportedly as it was seen through the eyes of the second graders in the author’s class. Since the children and their teacher were required to use AR, they performed some fairly sophisticated inquiry and devised some proactive strategies to make AR fit their literacy needs better.

Before I go into my reaction to the article, I must first state that I am no fan of the AR program. Like the author, I believe the AR program limits children’s reading choices inappropriately. My own granddaughter was a victim of AR; one day she joyfully told me that she was now “allowed” to read chapter books, which filled me with anger at this system, which reduces children to “levels” and dictates what they can and cannot read. I also dislike the focus on extrinsic rewards (see Alfie Kohn’s book, Punished by Rewards, for a full discussion of the issue), and I do not like the way AR teaches competition rather than collaboration and community. In fact, AR seems to be based on capitalist business models, which I believe are inappropriate for elementary schools. I even can buy into Souto-Manning’s contention that AR privileges the literacies of a white, middle-class culture and does not honor diverse literacies of the children in today’s schools. In all this, Souto-Manning and I agree.

What bothers me about what happened here is my fear that Souto-Manning’s political agenda was imposed upon her second graders, who were a captive audience of sorts and were, as children, open and impressionable to any agenda she might have about AR. I worry that they and their parents may have become tools for her to achieve her own agenda, and I cannot condone that, no matter how much I may agree with that agenda. I find myself wondering just how much of the dissatisfaction with AR, and how much of the awareness of the inequities and segregationist tendencies (the strongest indictment in the article) actually arose naturally from the students, and how much was shaped and manipulated by Souto-Manning. I do not want to accuse her of a lack of veracity or of intentionally doing this, but as teachers we must recognize that we are in a privileged position. As a longtime literacy educator who (I believe) is generally respected by my students and colleagues, I am well aware of the power I have to forward my own agendas in my classroom, and I work diligently to maintain an open, fair attitude. I do not try to hide my political and theoretical views (not possible in any case), but I try to remain aware of when they are coming into play and to issue clear caveats to my students and colleagues when it is my agenda and my motives need to be critically examined. I note that Souto-Manning’s affiliation is now in higher education. Working at that level allows more license for agenda-furthering than one would have in a second grade classroom, but it does not completely remove the ethical responsibility to be open to all views and to alert students when a political or theoretical position is being taken.