School Administrator Supports SBRI

Author/Speaker draws from trenches to support SBRI
By Lee Baker

“When taught together, comprehension and phonics are symbiotic strategies for reading success,” said Anthony Pedriana during his keynote address at the recent IDA-UMB annual conference.
Armed with 35 years serving public schools, plus extensive research following his retirement, Pedriana believes that it is imperative that schools rally around a scientific method to teach reading. And, he added, “It is critical that we make ourselves accountable for the reading success of our students.”

Pedriana began his teaching career in a Milwaukee school where over 92 percent of the students lived in abject poverty and 22 percent spoke English as a second language. His students were the victims of abuse and neglect, lived in homes with little or no parent involvement, and were surrounded by drugs and violence. Beginning as a high school English teacher and reading specialist, Pedriana later became an elementary school principal and consistently witnessed at-risk children graduating each year well below their grade reading level.

Approached by one of his elementary school teachers to pilot a new literacy instruction system, Pedriana agreed, and was dismayed by the results. In the previous year, the teacher finished the school term with all 22 second graders below their reading level. The following year, after introducing this new “A-Z” method, the same teacher succeeded in graduating the majority of her students at or above their reading level.

But success didn’t sway the school district to instigate change. Old teaching styles were maintained with the same dismal outcomes. Pedriana and his teachers wanted desperately for their students to be successful. They invested time and energy to help these young people gain reading-level proficiency, but even with all the best of intentions, they failed.

Following Pedriana’s retirement, he came to the alarming realization that his years as a teacher were largely ineffective. “I was scandalously unprepared to accomplish my heartfelt mission as a teacher and principal. I was haunted by the failure of being in a system that stagnated reading,” he says.
Those realizations led Pedriana to take action. With a commitment to helping children learn to read and avoid the pitfalls of life as a disenfranchised youth, Pedriana began researching reading instruction and the strong correlation between children’s reading failure and adult outcomes of poverty, incarceration, unemployment and other social vulnerabilities. The results of his studies and conclusions are presented in Leaving Johnny Behind: Overcoming Barriers to Literacy and Reclaiming At Risk Readers. Pedriana believes that research-based methodology for reading instruction must be adopted by our schools and that we have an obligation to incorporate reading science in early childhood education curriculum.

Click here to read more about Anthony Pedriana and Leaving Johnny Behind, or to read Pedriana’s blog.