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Showing posts from July, 2015

Fidelity to What?

A Question of Fidelity (originally published in the Arizona Reading Journal) In many elementary classrooms, teachers are being directed to ensure the commercial programs adopted in their districts are being implemented with fidelity . In fact, the word fidelity has become one of the current buzzwords in reading education. Often associated with Response to Intervention models, “Fidelity to the Core Program” is described as a prescribed curriculum that provides teachers with greater certainty about what and how to teach, enforcing strict adherence to the texts, pacing guides and scripts outlined by the authors and publishers of commercial reading programs. To others, it suggests a rigid, subservient adherence to demands of educators far removed from one’s classrooms, and a decrease in one’s professional autonomy. In either case, many reading teachers are mandated to follow adopted core programs, and not to stray from the prescribed tasks associated with each lesson or instructional comp