A mid-year look at Accelerated Reader

I thought it might be useful to post links to two on-line articles about implementing Accelerated Reader in the classroom in an effort to better inform our practice, and insure that we are best serving our students.
Both articles are sponsored by the International Reading Association, and take two different points of view.
The first is by Keith Topping- " Formative Assessment of Reading Comprehension by Computer: Advantages and Disadvantages of The Accelerated Reader Software " Professor Topping concentrates on best practices:

The characteristics of good implementation suggested by the Sanders and Topping (1999) report described under Research on The Accelerated Reader imply that teachers should do the following:

* Have students read as much as possible -- but guide those above fifth grade away from reading a large number of very easy books
* Monitor student progress carefully
* Check that students' percentage of correct answers is at 85 percent or higher
* Generate and study at-risk reports
* Intervene when the above goals are not being met -- especially with low ability students, and probably also with high ability students
* Increase the challenge level slowly and gradually
* Monitor carefully to ensure that challenge does not become so great as to begin to depress percentage of correct answers

Experience suggests that to these might be added the following general guidelines to good implementation:

* Teachers should be trained in implementation
* Participation must be voluntary for students
* There should be a large number of AR books available for students to choose from
* Books should be coded for readability to enable students to manage challenge on their own
* Extra opportunities for reading practice should be provided at school (in and out of class) and encouraged at home and in the community
* Student access to computers for the purposes of AR test taking should be easy, frequent, and immediate
* Students should be encouraged to reflect on the implications for action provided by the feedback they receive, with self-management encouraged
* Less able readers should be permitted to test on books read to and with them, as should their peer helpers
* Parents should be aware of the program, regularly receive AR reports from the school and respond to them, and be encouraged to ensure that their children have opportunities to read at home
* Peer tutoring should be incorporated, in support of reading, testing, or both
* Extrinsic rewards should be used only if necessary, effective, and culturally appropriate, and then the rewards offered should be books or reading-related items
* Retesting should be allowed only in exceptional circumstances
* Criteria for “Model Classroom” status should be met (even if certification is not applied for)

Practitioners might want to create a checklist for self-assessment of AR implementation quality in their own school by printing these points or copying and pasting them into a word-processing

The second is by Linda Labbo- "Questions Worth Asking about The Accelerated Reader: A Response to Topping". From her introduction:

I agreed to write this response primarily because, after reading Topping's commentary, I agreed with his observation: “Like any other educational tool, how it [AR] is used might be more important than if it is used.” It is interesting to note that much of the research Topping cites as evidence of the effectiveness of the AR program is based more on studies that look at if it is used rather than how. It is clear that statistical analyses of large-scale standardized-test scores from schools where AR is used provide interesting data; however, such studies do not shed light on the myriad, uncontrolled-for variables within the cultural context of a classroom or school.

In schools across the United States, educators are involved in multiple initiatives intended to do everything from integrate computers into the curriculum to decrease the potential for school violence. The Accelerated Reader may be perceived by some as an easy way simultaneously to meet goals related to computer use, to support students' development of reading comprehension, and to improve scores on standardized reading tests. The purpose of this article is to raise some questions worth asking about the AR program and to highlight the importance of studying how it is used.

Linda takes a more critical view of the effectiveness of A/R:

Educators, parents, business partners, and administrators wonder if the AR program is consistently effective in helping meet goals in these areas. For a program whose design is intended to free teachers from spending time and effort reading children's book reports, from keeping logs of books children have read, and from scoring comprehension questions about those books (How AR Works, 1995), it appears to cause many teachers to spend a great deal of time and effort on figuring out how to achieve “good” program implementation.

Between the two articles, every issue that any staff member has raised about Accelerated Reader is touched upon.