About the Toolkit

In spring 2007 CCSSO convened a National Secondary School Redesign Meeting for states. The meeting focused on four high-leverage areas of secondary school redesign, including adolescent literacy. The goal of the meeting was for states to provide recommendations for how CCSSO and its partners could support ongoing state efforts and build state capacity in the four areas through development of tools and resources.

Seven states – Arizona, Illinois, Louisiana, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia – focused on adolescent literacy and expressed the need for an adolescent literacy toolkit for SEA officials to use with districts and schools to encourage and prepare content-area teachers to embed literacy strategies into their discipline-specific instruction.

CCSSO worked with multiple partners to develop the toolkit, which was continuously shaped by feedback from the states.

Acknowledgements

CCSSO’s Adolescent Literacy Toolkit was developed in partnership with Public Consulting Group’s Center for Resource Management. CCSSO would like to thank Melvina Phillips for her hard work on this toolkit. Thanks also go to Kevin Perks for his valuable feedback and contributions. In addition, CCSSO would like to acknowledge Janice Dole, Russell Gersten, Elizabeth Birr Moje, and Cynthia Shanahan for providing feedback and sharing their expertise in answers to the literacy questions.

Janice A. Dole (Ph. D., Education, University of Colorado), is Associate Professor of Education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Utah. Dr. Dole’s university experience includes positions held at the University of Denver, the Center for the Study of Reading at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Michigan State University. She has published widely in the areas of comprehension and conceptual change learning and more recently in professional development and school reform. Her publications include articles in journals such as Reading Research Quarterly, Review of Educational Research, The Elementary School Journal and Reading and Writing Quarterly. She is also co-author of the book, Adolescent Literacy: Research to practice.

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Russell Gersten is the President of RG Research Group and Executive Director of Instructional Research Group in Long Beach, CA. He is also professor emeritus in the College for Education at the University of Oregon. He received his Ph.D in Special Education from the University of Oregon in 1978.

Dr. Gersten is a nationally recognized expert in both quantitative and qualitative research and evaluation methodologies. Dr. Gersten has conducted two syntheses of intervention research on teaching mathematics to low-achieving students and students with learning disabilities. He served as an advisor for the mathematics component of the Title One evaluation in 2003. He also recently completed a research project on developing valid measures for early screening of students with mathematics disabilities and is currently pursuing research on early preventative interventions.

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Elizabeth Birr Moje is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture in Educational Studies and a Faculty Affiliate in Latina/o Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. Moje teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in secondary and adolescent literacy, cultural theory, and research methods.

Moje also serves as a Faculty Associate in the University’s Institute for Social Research—Research Center for Group Dynamics. Her research interests revolve around the intersection between the literacies and texts youth are asked to learn in the disciplines (particularly in science and social studies) and the literacies and texts they experience outside of school. In addition, Moje studies how youth make culture and enact identities from their home and community literacies, and from ethnic cultures, popular cultures, and school cultures. These research interests stem from the start of her career when she taught high school history, biology, and drama at schools in Colorado and Michigan.

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Kevin Perks is currently the literacy coordinator of MSAD #60, a large district in southern Maine. In addition to his work in MSAD #60, Kevin works with schools throughout New England and across the country as an adolescent literacy coach. He has presented at national and regional conferences on topics such as sustained silent reading as a whole school practice, literacy across the curriculum, and data-oriented action planning. Recent publications include a chapter in Reflective Teaching, Reflective Learning (McCann et al, 2005), Principal Leadership, and Horace. Kevin is also a doctoral candidate at the University of New Hampshire and hopes to graduate in May 2008.

Melvina Phillips, a Senior Literacy Consultant, Public Consulting Group’s Center for Resource Management, serves as the literacy consultant for the SPIRAL I and SPIRAL II projects, as well as other adolescent literacy projects. Dr. Phillips has 35 years experience as an educator and school leader. Prior to retirement, she served as Instructional Administrator and Principal of Discovery Middle School in Madison, Alabama. In 1998, Discovery was selected as a Literacy Demonstration Site for Alabama's Reading Initiative. With a goal of 100% literacy, the staff and administration developed a successful school-wide literacy program that immersed literacy strategies across the content areas and provided for intensive intervention as needed. After retiring from public education, Melvina worked as NASSP’s Literacy and Professional Development Practitioner and continues to serve as a consultant with NASSP and state departments of education and school districts across the country. Working as the Alabama Reading Initiative-Project for Adolescent Literacy’s Secondary Principal Coach, she serves as a resource for the district and school leadership teams. She is principal author of the NASSP publication, Creating a Culture of Literacy: A Guide for Middle and High School Principals, funded by the Carnegie Corporation.

Cynthia Shanahan is a professor of Literacy, Language and Culture and Executive Director of the Council on Teacher Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). In her role as professor, she teaches pre-service and in-service teachers to teach middle and high school literacy. She taught for eight years in K-8 schools in California, Guam, Colorado, Arizona, and Georgia as an elementary teacher, special education teacher, and reading specialist. She received an EdD in Reading Education from the University of Georgia in 1984, and taught at Georgia State (1984-1986) and the University of Georgia (1986-2000). At the University of Georgia, she taught college students to meet the reading and study demands of their college courses of study. She was also a principal investigator in the National Reading Research Center, an OERI-funded center for the study of literacy and studied the role of text in learning science and history.

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