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For information on NLCB, please visit our Task Force page.
For information on Assessment, please visit our Task Force page.
For information on PI34, please visit our Task Force page.

WSRA encourages you to become an advocate for reading education by contacting your legislators and letting them know how you feel about bills coming before them. You can find out who your state and federal legislators are by typing in your 9 digit zip code at www.vote-smart.org. If you don't know your nine digit zip code, you can find out what it is by typing your address in the bottom section on the site.

After you enter your zip code, click on FIND. This will take you to a site listing your federal and state legislators. Click on their name and you will be shown how you can contact them.

Information on national literacy advocacy issues can be found at www.reading.org/association/advocacy.

WSRA Receives IRA Advocacy Award Again

(posted April 1, 2002)

We are delighted to announce that WSRA and its Legislative Committee has received a second Advocacy Award from the International Reading Association.

Once again IRA has recognized state councils for their work and efforts to affect educational policy and legislation at the local, state, and national levels.

The IRA supports taking an active role in educational advocacy by its 1250 councils and affiliates. This award recognizes WSRA's efforts to educate, organize, and activate its members in relation to positions that are taken to effectively influence public educational policy.

Among the pieces of evidence that WSRA submitted to demonstrate its qualifications for this award were:

  1. Its efforts in developing legislation and supporting it. This relates to the work that was done on our Books for Success bill.
  2. Publicizing issues through articles written about advocacy that were published in WSRA Update and the WSRA website, especially those written by Dr. Michael Ford .
  3. Creating web page entries on the Discussion Board .
  4. Letter writing campaigns to support the passage of the Books for Success bill and supporting specific issues related to the state budget.
  5. Posting Hotline messages related to legislative committees.
  6. Providing testimony to state legislative committees, especially testimony during hearings with the Joint Finance Committee regarding state budget issues
  7. Attending meetings with legislators and with the governor's staff to promote new ideas to support reading education.
  8. Networking with other educational organizations such as WEAC to get things done in the legislative arena.
  9. Using the opportunities provided by Wisconsin Public Radio programs to enlighten the public about issues regarding reading education.
  10. Providing recognition to legislators who help advance the cause of reading education.

Congratulations to all WSRA member who worked to make this happen.

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WSRA Supports Books for Success

(posted February 25, 2000)

Books for Success is a legislative bill that has been drafted and is currently being discussed. The legislation would provide grants to qualifying school districts for the purpose of increasing student access to a variety of books in the classroom. To qualify, 50% or more of the third grade students in the district who took the Wisconsin Reading Comprehension Test would have scored below the proficient level.

The purpose of the legislation is to make another avenue of approach to increasing reading achievement for these students a possibility. Studies show that there is a relationship between students becoming good readers and the number of books to which these students have access in both the classroom and school libraries. Increasing the number of books to which the students have access increases the likelihood that they will become good readers (Krashen, 1998).

Studies have continually shown that children learn to read by reading. The vision that we have is to increase the access to books for children in these grade levels in order to encourage them and their teachers to spend more time in self-selected reading and re-reading. Books for this endeavor need to be at each child's current reading level. Classroom collections of books for this purpose need to reflect a wide range of independent and instructional reading levels that support emerging reading skills through pictures, rhymes, patterns, and familiar vocabulary. The need is for many books that students can read independently even at early stages of reading development. More time spent reading a variety of books at the appropriate level of difficulty will not only increase a student's fluency and word recognition, but will also increase comprehension and an interest in reading higher level books.

This legislation focuses on classroom collections rather than increasing collections in library media centers because of the often specialized nature of the books that are needed in classrooms. Some books appropriate for the earliest emergent readers are usually small in size, paperback, short in length (8-10 pages), and contain vocabulary that is often limited. In addition, books in a classroom collection need to reflect a large variety of reading levels as well as interests and be immediately available for reading and re-reading at any time of the school day.

Practice reading in books that are immediately accessible is a vital part of progress in reading achievement. Studies have shown that students need to be in print rich environments. Studies have also shown that students' reading achievement is highly related to the number of books to which they have access. Students whose environment includes ready access to a well supplied LMC, access to a public library, access to well supplied classroom collections, and access to books in the home do best. Good readers are most likely to enjoy access to all of these: school library, classroom library, public library, and home library (Krashen, 1998).

Many years ago, school librarians worked diligently to centralize and increase school collections of quality children's literature. This effort opened the path to greater access to children's literature and a greater emphasis on children's literature in the classroom. Classroom collections supplement and augment the collections available in the school library. They also extend the print rich environment needed by students in the classroom. This extension can enhance literacy learning in classrooms that are print rich literate "homes" where reaching out and picking up a book that the child can read independently is possible at any time of the day.

WSRA Position on Licensure

(posted September 1999)

The Wisconsin State Reading Association Executive Committee and Legislative Committee supports the following revised language for the reading specialist license as adopted by the DPI:

(8) PROGRAM COORDINATOR READING SPECIALIST. A program coordinator reading specialist license is required for any person who directs early childhood through adolescence reading programs or works with reading teachers, classroom teachers, administrators, and others as a resource teacher in reading. A reading specialist license may be issued to an applicant who has completed an approved program, who has received the institutional endorsement for the reading specialist license, and who has both of the following:

  1. A reading teacher license
  2. A master's degree with a major emphasis in reading and the ability to demonstrate expertise in each of the following:
  • guiding and directing the kindergarten through grade 12 program
  • field experience in kindergarten through grade 12 reading programs
  • research related to reading
  • supervision of instruction
  • content area reading for the reading specialist

 

 
This page last updated January 04 2009

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