A Coming Tidal Wave Of NonReaders

Literacy is indeed in crisis. Nearly nine million struggling readers desperately need your help.

Why?  Because we aren't effectively teaching the kindergartners, first, and second graders to read -- we're just passing them on.  And on.  Some kids "get it" naturally -- without, despite, or with instruction-- but that group is a tiny minority.  Most others need effective instruction, and our students aren't getting it.

We are building a nation of criminals.  82 percent of prison inmates are school dropouts, and a high proportion are unable to read.

How can schools motivate failing adolescents to read? Virtually no research has been done in this area.

A true crisis

I go to great lengths to avoid using the word “crisis.” But when it comes to literacy, I’m convinced the word applies.

So are others who’ve studied the problem. Ernest Fleishman, senior vice president of New York-based Scholastic Inc., calls adolescent literacy -- or the lack of it -- “a national reading crisis.” In a 2004 report on adolescent literacy, Fleishman describes the meager prospects that await poor school-age readers. Many nonreaders are unemployable, and those who land menial jobs earn extremely low wages, usually without health insurance or other benefits. To survive, many illiterate and barely literate teens and adults depend on social services and other forms of public assistance.

Recent reports underscore the severity of the situation. The 2001 National Census reports that 42 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds who dropped out of high school and did not earn a GED reported no employment income. And a recent investigation by the Washington, D.C.-based Alliance for Excellent Education shows that, compared with high school graduates, dropouts are three times as likely to live below the poverty line and end up on welfare rolls.

Michael Kamil, a Stanford University literacy expert, also believes adolescent literacy has reached a crisis point. Compared with U.S. fourth-graders, who place near the top in international tests of reading performance, Kamil says, 11th-graders fall close to the bottom, behind students from Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other developing countries. (If the students who have dropped out of school by the 11th grade were included in this comparison, the U.S. showing would be even more dismal.)

In a 2003 AEE research report on adolescent literacy, Kamil says many students achieve adequate reading skills in the primary grades, but their reading performance often diminishes in the later elementary grades and continues to fall in middle and high school. Catherine Snow and Gina Biancarosa, both with Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, report a similar finding, noting that some 70 percent of older students require reading remediation. Many students can read words on a page but cannot comprehend what they’ve read.

Tackling the problem

It’s possible to raise middle school and high school students’ overall literacy, including reading comprehension, Snow and Biancarosa contend. But to do so, schools must have the will and persistence to make literacy the cornerstone of learning.

In Reading Next, a 2004 report from the Carnegie Corp. of New York and AEE, Snow and Biancarosa recommend the following classroom-based strategies to improve adolescent literacy:

• Provide direct, explicit instruction in reading comprehension, such as summarizing and discussing texts with others.

• Teach students reading and writing skills specific to subjects such as science and math.

• Motivate students to become self-directed and independent readers.

• Encourage students to work collaboratively, using text materials at different levels and on a variety of topics.

• Individualize reading, writing, and content instruction for students who need extra help.

• Include more writing in daily lessons.

• Add technology, such as well-designed computer tutorials, to help struggling readers.

• Assess students continuously and use information to monitor and adjust lessons and assignments.

• Infuse literacy development into all classes, not only English and language arts.

• Train teachers to teach literacy development well.

• Use data to inform literacy policies and practices.

• Organize interdisciplinary teacher teams that focus on literacy in daily lessons.

High-performing middle and high schools that succeed in teaching students to read and write well “weave a web of connections” that support literacy, says Judith Langer, director of the National Research Center on English Learning & Achievement based at the State University of New York at Albany.

How?  Read the rest of the article. I think we need a moonshot for reading mastery.

Comments

[MissMeliss]

I don't have children. If I did, I'd be reading with them, daily, because that's how I was raised, and I think it's crucial to pass on love of the written word.

The idea of so many nonreaders terrifies me.

[Peggikaye]

Spelling isn't helping the reading problem.

Today's educational atmosphere encourages kids to use their creative skills by not correcting their writing and allowing kids to spell words however they think it's spelled.

The end result is ..they dont' know how to spell, and if they are consistantly mispelling a word ... then doesn't it stand to reason that they would not recognise that word when they went to read it because it isn't spelled like they spell it?

So much is done to day in the name of not harming their tender self esteems and in the long run, they're not learning what success and failure, and hard work is and they are not learing a work ethic and in the long run ..their self esteem is truely suffering!

Sorry ... just the rantings of a parent of a special needs child who can only fight so much of the system.

[liz]

Miss Meliss is correct -- reading to kids is one way of passing on the love of reading, the idea that the words on the page spark your imagination.

If being read to was enough to create good readers, why Allison would have been reading chapter books in first grade. Oops. Her little neurological deficit -- or non-standardization -- meant that she needed direct, explicit instruction to master reading. She got it. The kids who are not learning to read, in their millions, aren't getitng the kind of instruction they need.

Peggikaye is correct also (although spelling is less of a bugabear for me*). She encapsulates the whole self-esteem instead of pleasure-of-mastery thing in a nutshell.

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*The spelling thing -- many of our forebears didn't spell consistently, but could read fluently. It depends on the type of error.

[MissMeliss]

This has NOTHING to do with this topic, I merely wanted to comment that I'd never noticed the Four Principles on your sidebar before, and just read them. . . wow. What beauty and elegance and simple Truth is in those words.

[Peggikaye]

I get your spelling point ... I consistantly mix up the ie and ant ent words. But, I can read them.

I think for a neurotypical child, the spelling plays a roll, but not as big of a roll as it does for the learning disabled child like my son. A few years of mispelling will not have the impact on reading that many years of massive mispellings will.

The Four principals, love them!
Number 3 is hard for me to read. As a parent who lives on social security disability (Lupus/myasthenia gravis) and has a low income and trying to raise 2 teenaged boys in a wealthy school district and fairly well off church, I often have to remind myself that God has given me equal responsibility to the community inspite of lack of funds.
The "you're no better because you have money" is a two way coin.
It also means "you're no worse because you are poor"
that means you have a responsibility to function inspite of health ..inspite of income ... inspite of struggles.

[Tom Cunliffe]

Liz, I am so concerned about this problem, which is as prevalent over here in the UK. Reading is a quiet activity requiring the reader to draw in on her/himself and find an occupation in the mind which does not depend on external stimulation. The competition from instant gratification alternatives is just too much for many children. I am delighted however at the success of Harry Potter which is leading many children back to the world of imagination and literary fulfilment - and also the satifaction that derives from reading really long books.