I almost hesitate to write on this, for a liberal on another site accused me of being disrespectful and contemptuous of my students for noting their reading deficits in a recent post. But the reality is that students reaching high school do have literacy and/or fluency problems, and educators need to address them.

The Washington Post article notes this issue.

Educators said it's difficult to pin down one cause. Bad teaching, chaotic home lives, low expectations for some students, cultural bias, the fact that older students simply don't read enough -- all have been faulted.

And student attitude can be a factor.

"By late elementary school, kids who are struggling readers have developed strategies to avoid reading," said Sylvia Edwards, a reading specialist with the Maryland State Department of Education. "They are under the radar, scraping by."

Even in relatively affluent areas, over 20% of kids reach high school with serious reading difficulties -- a problem that is even more marked among minority and special population sub-groups. And unfortunately, most teachers at that level are not trained to teach reading, because that is a skill teacher training programs for secondary teachers presume is unnecessary because students are expected to be functionally literate by the time they reach middle school.

The teaching of reading therefore needs to continue beyond the primary grades, into the upper elementary grades and on through graduation. The high-stakes testing regimens of NCLB make this even more essential, for without those reading skills there is little hope of students ever passing the exams needed to graduate. That will mean revamping our teacher training paradigm, and retraining teachers already in the classroom to meet that new reality.

Posted by: Greg at 10:31 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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