Literacy General Research & Reports
Early Childhood Literacy
Young Adolesence Literacy
Middle & High School Literacy
College Preparation/Remedial Literacy
Bilingual/Limited English Proficiency Literacy
Students with Disabilities & Literacy
Afters-School/Summer School Literacy
Professional Development & Literacy
Adult Literacy
Family Literacy
Early Childhood Literacy (Typically Pre-K through Kindergarten)
What Education School Aren't Teaching about Reading and What Elementary Teachers Aren't Learning (May 2006)
National Council on Teacher Quality
"The persistent reading struggles and failure of nearly 40 percent of all American children, little improved over time, has led to aggressive government-funded efforts in school districts to train veteran teachers in the science of reading. The accumulated scientific findings of nearly 60 years of research gained the nation’s attention with the release of a number of significant reviews and compendia of the research beginning in 1990, but most notably the National Reading Panel report in 2000. The findings call for explicit, systematic teaching of phonemic awareness and phonics, guided oral reading to improve fluency, direct and indirect vocabulary building, and exposure to a variety of reading comprehension strategies. All this attention on veteran teachers begs the question: How are future teachers being prepared to teach reading?"
How Young Children Learn to Read in High/Scope Programs: A Series of Position Papers (2002)
High/Scope Educational Research Foundation
“This set of position papers explains how young children learn to read and write in High/Scope’s infant-toddler, preschool, and early elementary programs. Papers for each developmental level (a) describe how children at that level acquire these closely related and complementary literacy skills; (b) list the strategies High/Scope-trained teachers and caregivers use, in partnership with parents, to support reading and writing development in their programs at home; (c) cite scientific research providing that the High/Scope approach works; and (d) answers questions frequently asked by educators, families, and policymakers.”
School Readiness Skills: Percentage of 3- to 5-Year-Old Children Not Yet Enrolled in Kindergarten with Specific Reported School Readiness Skills, By Selected Child and Family Characteristics: 1993 and 1999 (2002)
Education Commission of the States Quick Facts
Direct Instruction and the Teaching of Early Reading (2001)
Wisconsin Policy Research Institute Report
“First, there is an approach to teaching early reading—an approach called Direct Instruction—that is known to work very well. It is a highly organized, teacher-direct approach informed by a careful analysis of the skills that must be acquired by anybody learning to read. Given the successful track record of this approach, and given the undisputed importance of getting children off to a good start in reading, one might suppose that Wisconsin’s educators would be seen hard at work implementing Direct Instruction and helping new teachers learn to use it. But that is not the case. Many leading educators ignore Direct Instruction altogether, and others smear it by misrepresentation and ridicule when they mention it at all.”
A Framework for Early Literacy Instruction: Aligning Standards to Developmental Accomplishments and Student Behaviors (2000)
Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL)
“In recent years, many major studies (e.g., National Reading Panel, 2000; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998) have found that the seeds of literacy are planted before children begin formal instruction in reading and writing. There is now empirical evidence that differences in pre-literacy experiences are associated with varied levels of reading achievement. For example, research shows that many children who begin school with fewer experiences in and less knowledge about literacy are unable to acquire the prerequisites quickly enough to keep up with formal reading instruction in first grade. In addition, recent studies of kindergarteners have found that only 37 percent of children entering kindergarten have a basic familiarity with print.”
Young Adolesence Literacy (Typically K-5)
Reading First Implementation Evaluation: Interim Report (2006)
U.S. Department of Education
"The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (PL 107-110) established the Reading First Program
(Title I, Part B, Subpart 1), a major federal initiative designed to help ensure that all children can read at or above grade level by the end of third grade. Reading First (RF) is predicated on scientifically researched findings that high-quality reading instruction in the primary grades significantly reduces the number of students who experience reading difficulties in later years."
Achieving State and National Reading Goals, a Long Uphill Road (2004)
The RAND Corporation
“ To succeed in post-secondary education or employment, students must emerge from high school possessing literacy skills and critical-thinking skills so that they can extract and construct meaning from a variety of texts. Recent reform efforts have yielded positive results in improving reading achievement for the nation’s children in the primary grades. However, many children are not moving beyond basic decoding skills—deciphering and/or sounding out—to fluency and comprehension, even as they advance to the fourth grade and classes in history, mathematics, and science.”
The Condition of Education 2004—In Brief
National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education
“Since 1870, the federal government has gathered data about students, teachers, schools, and education funding. As mandated by Congress, the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) annually publishes a statistical report on the status and progress of education in the United States. The Condition of Education includes data and analysis on a wide variety of issues. The indicators in the 2004 edition are in six sections: participation in education, learner outcomes, student effort and educational progress, contexts of elementary and secondary education, contexts of postsecondary education, and societal support for learning.”
The Fourth-Grade Reading Classroom (2004)
Educational Testing Service
“Effective reading and literacy instruction are keys to educational success and form a critical component in efforts to close the gaps in student achievement between social classes and between racial/ethnic groups. The National Research Council has concluded that ‘quality classroom instruction in kindergarten and the primary grades is the single best weapon against reading failure.’ This report draws on data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to provide a picture of the fourth-grade reading classroom. The picture includes views of teachers and their training, the climate and characteristics of the school environment, and the kinds of instructional and assessment practices that teachers use in reading instruction. In addition to describing the national picture, the report focuses on differences among different types of schools and among racial/ethnic groups of students.”
Who Teaches Reading in Public Elementary Schools? The Assignments and Educational Preparation of Reading Teachers (2004)
National Center for Education Statistics
“A central task of elementary-level schooling in the United States is teaching children to read. This task is assigned to general elementary teachers who teach reading as one of many subjects taught during the day, as well as to teachers assigned specifically to teach reading.”
From Kindergarten Through Third Grade: Children’s Beginning School Experiences (2004)
National Center for Education Statistics
“Children begin kindergarten with many different levels of reading and mathematics skills and make significant gains in their reading and mathematics achievement over the first two years of school. The knowledge and skills children acquire in kindergarten and first grade can serve as a foundation for their later educational success. It is important to explore children’s growth and development as they move from the beginning of kindergarten through the elementary school years.”
Reading Recovery and Descubriendo la Lectura National Report 2002-2003 (2004)
National Data Evaluation Center
“Reading Recovery is a short-term intervention for children who have the lowest achievement in literacy learning in the first grade. Children meet individually with a specially trained teacher for 30 minutes each day for an average of 12 to 20 weeks. The goal is for children to develop effective reading and writing strategies in order to work within an average range of classroom performance. Reading Recovery is also available to children whose initial reading instruction is in Spanish."
Reading Highlights: The Nation’s Report Card (2003)
National Center for Education Statistics
“Average fourth and eight grade reading scores show little change. No significant change was detected between 2002 and 2003 in the average score for fourth-graders. The average fourth-grade score in 2003 was not found to differ significantly from that in 1992. The average reading score for eight-graders decreased by 1 point between 2002 and 2003; however, the score in 2003 was higher than that in 1992.”
Reading First: Lessons from successful state reading initiatives (2003)
Southern Regional Education Board
“The Reading First initiative is a central part of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Reading First is an ambitious effort to bring early reading instruction across the country up-to-date with new knowledge gained in recent years from high-quality, scientifically based research on the way children learn to read. With $900 million for grants to states in the 2002-2003 fiscal year and $1 billion in 2003-2004, Reading First could make a significant contribution to reaching all of the SREB education goals related to student achievement.”
Implementation of America’s Choice Literacy Workshops (2002)
The Consortium for Policy Research in Education
“The America’s Choice School Design is a K-12 comprehensive school reform model designed by the National Center on Education and the Economy. America’s Choice focuses on raising academic achievement by providing a rigorous standards-based curriculum and safety net for all students. The goal of America’s Choice is to make sure that all but the most severely handicapped students reach an internationally benchmarked standard of achievement in English language arts and mathematics by the time they graduate. An initial focus on literacy that features elements of phonics, oral language, shared books, guided and independent reading, daily writing, and independent writing is an essential principle of America’s Choice.”
Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read (2001)
Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA) funded by the National Institute for Literacy (NIFL)
“In today's schools, too many children struggle with learning to read. As many teachers and parents will attest, reading failure has exacted a tremendous long-term consequence for children's developing self-confidence and motivation to learn, as well as for their later school performance. While there are no easy answers or quick solutions for optimizing reading achievement, an extensive knowledge base now exists to show us the skills children must learn in order to read well. These skills provide the basis for sound curriculum decisions and instructional approaches that can help prevent the predictable consequences of early reading failure.”
Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction (2000)
National Reading Panel
“The findings and determinations of the NRP reflect a focused and persistent effort on the part of the panel to contribute reliable, valid, and trustworthy information to the body of knowledge that is leading to a better scientific understanding of reading development and reading instruction. In carrying out its congressional charge, the panel was able to first develop, and then to apply a methodologically rigorous research review process and protocol and to do so within an open and public forum.”
Middle & High School Literacy (Typically 6th-12th grade)
Reading to Achieve: A Governor's Guide to Adolescent Literacy (2005)
National Governors Association
"To compete in the global information economy, young people today need literacy skills far more advanced than have been required of any previous generation. Strong reading, writing and thinking sills are essential not only for success in school and the workplace, but also for participation in civic life. Yet many youth lack the requisite literacy skills. Only three out of 10 U.S. eighth-graders are proficient readers."
Reading at Risk: The State Response to the Crisis in Adolescent Literacy (2005)
National Accociation of State Boards of Education
"President Bush has called reading the 'new civil right.' Certainly, such a statement emphasizing the essential nature of reading is warranted. If anything, however, the sentiment understates the indispensableness of reading skills. Reading is a basic human right. An inability to read in today's world in to be consigned to education, social and economic failure-an existence entirely devoid of meaningful life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness."
Achieving State and National Reading Goals, a Long Uphill Road (2004)
The RAND Corporation“To succeed in post-secondary education or employment, students must emerge from high school possessing literacy skills and critical-thinking skills so that they can extract and construct meaning from a variety of texts. Recent reform efforts have yielded positive results in improving reading achievement for the nation’s children in the primary grades. However, many children are not moving beyond basic decoding skills—deciphering and/or sounding out—to fluency and comprehension, even as they advance to the fourth grade and classes in history, mathematics, and science.”
Reading Next: A Vision for Action and Research in Middle and High School Literacy (2004)
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Alliance for Excellent Education
 “American youth need strong literacy skills to succeed in schools and in life. Students who do not acquire these skills find themselves at a serious disadvantage in social settings, as civil participants, and in the working world. Yet approximately eight million young people between fourth and twelfth grade struggle to read at grade level. Some 70 percent of older readers require some form of remediation. Very few of these older struggling readers need help to read the words on a page; their most common problem is that they are not able to comprehend what they read. Obviously, the challenge is not a small one.”
The Condition of Education 2004—In Brief
National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education
“Since 1870, the federal government has gathered data about students, teachers, schools, and education funding. As mandated by Congress, the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) annually publishes a statistical report on the status and progress of education in the United States. The Condition of Education includes data and analysis on a wide variety of issues. The indicators in the 2004 edition are in six sections: participation in education, learner outcomes, student effort and educational progress, contexts of elementary and secondary education, contexts of postsecondary education, and societal support for learning.”
Reading Highlights: The Nation’s Report Card (2003)
National Center for Education Statistics
“Average fourth and eight grade reading scores show little change. No significant change was detected between 2002 and 2003 in the average score for fourth-graders. The average fourth-grade score in 2003 was not found to differ significantly from that in 1992. The average reading score for eight-graders decreased by 1 point between 2002 and 2003; however, the score in 2003 was higher than that in 1992.”
Implementation of America’s Choice Literacy Workshops (2002)
The Consortium for Policy Research in Education
“The America’s Choice School Design is a K-12 comprehensive school reform model designed by the National Center on Education and the Economy. America’s Choice focuses on raising academic achievement by providing a rigorous standards-based curriculum and safety net for all students. The goal of America’s Choice is to make sure that all but the most severely handicapped students reach an internationally benchmarked standard of achievement in English language arts and mathematics by the time they graduate. An initial focus on literacy that features elements of phonics, oral language, shared books, guided and independent reading, daily writing, and independent writing is an essential principle of America’s Choice.”
College Preparation/Remedial Literacy
What Education School Aren't Teaching about Reading and What Elementary Teachers Aren't Learning (May 2006)
National Council on Teacher Quality
"The persistent reading struggles and failure of nearly 40 percent of all American children, little improved over time, has led to aggressive government-funded efforts in school districts to train veteran teachers in the science of reading. The accumulated scientific findings of nearly 60 years of research gained the nation’s attention with the release of a number of significant reviews and compendia of the research beginning in 1990, but most notably the National Reading Panel report in 2000. The findings call for explicit, systematic teaching of phonemic awareness and phonics, guided oral reading to improve fluency, direct and indirect vocabulary building, and exposure to a variety of reading comprehension strategies. All this attention on veteran teachers begs the question: How are future teachers being prepared to teach reading?"
California Early Assessment Program (EAP) Results (2004)
“The Early Assessment Program (EAP) is a collaborative effort among the State Board of Education (SBE), the California Department of Education (CDE) and the California State University (CSU). The program was established to provide opportunities for students to measure their readiness for college-level English and mathematics in their junior year of high school, and to facilitate opportunities for them to improve their skills during their senior year.”
Bilingual/Limited English Proficiency Literacy
Language Minorities and Their Educational and Labor Market Indicators-Recent Trends (2004)
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
“The number and percentage of language minority youth and young adults—that is, individuals who speak a language other then English at home—increased steadily in the United States between 1979 and 1999. Of those individuals ages 5-24 in 1979, six million spoke a language other then English at home. By 1999, that number had more than doubled, to 14 million. Accordingly, of all 5- to 24-year-olds in the United States, the percentage who were language minorities increased from 9 percent in 1979 to 17 percent in 1999.”
A Look at the Progress of English Learner Students (2004)
California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office
“In the fall of 2002, almost 1.3 million English learner (EL) students took the California English Language Development Test (CELDT)—including about 1 million taking the test for the second time. This report describes the progress EL students made in mastering English—an essential step toward long-term success for these students. The CELDT measures a student's English proficiency in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. All K-12 students identified as ELs take the test each fall. The CELDT uses a five-level scale to report scores, with a level 1 indicating a beginning level of fluency and a level 5 indicating advanced English skills. A score of 4 or 5 signals a student may be ready to be reclassified as "fluent."
English Language Learners: Boosting Academic Achievement (2004)
American Educational Research Association
“Beyond the debate over bilingual versus English-only education, the fundamental questions remains: What are the best ways to teach English literacy to English language learners, and what rate of achievement in English is realistic to expect?”
English Language Learner Students in U.S. Public Schools: 1994 to 2000 (2004)
National Center for Education Statistics, Issue Brief
“In the United States, many languages other than English have always been spoken, and in recent years this is increasingly the case. In 1990, 32 million people over the age of 5 in the United States spoke a language other than English in their home, comprising 14 percent of the total U.S. population. By 2000, that number had risen by 47 percent to nearly 47 million, comprising nearly 18 percent of the total U.S. population.”
Immigrant Students, Urban High Schools: The Challenge Continues (2003)
Carnegie Corporation of New York
“We want our immigrants to be American [but] the method of shifting the burden to the foreign born has failed. We can no longer rest content with opening schools and then counting the number who avail themselves of our generosity. The quantitative standard, the interest in, “How many are you teaching?” must give place to the qualitative standard, to the interest in, “What and how are you teaching?”
Reading and Adult English Language Learners: The Role of the First Language (2003)
National Center for ESL Literacy Education
“The ability to read is a critical skill for adults in the United States. Educators Grabe and Stoller (2002) assert, ‘As we enter a new century, productive and educated citizens will require even stronger literacy abilities (including both reading and writing) in increasingly larger numbers of societal settings’ (p. 1). However, most research on reading development has focused on English-speaking children in preschool through grade 12. (See, for example, the results of the National Reading Panel, 2000; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998.) Little research on reading involves adults learning English as a second (or additional) language.”
Overview of Public Elementary and Secondary Schools and Districts: School Year 2001-2002 (2003)
National Center for Education Statistics
“This report summarizes information about public elementary and secondary schools and local education agencies in the United States during the 2001-2002 school year. The information is provided by state education agencies through the Common Core of Data (CCD) survey system.”
Limited English Proficient Students and High-Stakes Accountability Systems (2002)
Report of the Citizens Commission on Civil Rights
“In 1994, Congress required all states to implement comprehensive accountability systems for schools receiving federal funds under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). This new federal requirement responded to civil rights advocates’ concerns that schools serving large numbers of poor, minority, and limited English proficient (LEP) students set lower standards for their education and thus ratified lower expectations for their performance.”
The Effects of Accommodations on the Assessment of LEP Students on NAEP (2001)
National Center for Education Statistics, Working Paper Series
“Recent federal and state legislation, including Goals 2000 and the Improving America’s Schools Act (IASA), call for inclusion of all students in large-scale assessments such as the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP). This includes students with limited English proficiency (LEP). However, we have clear evidence from recent research that students’ language background factors impact their performance on content area assessments. For students with limited English proficiency, the language of the test item can be a barrier, preventing them from demonstrating their knowledge of the content area.”
Literacy for Limited English Proficiency (LEP) Students (2001)
Florida Literacy and Reading Excellence Center
“Culture refers to the shared beliefs, values, and rule-governed behavioral patterns that define a group and are required for group membership. Culture involves what people know and believe, what people do, and even what people make and use. One vital aspect of culture that can affect learning and teaching has to do with language. Problems arise from lack of a common language. Teaching and learning depend on clear communication between teacher and student.”
Students with Disabilities & Literacy
Improving Educational Outcomes for Students with Disabilities (2004)
National Council on Disability
“The educational landscape for students with disabilities is undergoing vast changes. Thanks to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and its push for increased access to education for students with disabilities, and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), with its push for improved student outcomes, educators across the U.S. are reexamining their practices to find ways to close the achievement gaps between groups of students. Students with disabilities are a focus of this attention, as schools and states labor to improve their academic outcomes. Policymakers are studying both the reauthorization of IDEA and the ongoing implementation of NCLB to determine the most effective means for serving students with disabilities.”
Including Special-Needs Students in the NAEP 1998 Reading Assessment: Part I (2003)
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
“Evolving policies and practices regarding the inclusion of special-needs students pose challenges to the state NAEP program as its strives to monitor accurately trends in academic achievement. As policies and practices have changed, the state NAEP program has seen corresponding changes in the proportion of special-needs students included in its samples. This report provides data on statistically significant differences in exclusion rates when accommodations were not permitted and when accommodations were permitted, and the relationship between those exclusion rates and state average scale scores.”
Accessing Students with Disabilities: Issues and Evidence (2003)
Center for the Study of Evaluation, Technical Report 587
“Until recently, many students with disabilities were excluded from large-scale assessments, such as those mandated by states. Recent federal and state policy initiatives, including the most recent reauthorization of IDEA, require that the large majority of students with disabilities be included in the statewide assessments used in accountability systems. Most observers agree that educational outcomes for students with disabilities were inadequate before the new policies were implemented; however, the research undergirding the new policies is limited. The reforms have spurred a rapid increase in relevant research, but more and improved research is needed.”
Appropriate Inclusion of Students with Disabilities in State Accountability Systems (2002)
Education Commission of the States (ECS)
“The Improving America’s Schools Act (IASA), the 1994 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Amendments of 1997 (IDEA-97) all required states and school districts to include all students with disabilities in statewide or district wide assessment programs. These requirements were reinforced in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), the most recent reauthorization of ESEA. These laws require that all students with disabilities participate in general assessments at the state and local level so as to maximize their access to the same general academic content standards that serve as the basis for the general assessments. Participation can be through the general assessment with or without accommodations, or through an alternate assessment. These laws set two competing priorities for states: assess students with disabilities on grade-level standards and ensure all students with disabilities participate in state assessment programs.”
Students With Disabilities: Their Literacy and Numeracy Learning (2001)
Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training
“Recent views about learning as actively constructed by students and about literacy and numeracy as social practices have meant that the way we provide for students with disabilities has changed. Today there is a greater emphasis on supporting and facilitating learning through creating an environment that responds to the students as they make sense of their world. In these learning situations teachers and peers are seen as important agents in providing interactions which scaffold the students' learning. In our study we observed numerous ways in which teachers, support staff and peers provided support, facilitation and guidance. Often these were undertaken in a direct or explicit manner.”
After-School/Summer School Literacy
Afterschool Alliance Backgrounder: Formal Evaluations of the Academic Impact of Afterschool Programs (2004)
Afterschool Alliance
“Although afterschool programs for children have been operating for many years in some communities, the afterschool movement—the great national awakening to the opportunity afterschool offers—is just a few years old. As public demand for afterschool has grown, so has the demand for accountability. This is particularly true in afterschool programs that spend public dollars. After all, where tax dollars flow so must accountability to taxpayers.”
Opening Doors for Boston’s Children: Lessons Learned in Expanding School-Based After-School Programs (2004)
Boston’s After-School for All Partnerships
“Over the past decade, Boston has become a national leader in the field of after-school programming by forging a broad network of partnerships between the city, the public schools, private funders and community-based organizations.”
Strategies for Success: Strengthening Learning in Out-of-School Time (2003)
Boston’s After-School for All Partnerships
“Achieving success in the Information Age demands higher levels of knowledge and skill than ever before. Skills in literacy and numeracy, written and oral communication, problem solving and critical thinking, knowledge of and comfort with technology, and the ability to work with diverse groups of people are essential in today’s world. Over the past decade, policymakers and educators across the nation have focused on setting high standards for learning and helping all students to reach them. Yet all of these reform policies and new resources do not change the basic fact that children spend only 20 percent of their waking hours in school. In order to impact children’s learning more broadly, society must look to support learning beyond the school day.”
Enhancing Literacy Support in After-School Programs (2002)
Boston Plan for Excellence (BPE)
“As factories move overseas and jobs requiring minimal reading skills become fewer and farther between, our educational institutions must make important changes to how they prepare students for these new economic realities. One thing is clear: students, particularly those in low-income, urban communities, need more time, especially for reading, so that they can compete for jobs that demand higher-level skills. Echoing Lucky Calkins, researcher Stephen Krashen writes, “Reading is the only way, the only way, that we become good readers, develop a good reading style, and adequate vocabulary, and advanced grammar skills, and the only way we become good spellers.” (1993)
Literacy & Reading in After-School Programs (2001)
Afterschool Alliance Issue Brief No. 6
“Many quality afterschool programs offer literacy and reading activities that provide significant benefits to youth. Research indicates that such activities can improve students’ achievement in reading and language arts and foster their appreciation for reading as a lifelong hobby. In addition, literacy and reading activities are effective tools for involving family and community members in students’ learning process.”
Professional Development & Literacy
Reading First Coaching: A Guide for Coaches and Reading First Leaders (2004)
Learning Point Associates
“Educators today are continuously searching for tools for excellence. Systemwide aspects of school improvement include: accountability through testing; data inspection by faculties to look for weaknesses in student understanding; and increased professional development opportunities. These efforts help to inform faculty teams of student progress at an aggregate level. Yet we know that the difference in student learning is made in individual classrooms and that teachers are a key change agent in this process.”
Reading for Understanding: Toward an R&D Program in Reading Comprehension (2002)
RAND Reading Study Group
“One of the most vexing problems facing middle and secondary school teachers today is that many students come into their classrooms without the requisite knowledge, skills, or disposition to read and comprehend the materials placed before them. In an effort to inform the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) on ways to improve the quality and relevance of education research and development, RAND convened 14 experts with a wide range of disciplinary and methodological perspectives in the field of reading. The RAND Reading Study Group (RRSG) was charged with proposing strategic guidelines for a long-term research and development program supporting the improvement of reading comprehension. This report is the product of that group’s efforts and of the valuable commentary provided by various members of the reading research and practice communities.”
Every Child Reading: A Professional Development Guide (2000)
Learning First Alliance
“Agreement by experts in recent, comprehensive reviews of reading research is substantial: A successful teacher of beginning reading enables children to comprehend and produce written language, exposes them to a wide variety of texts to build their background knowledge and whet their appetite for more, generates enthusiasm and appreciation for reading and writing, and expertly teaches children how to decode, interpret, and spell new words from a foundation of linguistic awareness. The successful teacher adapts the pacing, content, and emphasis of instruction for individuals and groups, using valid and reliable assessments. The teacher’s choices are guided by knowledge of the critical skills and attitudes needed by students at each stage of reading development. Beginning reading skills are taught explicitly and systematically to children within an overall program of purposeful, engaging reading and writing.”
Adult Literacy
Rising to the Literacy Challenge: Building Adult Education Systems in New England (2002)
Nellie Mae Education Foundation
"Rising to the Literacy Challenge reveals that 41% of all adults in New England lack the skills needed to succeed in today’s knowledge-based society. The report also reveals the adult basic education system throughout New England has remained practically unchanged for over a century. Blenda J. Wilson, President and CEO of the Nellie Mae Education Foundation commented, 'This report documents the need to continue updating the adult basic education system and link it to postsecondary education and occupational skills training. The economic advancement of our region and our citizens depends on it.'"
Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America (2004)
National Endowment for the Arts
“Reading at Risk presents the results from the literature segment of a large-scale survey, the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, conducted by the Census Bureau in 2002 at the request of the National Endowment for the Arts. This survey investigated the percentage and number of adults, age 18 and over, who attended artistic performances, visited museums, watched broadcasts of arts programs, or read literature.”
Expanding Access to Adult Literacy with Online Distance Education (2003)
National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy
Harvard Graduate School of Education
“In the U.S. economy, education and training are keys to economic survival. Estimates of the number of adults who need educational services to secure a decent-paying job vary considerably, but it is widely claimed that existing classroom programs for adults reach only 3 percent to 5 percent of those in need. Although increasing the capacity of classroom programs might help, this will not meet the needs of many adults who are unable to attend classes because of constraints in their lives, such as their work schedule, transportation, and child care. Distance education is one way to meet their needs. “
Research-Based Principles for Adult Basic Education Reading Instruction (2002)
The Partnership for Reading
 “Findings from the adult reading instruction research show that adults can have difficulties with any of the crucial aspects of reading: alphabetics (phonemic awareness and word analysis), fluency, vocabulary, or comprehension. It is important to assess adult students’ abilities in each of these areas in order to identify what they already know as well as what they need to work on during instruction. Assessment for instructional purposes is one of the first tasks a teacher performs. One emerging principle in the ABE research suggests that assessing each component of reading in order to generate profiles of students’ reading ability gives teachers much more instructionally relevant information than any test of a single component can.”
Rising to the Literacy Challenge: Building Adult Education Systems in New England (2002)
Nellie Mae Education Foundation
 “New England faces a major skills crisis that both limits the ability of adults to meet their families’ basic needs and threatens the region’s long-term economic health. More than 4.2 million adults—41 percent of the adult population—lack the literacy skills to succeed as workers, parents, and citizens in today’s knowledge-based society. Among them are adults who lack a high school diploma, immigrants with low English proficiency, and high school graduates who lack the skills needed for the new economy.”
Family Literacy
Working Hard, Falling Short: America’s Working Families and the Pursuit of Economic Security (2004)
 Working Poor Families Project, Annie E. Casey & Rockefeller Foundations
“The United States of American is often called the ‘Land of Opportunity,’ a place where hard work and sacrifice lead to economic success. Across generations, countless families have been able to live out that promise. However, more than one in four American working families now earn wages so low that they have difficult surviving financially. There are families with responsible, hard-working breadwinners who want to get ahead but hold down low-paying jobs with inadequate benefits and little hope for advancement. Many lack the skills and education they need to move into jobs that pay better, even while the economy demands more highly trained employees. And while our economy relies on the service jobs these low-paid workers fill—such as cashiers, janitors, security guards and home health aids—our society has not taken adequate steps to ensure that these workers can make ends meet and build a future for their families, no matter how determined they are to be self-sufficient.”
America’s Children In Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being (2004)
Forum on Child and Family Statistics
“Education shapes the personal growth and life chances of children, as well as the economic and social progress of our nation. Early educational experiences, such as reading to children, improved skills and academic success in school, while later academic accomplishments, such as advanced coursetaking and high school completion, promote achievement in higher education and employment prospects. The most recently available data (2001) indicate that 58 percent of 3- to 5- year-olds were read to daily by a family member. This percentage has fluctuated since 1993, ranging from 53 percent to 58 percent. Females (61 percent) were more likely to have been read to than males (55 percent).”
Family Literacy: A Strategy for Educational Improvement (2002)
National Governors Association (NGA) Issue Brief
“Over the past three decades, the nation has actively pursued reforms to improve the academic achievement of America’s children. The majority of these efforts have focused on instruction and intervention practices, but have seldom addressed the overwhelming relationship between parental education levels, parental involvement, and children’s school success. Family literacy directly affects the role and effectiveness of parents in helping their children learn. If parents understand the language and literacy lessons their children learn in school, they can more easily provide the experiences necessary for their children to succeed. Bringing parents and children together to learn in an educational setting is the core of family literacy and the way to provide parents with firsthand experiences about what their children learn and how they are taught.”
A Decade of Family Literacy: Programs, Outcomes, and the Future (2002)
Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education (ACVE)
 “For at least the past two decades, educators, educational researchers, and other professionals who interact with families have become increasingly convinced that family literacy programs offer effective vehicles for educating both parents and other caregivers and their children. Literacy growth is now seen as cyclical, interactive, and intergenerational, a function of literacy interactions in the school, home, and community.”
Visitor counts for this page.
 Education Home Page
|
