At fourth grade, two-thirds of American children are “not proficient in reading.” By eighth grade, there is no improvement and even a slight decline, and the reading problems continue through high school and into adulthood unless parents have funded costly private interventions. But the long-term effects of the so-called “reading wars” are now affecting perhaps two-thirds of our schoolchildren, whose abilities to fully use language for thinking, planning, and achieving their goals have been restricted by faulty and inadequate reading skills acquired in their earliest school years.įortunately, we at least have national testing that has revealed the problem.
The two sides, labeled “the science of reading” and “balanced literacy,” have been vying for power for nearly thirty years, largely out of view of the general American public because the primary targets of this struggle have been small children in kindergarten, first, and second grade.
And at risk is nothing less than America’s future in terms of how we teach our youngest public school students how to read. It is the key to comprehending the world, to being an informed citizen, and to having a successful life.Īt this moment, a knock-down, drag-out battle is gaining momentum among American elementary education experts and teachers. The skill of reading as with drawing is fundamental to a child and ultimately to an adult. The subject of how to effectively teach reading to young children is one that has long fascinated me, as I can see parallels between the way that we should teach drawing and the way we should teach reading.
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