Today Foundation - Education Reform Series – April 2009
The Agony of Reading Failure
Executive Summary
Reading is the gateway skill all students must master if they are to succeed in school. Reading difficulties translate into poor grades, grade repetition and dropout rates.
Reading failure and its devastating consequences are not equal-opportunity experiences. Minority and poor students suffer the most.
Well-intentioned efforts to close this gap have been tried. However, they've not effectively reduced the literacy gap nationally … or in Texas. In fact, the literacy gap between Texas students living in high-income families compared to those living in low-income families has not appreciably changed in over 40 years.2
Reading failure in Texas is not just an educational issue – it is also a social, health and economic problem. It affects the state's dropout rate, crime rate, health care costs and tax revenues.
Fortunately, two factors can dramatically reduce reading failure in kids.
Research shows intervention in pre-school and kindergarten can reduce reading failure to less than 10% of the school age population.4
Meanwhile technology tools now exist that help teachers provide the high-quality, consistent instruction needed over the extended period of time it takes for students to master reading. This technology provides explicit teaching examples that energize teachers and helps teachers identify children in preschool and kindergarten who are at-risk for reading failure.
The technology tools help teachers offer instruction that is exciting, vibrant, engaging and motivating to children. These tools also provide teachers, principals, district leaders and parents with continuous and frequent data reports on each child's reading progress.
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