The light bulb went on for me about 10 years ago, when I was tutoring a middle school student in Northern Virginia.
It wasn’t a great experience. The program wasn’t well run. I had little contact with the classroom teachers. The student was uncommunicative (even by middle school standards) and at times seemed downright hostile. For all I knew, he hated school.
Oh, and did I mention? He couldn’t read.
It’s true, he could mouth the words of his American history text, and he could sort of “read” the sentences. But there was barely a spark of comprehension. It was then that I realized that there is an alarming adolescent reading crisis in this country.
If that sounds overwrought, consider this boy’s future: My tutoring did absolutely no good; what he needed -- if he was to ever learn to read well enough to “read to learn” -- was intensive remediation, and even that might not be enough..
One state that is facing up to this crisis is Alabama, which launched a state reading initiative in the late 1990s. While focused originally on early elementary school, the program is now expanding into middle schools, said Sherrill W. Parris, the assistant state superintendent for reading, who spoke at a Washington D.C. forum last week.
Fourteen schools throughout the state -- “the Fabulous Fourteen” -- were chosen to pilot the adolescent program. To be accepted, the school’s principal had to promise to attend training sessions, and at least 85 percent of the faculty had to commit to ongoing, “job-embedded” professional development. Each school has a literacy coach and a leadership team that meets frequently to assess the program’s success.
Alabama has made remarkable gains in elementary reading, but no measurable progress at eighth grade -- so far. Parris hopes the fledgling adolescent reading program will change that; and it looks, to me at least, like her state is on the right track.
Click here to read more about Alabama’s reading program. And here is the Reading Next report upon which much of that program is derived from.
Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor