An essay by Children's Literacy Initiative
Because teacher expertise is the most important factor in student achievement, quality professional development is critical. In What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future, the National Commission on Teaching & America's Future cites the study comparing high-achieving and low-achieving elementary schools with similar student characteristics, which found that differences in teacher qualifications accounted for 90% of the variation in student achievement in reading and mathematics.
Helping teachers use effective practices, supporting their professional development, providing them with great books, and showing teachers and administrators how to use assessments and benchmarks to inform instruction are all activities that have enormous impact.
Helping children achieve reading success in the early grades is critical, as those who are not independent readers by the end of third grade rarely catch up later. Research by Dr. Connie Juel, a reading expert at the University of Virginia, found that only 10% of students who read poorly at the end of first grade ever read proficiently in later grades (Connie Juel, 1994). Although this statistic probably reflects more what resources we bring to bear on helping children learn to read past first grade than upon the individual child, it is still an alarm bell for educators.
Without intervention, illiteracy may even begin earlier in life. Vocabulary, the building block of literacy, is essential to success in learning to read and write. However, by age four, the average child of a welfare family might have heard 13 million fewer words of cumulative experience than the average child in a working class family (Betty Hart, 1995). According to the National Research Council's Committee on Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, "language development during the preschool years, in particular the development of a rich vocabulary...constitutes an...important domain of preparation for formal reading instruction (Catherine Snow)."
The Council further states that failure to develop an adequate vocabulary, understanding of print concepts, or phonological awareness during the preschool years constitutes risk for reading difficulties (Catherine Snow).
Not only do children from low-income families have smaller vocabularies than children from professional families, they also add words more slowly to their repertoire. Consequently, there is an ever-widening gap between disadvantaged children and those who are more prosperous, and that gap is unlikely to narrow with increasing years of experience (Catherine Snow).
Literacy is strongly linked to success in school and, consequently, success in life. Americans are faced with disheartening statistics: 85 percent of the juveniles who appear in court and 75 percent of unemployed adults are illiterate (Marilyn Jager Adams, 1990). National statistics show that students who have been retained are 14.1 percent more likely to drop out than other students (U.S. Department of Congress, 1995). The economic consequences of leaving high school without a diploma are severe. Dropouts are more likely to be unemployed than high school graduates (9 percent unemployment rate vs. the 1995 national average of 4.3 percent), and they earn less money when they eventually secure work (U.S. Department of Education, 1996).
Moreover, the same data shows that young women who drop out of high school are more likely to become pregnant at younger ages, and more likely to be single parents (M. McMillen and P. Kaufman). As a result, high school dropouts are more likely to receive public assistance than graduates who did not go on to college (U.S. Department of Education, 1996). The new, time-restricted welfare regulations are
creating a new urgency for literacy training of high school dropouts. But to break the cycle of poverty, our youngest students must also be placed on a sure path to literacy.
By helping teachers and parents focus on literacy during critical years of child development, Children's Literacy Initiative can help students prepare to read earlier and better, thus reducing the need for remediation. With these skills, students will have a better chance of gaining employment and improving the quality of life in their neighborhoods.
Juel, Connie. Learning to Read and Write in One Elementary School.
New York: Springer-Verlag, 1994.
Hart, Betty and Todd R. Risley. Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience
of Young American Children. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes, 1995. p. 164.
Snow, Catherine, et.al. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. p. 170
Ibid. p. 320.
Ibid. p. 198.
Adams, Marilyn Jager. Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print.
Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1990.
U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Current Population Survey,
October 1995, unpublished data.
U.S. Department of Education. Condition of Education 1996 (Indicators 32 and 43).
McMillen, M. and P. Kaufman. Dropout Rates in the United States: 1994. U.S.
Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, NCES 96-863.
U.S. Department of Education. Condition of Education 1996 (Indicator 36).