Reading failure can be as destructive as serious disease
Editor's note: For a full copy of this report, contact Beth Thomas in the University of Delaware Office of Public Relations at (302) 831-8749 or via e-mail at [email protected]
"If we believe that reading failure has the same destructive outcomes for individuals as serious diseases, then we must be willing to apply the same intensity and concentration of resources on overcoming it as we do other afflictions," a recently released national report states.
The report summarizes what consensus exists among researchers on reading instruction and reading research in the preschool-to-12th grade range, and notes where opinions diverge and where further study is needed.
Richard L. Venezky, Unidel Professor of Educational Studies at the University of Delaware, currently working with the U.S. Department of Education, served as primary author of the paper, "Reading Instruction and Reading Research: What Do We Know and What Should We Do Next?"
It has been released by a team of senior researchers who first met in February 1997, under the sponsorship of the Pew Charitable Trusts.
The report notes that by international standards, American youth, as a group, read well. But, it notes, U.S. schools are not doing an adequate job of teaching reading to high-risk, inner-city students, to students who speak English as a second language and to those students among the rural poor.
The report recommends additional research to identify instructional practices characteristic of successful elementary schools. Researchers should discuss issues and methods on an ongoing basis, the report says and these efforts should be coordinated across various government agencies that sponsor such research.
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