Reading for Life

Recently, I traveled to Seattle, Washington, to meet with representatives from the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s eight Making Connections sites.  For several days, we shared insights and strategies focused on helping children in the early grades learn how to read.

Why is this so important?  (1) Half of the children in this country do not read on grade level, even though we know that 95% of them can, given proper instruction and support. (2)  73% of children who enter fourth grade with first- or second-grade reading skills never catch up. (3) Children who read on grade level by third grade are more likely to graduate from high school – high school graduates, in turn, are more likely to pursue further education and be employed, with higher incomes and better health, than their peers who drop out.

Given these facts, there should be no question in anyone’s mind that to thrive in school and in life, our children need to read early and they need to read well.  But that doesn’t mean that we should stop investing in reading and writing programs after third grade; adolescent literacy is also a growing national concern.  Time to Act, a recent report by the Carnegie Corporation, notes that without sustained emphasis on literacy and ongoing supports, early reading gains can rapidly deteriorate as students move into higher grades.

We must continue to provide the support and instruction necessary to promote grade level reading in the early grades through initiatives like Making Connections. But we cannot stop there; we must also help adolescents learn to read through collective endeavors such as Foundations’ new Philadelphia Center for Arts and Technology (PCAT), which not only prepares youth and young adults for jobs in high-growth industries, but also offers quality instruction for participants lacking basic literacy and numeracy skills.  And we need to support President Obama as he seeks to expand the small federally funded program Striving Readers, created in 2004 to help schools develop literacy supports for adolescents reading below grade level.

When it comes to reading – a skill so vital for lifetime success – we must not choose between investing in adolescents or young children, teenagers or first graders.  By pooling our resources and energy, we must work together to help them all.