Reading is Fundamental, but Literacy is Key
By Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 10/7/2009
Students are taught to read in their early years of schooling—but that doesn’t mean they’re given the keys to comprehension. And it’s this skill that the Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY) believes is the cornerstone to academic—and lifelong—success, according to a new report.
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Andrés Henríquez, program officer of CCNY’s Advancing Literacy Initiative. |
In CCNY’s report, “Time to Act: An Agenda for Advancing Adolescent Literacy for College and Career Readiness,” researchers note that U.S. students actually lose literacy skills as they go through their schooling—ranking first in the world in the 4th grade, but among the worst across the globe by the 10th grade.
To close this gap, which researchers believe increases in middle school, educators, school administrators and state leaders need to refocus on how they teach literacy to students in these key years, by providing more financial support for literacy instruction, and offering additional literacy and instructional tools to all instructors—not just English teachers.
“We need to look for ways to make literacy imbedded in our schools,” says Henríquez. “Teachers need literacy instruction to help students develop deep knowledge within a core content.”
However, the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) has concerns the report made no mention of librarians or media specialists as literacy experts who schools could turn to as they helped broaden these skills in students.
“…I am disappointed that libraries and librarians are excluded entirely from your plan to ensure our young adults have the literacy skills they need to succeed both in college and the twenty-first century workplace,” says Linda Braun, YALSA’s president in a statement.
But to Henríquez, it made no sense to call upon those leaders in schools who already have expertise in teaching literacy. He says the point of the report is to push other educators to develop these skills whether it’s a chemistry teacher or one teaching geometry.
“It’s not about singling out those who do know the work,” he says. “It’s about singling out the people who don’t know.”
CCNY’s report comes just as the National Governors Association (NGA) and Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) released its first draft of national standards for college and career readiness. And these call for literacy instruction not just in English language arts classes–but also across all disciplines.
CCNY has made literacy a focus of its research for the past eight years, and has two more reports, including one that shows how writing expands reading comprehension and another focusing on the need to imbed literacy education in the curriculum at teaching schools. The group will publish both in the next nine months.
“This is a wisdom librarians have known for a long time,” says Henríquez, of the need to push literacy instruction in K-12 schools. “Not we need to raise this to a national urgency issue.”
