Training Wheels for Literacy - A New Way of Thinking About Learning to Read

More on: Our Reading Problem

On the Importance of Reading:

No other skill taught in school and learned by school children is more important than reading. It is the gateway to all other knowledge.

Teaching students to read by the end of third grade is the single most important task assigned to elementary schools

nearly 70 percent of teachers believe that reading is the "most important" skill for children to learn.
American Federation of Teachers

Reading Problems:

Reading is not developmental or natural, it is learned.

The difference between a child who has a learning disability in reading and a child who is simply a poor reader is only a difference in the severity of the problem.

About 40% of the population have reading problems severe enough to hinder their enjoyment of reading

These problems are generally not developmental and do not diminish over time, but persist into adulthood without appropriate intervention.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

The Personal Consequences of Reading Problems:

…reading-impaired children are kept from exploring science, history, literature, mathematics and the wealth of information that is presented in print
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

They fall further and further behind in school, become frustrated, and drop out at much higher rates than their classmates.
American Federation of Teachers

And when they leave school, they enter the working world lacking the skills they need to find a job, develop financial independence, and take their places as citizens, parents and workers
American Federation of Teachers

The Importance of Early Reading Success:

Children who fall behind at an early age (K and Grade 1) fall further and further behind over time.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

…very early in the reading process poor readers, who experience greater difficulty in breaking the spelling-to-sound code, begin to be exposed to much less text than their more skilled peers.

…cognitive differences observed between readers of differing skill may in fact be consequences of differential practice that itself resulted from early differences in the speed of initial reading acquisition.

…Thus, this study showed us that an early start in reading is important in predicting a lifetime of literacy experience….
What Reading Does For The Mind

Those who learn to read with ease in the early grades have a foundation on which to build new knowledge. Those who do not are doomed to repeated cycles of frustration and failure.
American Federation of Teachers