National Push for Reading

Four out of 10 American fourth-graders fail to master basic reading skills. This national epidemic drives reading reform in every state and provides some lessons for California, where struggling readers are the norm. In this state, six out of 10 fourth-graders do not read competently, a handicap that left uncorrected can cripple futures, burden taxpayers and even thwart democracy.

In our ongoing series, “Reading: The First Skill,” The Times today explores the national response to the reading crisis, taking a close look at intensive early literacy efforts in Houston and Baltimore, and it again issues a call to action with one goal: children reading at grade level in English by the end of the third grade.

To move toward that goal, U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley calls for a national reading crusade, America Reads, designed to help every child gain strong reading skills as early as possible. This nationwide advisory initiative underscores the scope of America’s literacy problem and the importance of fixing it before it is too late.

Riley recognizes the importance of parents reading daily to their children from infancy through middle school. Dinner table conversations, doing errands together and word games also build a child’s vocabulary. For children who do not get the help they need from parents, the education secretary prescribes language-rich preschools that bombard them with words before they start kindergarten.

Reforming reading instruction has become a top priority across America. California, as part of a broad, bipartisan and unprecedented commitment to early literacy, has already ended the “reading wars” between competing methods of reading instruction. The state now mandates traditional skills-based phonics instruction, along with exposure to good literature.

But new problems could result from a teacher shortage. Class-size reduction, a reform that California imported from Tennessee, worsens the teaching crisis by nearly doubling the number of teachers needed for the primary grades. School districts are encouraged to limit to 20 the number of pupils in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms. The smaller number allows teachers to provide greater individualized attention, which is particularly useful for struggling readers. The value of those smaller classes can be lost, however, when they are staffed by teachers who do not know how to teach reading.

One in 10 teachers holds an emergency credential in California, and those ranks rose this school year by 9,000 because of the teacher shortage. Nationally, 100,000 unprepared teachers staff public schools. To attract the best teachers, Massachusetts is offering a signing bonus. New York is recruiting math teachers from Austria. To improve teachers who are already in the classroom, many school districts require additional training ranging from several days to the thorough and rigorous instruction in teaching reading that 5,000 teachers and several hundred principals have completed in Houston. The Houston reading initiative requires teachers to spend at least 90 minutes a day giving reading instruction and practice, more than double the time most other teachers dedicate to reading lessons. And Houston teachers, students and parents are backed by businesses, foundations, community groups and political leaders who are united in a citywide effort to raise reading ability.

A good reading teacher is, according to the experts, the single best defense against reading failures, especially among children who do not get a head start at home. Catherine Snow, the Harvard professor who is the principal author of the National Research Council’s report “Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children,” laments that so few reading methods courses are taken by certified teachers and recommends they take at least two. In Maryland, the state Board of Education in July passed new reading course requirements for elementary and secondary instructors. The change is important at both levels. Not only should primary teachers know how to teach phonics, but high school teachers should know how to help the growing number of secondary students who read poorly.

Good reading teachers need good reading materials. California educators should determine the two or three most effective reading series and limit school districts to those choices.

State efforts, including training for teachers, new reading books and grants for schools, are beginning to pay off in Texas, where Gov. George W. Bush announced a statewide reading initiative in 1996 that helps parents, teachers and pupils. The state also requires standardized tests that closely measure student progress and failures, and it holds teachers and principals accountable.

Texas, like California, educates a diverse student population that includes children who speak little or no English, poor children and disabled children. Yet, these students consistently outscore their counterparts in this state. There are lessons to be learned from Texas, Maryland and other states. Let’s learn from them and make a difference for California’s children.