There are some students you just can't forget. One of my students, Marisol, came to me at age 16. By this time she had been tossed out of two schools. She had taken to throwing things at her teachers and was a very angry person when I met her. I conducted a reading assessment and quickly learned that Marisol did not even know the sounds that all of the letters make. I showed her the test results, which of course were no surprise to her, and promised her that she would learn to read. Marisol became very motivated just by learning that she could acquire these skills. Within about six months, she was reading very fluently. After a year she began accelerating her course work so she could catch up on the high school credits she was lacking. By the time she was 18, Marisol was taking courses at the local community college and was on her way to a promising future. This was all because she finally learned the code.

The English language is based on a simple code. It has 26 letters which make 42 sounds. That's it...just 26 letters that make 42 sounds. You can determine which sound is which by applying 5 simple decoding rules to each syllable. You can determine where a word is broken into syllables by applying just 2 simple rules. Yes, there are a few exceptions, but really just a few. I have personally taught this code to countless children, teens and adults. I have never met a student who couldn't learn the code. This includes people on the autism spectrum, people with cognitive differences, and those with severe dyslexia and ADHD. 

Yet, if you hear some people explain our language, you would think it is impossible to learn. It is not uncommon to hear teachers tell students that it is the hardest language on Earth to learn, or that our letters make hundreds of sounds, or that there are more exceptions than rules. The truth is that it is highly predictable and can be taught in a relatively short period of time. We now live in a country where over two thirds of children do not have the reading skills they need by the time they enter fourth grade. It is time we embraced the code and ensured that every child learns it. The future of every "Marisol" out there depends on it.

There are many arguments in the United States about education. School choice, teacher tenure, school funding, testing , Common Core, school hours, school calendars, LIFO rules (last in, first out) are some of the things that educators, politicians, pundits and celebrities discuss. There is rarely middle ground or logic to these discussions. We get caught up in the rhetoric and our own perspectives, based on personal ideals of democracy and the true purpose of education. The result of all of this are schools that are not meeting the needs of most children and educators getting caught in the crossfire. I admit to being someone who has willingly participated in these arguments in a very public way. But I am done. I am done worrying about whether or not an individual teacher gets tenure or what standards each state chooses. I am done thinking about if and how school choice works. I am done demanding funding for underfunded schools and screaming about how funding doesn't equate to results. 

These arguments have become a distraction to the real issue. We are failing America's kids in a very big way. There are a few facts that are not argued very often, because most of us understand they are simply facts. About 80% of the kids who make it to high school will graduate from high school in four years. This is a well researched fact. We don't have to know why or think about the political implications. We can accept this as a fact. Yes, it is better than it has been in the past. We are definitely graduating more kids on time, thanks to the efforts of many individuals and organizations. But, I think that losing one out of every five kids is a disaster in a country like ours with so many resources. If you disagree, please read on. We also know that about 42% of high school graduates will be in college sometime between the ages of 18-24. Again, this is really not disputable. It is well researched and based on actual enrollments at real colleges and universities. Whether you think this is an appropriate percentage can be debated. We can argue that college is not right for every student, but we can't argue about how many people attend college. So, if you do the math you will see that just over a third of our high school students actually complete high school and go on to college. I will leave it up to you to decide if that is a good number. Finally, we know that about 60% of the students who go to college will require at least one remedial course once they get there. It is higher and lower in some places, but overall we know that more than half of our kids who make it to college are not prepared. If you do the math one more time, you will discover that just over 20% will graduate high school and go to college with adequate preparation. So there you have it. Only one in five of the kids who start high school in the United States will be end up fully prepared for college. You may say that is okay. You may believe that college is really only for an elite group of 20% of our kids. If so, you don't need to worry about the American educational system. It is working just fine. But if you believe like I do, that education should provide all kids with a solid foundation so they can do whatever they want with their lives, you will want to help find a way to improve it.

From this point forward I will be focusing on solutions for the real teachers in real classrooms who are engaged daily in the mighty struggle to educate our kids. I don't care to fight any more about school choice or teacher tenure or funding or calendars or anything else. I accept that others will continue to engage in conflict about these things, but I believe at this point they have become a distraction from the real issue. There is widespread agreement that our problem begins in the early elementary years. If children are not reading proficiently by the end of third grade, they are very likely to have big problems later on. That is because our system makes a huge shift at the beginning of fourth grade. Each student is expected to move from learning to read, to reading to learn. Once they are in fourth grade, we expect they will be able to read well enough to learn from the printed word. Even kids who do not have access to a formal education can learn beautifully if they can read and have access to information. There are correlations to reading success in third grade and almost every other indicator. When you look at the statistics on third grade reading, all of the other problems come into focus. More than two thirds of our third graders will NOT get the reading skills they need for success later in life. That means only one out of every three kids will be reading well enough by the end of grade three.

It is surprising that we are not focusing more on this issue. I believe it is because most people who know the truth don't think we can do anything about it. We talk a lot about poverty, which plays a huge role in this problem. There are many people who believe that you can't teach kids to read unless you fix the poverty. I believe that we won't fix poverty until we teach kids to read...ALL kids. So from this point forward I will be focusing on solutions to our great American reading crisis and leave the distractions to others.

Check back here in the coming weeks to learn more...

Sources:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014391.pdf
http://www.highereducation.org/reports/college_readiness/gap.shtmlhttp://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372

There has been much written about differentiation in the classroom. When teachers think about differentiation, they generally think about providing three levels of instruction: on level, below level and above level. We are trained to gear the bulk of instruction to the middle. These are the "typical" kids who fall within the expected level of functioning for their grade. We then adapt the instruction to meet the needs of kids who may be below level, and extend the learning for more advanced students. If we do this well we will have decent results in terms of achievement. However, we will not engage all learners effectively. What is really needed in schools is a personalized approach to learning. The goal of personalization is to not waste the learner's time. We want every student to be fully engaged in learning all the time.

This idea is incredibly important when it comes to reading. Students who grow into lifelong learners with a love of reading need to be allowed the time and space to read as much as possible when they are young. It is very unusual to find a preschool or kindergarten child who doesn't love books. They love it when we read to them, engage them in choral responses to books, and talk about stories. They are just naturally drawn to it. However, if they fail to master the basic decoding skills in first or second grade, reading becomes laborious and tedious. They start hating it and usually don't catch up if they don't master the basic skills by grade 3. Advanced students have the opposite problem. If they are forced to work on basic skills for too long, they become bored and will disengage from all reading activities.

Every classroom in the early years should include explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics (decoding skills). Although many people will tell you that the English language is challenging, it is still quite simple. There are a finite number of letters and sounds. There are very predictable patterns, with a few teachable exceptions. Once a child has mastered these, she should not be forced to continue instruction in decoding. Unfortunately, many classrooms either fail to explicitly teach basic decoding skills, teach them in a non-systematic way, or continue teaching them as part of a "basal" series long after they have been mastered. What is needed is a completely individualized system that will provide explicit instruction over a period of time. This instruction will have an end point. A good example of such a system is Reading Horizons. Once this instruction is completed, the child will be free to engage in a host of other literacy experiences that are critical to future learning and to develop a love of reading.  

Instructional time is truly a precious commodity. We get 180 days of school each year. There are usually about 10-15 days when instruction is interrupted by testing, assemblies, bad weather, or other unusual events. Instructional time for literacy is generally 90 minutes (1.5 hours) per day. That means that we can only count on about 247.5 hours per year. If you were to calculate that according to a standard 40 hour work week, it would only equate to a little over 6 weeks. Think about your work like. How much can be accomplished in 6 weeks? In order to ensure success, we must manage instructional time in such a way that it is never wasted for any child. 

When the federal program called No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was envisioned over a decade ago, one expectation was for all children to learn to read proficiently by the end of third grade. We know from a great deal of research that children need to do this in order to continue learning the necessary skills and content to prepare them for college and career after high school. While NCLB has its champions and critics, what is clear is that our kids are still not reading by the end of third grade. Some of the most challenged districts only get about 20% of their kids to that milestone. According to a recent Annie E. Casey Foundation study, about two thirds of our nation's children are not reading proficiently by the end of third grade. These children are three times more likely to drop out of school. Those with the lowest skills are six times more likely not to make it to high school graduation. The consequences of leaving school early are astounding. Less than half of dropouts are employed, and male dropouts are 47 times more likely to go to jail or prison than their counterparts who graduate from high school. Those who drop out are much more likely to have children without the means to support them, perpetuating the poverty cycle. It seems clear that we must impact reading skills if we are to reverse these trends. Yet, despite over a decade of NCLB, we are not making a dent. 

The United States has a long history of solving social problems through its public schools. We ensure that children in poverty get free lunches, breakfasts, and in some places even dinner. We use schools to eradicate childhood disease by requiring immunization. When these ambitious initiatives were first launched, we didn't even blink. We knew our children were hungry and we fed them. We knew that childhood diseases were devastating, so we did what was necessary to keep our children from harm. Yet when it comes to the most basic thing that a school is here to do, we have accepted failure decade after decade. 

We do know what to do.

The worst part about this problem is that we do really know what to do. Teaching children to read is not some great mystery. Yes, the community and parents need to play a role. Yes, poverty influences this problem. But the truth is that if teachers are given the right tools and training, they can impact this tremendously in the classroom. There is money available. There are tools available that work. There are countless teachers who are desperate to get their students to a level of proficiency. Solving this problem takes focus and will. Here is a list of schools that have solved the problem. These approaches can be used all over the country, if only those in charge would move their schools in the right direction.

If we can solve homelessness, we can solve this.

Our country is in the process of solving the problem of homelessness for veterans. This started with a federal push, and then local communities taking a stand, beginning in Phoenix. The good people of Phoenix decided they would not stand for this and became determined to solve the problem. NCLB was supposed to be the federal declaration for education, and the local communities were supposed to take it from there. However, it instead became a mandate in order to receive federal funding, complete with carrots and sticks. What has been missing in reading is a moral imperative. Each community needs to decide that it is simply indecent for children to fail to learn to read. Once this is decided, we can solve this.