Two-Thirds of Kids Struggle to Read, and We Know How to Fix It

By NICHOLAS KRISTOF of The NY Times.. Excerpts:

"Two-thirds of fourth graders in the United States are not proficient in reading."

"Eighth graders today are actually a hair worse at reading than their counterparts were in 1998."

"There is growing evidence from neuroscience and careful experiments that the United States has adopted reading strategies that just don’t work very well and that we haven’t relied enough on a simple starting point — helping kids learn to sound out words with phonics.

"“Too much reading instruction is not based on what the evidence says,” noted Nancy Madden, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who is an expert on early literacy. “That’s pretty clear.

“At least half of kids in the U.S. are not getting effective reading instruction.”"

"Ted Mitchell, an education veteran at nearly every level who is now president of the American Council on Education, thinks that easily a majority of children are getting subpar instruction."

"an approach called the “science of reading” has gained ground, and it rests on a bed of phonics instruction."

"I spent much of the 1980

s and 1990s as a New York Times correspondent in East Asia"

"Then I returned with my family to the United States in 1999, and I found that even reading was political: Republicans endorsed phonics, so I was expected as a good liberal to roll my eyes."