Every Child Reading: An Action Plan

The Learning First Alliance is an organization of twelve collaborating national educational associations. At its January 1998 Summit on Reading and Mathematics, the alliance developed "action papers" on reading and mathematics. The following excerpts are from its plan for improving students' reading performance.

If we started today, we could ensure that virtually every healthy child born in the 21st century would be reading well by age nine, and that every child now in elementary school would graduate from high school a reader....[In view of this situation, the Alliance calls on educators and policy makers to carry out the following strategies, among others:]

1. Base educational decisions on evidence, not ideology. It is time to call off the endless reading wars [among advocates of differing approaches to teaching reading]....The famous pendulum of educational innovation swings more wildly in reading than in any other subject....Educational practice must come to be based on evidence—not ideology....
2. Promote adoption of texts based on the evidence of what works. Historically, reading textbooks have been adopted primarily based on criteria that have little to do with evidence: attractiveness, cost, supplements, and so on. This must change....
3. Provide adequate professional development....Teachers and paraprofessionals must receive quality staff development on instructional strategies....
4. Promote whole-school adoption of effective methods. Some of the most effective approaches to early literacy instruction are comprehensive methods that...are adopted by the entire school, providing a common focus and extensive assistance in implementing a well-integrated design for change.
5. Involve parents in support of their children's reading. Research shows that parent involvement, especially in activities that directly support their children's school success, is correlated with reading achievement....
6. Improve preservice education and instruction...on the research base about learning to read...[and] applications of that research in the classroom....
7. Provide additional staff for tutoring and class-size reduction....
8. Improve early identification and intervention. Diagnostic assessments should be administered regularly to kindergartners and first-graders....Such tools can tell us which children are having reading difficulties and enable teachers to provide immediate and high-quality interventions if necessary.
9. Introduce accountability measures for the early grades....Usually, the earliest assessments are of third- and fourth-graders [but appropriate tests also should be developed and used in kindergarten and grades one and two].
10. Intensify reading research. If early reading were as high a priority in our society as, say, space exploration was in the 1960s, there is little question that early reading failure could be virtually eliminated....

[Among the most important additional actions are the following involving Early Childhood and Community Outreach:]

• Promote family literacy programs to help parents develop in their young children a love of reading....
• Provide full-day kindergarten, with a curriculum designed to have all children ready to read by first grade.
• Assist at-risk families in providing their children with the health care and rich cognitive experiences they will need to enter school ready to learn.
• Provide high-quality prekindergarten programs to all four-year-olds and to younger children.
• Improve the quality and availability of early child care, afterschool programs, summer programs, and other out-of-school opportunities to promote literacy and healthy development.

Questions

1. In what ways is this action plan connected with material in this chapter and other chapters, particularly the chapter on Motivation, Preparation, and Conditions for the Entering Teacher and the chapter on Providing Equal Educational Opportunity?
2. Do you think the plan as presented in this excerpt represents "systemic" reform? What might be added to make it more systemic?
3. Do you agree that all future teachers, whatever their subject area or grade level, should be required to learn about the "research base" concerning "learning to read"? Why or why not?
4. How would you rank the ten strategies presented by the alliance in order of importance? Which would you postpone if resources were not sufficient to deal with all of them?
5. Do you think this paper is likely to have an influence on what you do when you become a teacher?

Source: Every Child Reading: An Action Plan (Washington, D.C.: Learning First Alliance, 1998), available at www.learningfirst.org. See also Every Child Reading: A Professional Development Guide (Washington, D.C.: Learning First Alliance, 2000), available at www.learningfirst.org. Reprinted with permission. Members of the alliance include the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education; American Association of School Administrators; American Federation of Teachers; Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development; Council of Chief State School Officers; Education Commission of the States; National Association of State Boards of Education; National Association of Elementary School Principals; National Association of Secondary School Principals; National School Boards Association; National Parent Teachers Associations; and National Education Association.