A disturbing portion of our nation’s middle school and high school students can’t read well. According to a July 13, 2006 Washington Post article:
The Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington-based education policy research and advocacy group, estimates that as many as 6 million middle and high school students can’t read at acceptable levels. It’s an issue for students well above the bottom of the class. A report released in March that looked at the reading skills of college-bound students who took the ACT college entrance exam found that only 51 percent were prepared for college-level reading.
To me reading and math are two absolutely fundamental subjects that students need to become experts in, in order to succeed in life. There will always be math and or reading at some level at every potential job.
Why is this happening? Why aren’t middle and high school aged children able to read at a productive level? Are the standards too high? Has the playing field been leveled so much that now close to the majority cannot even participate in reading at a level that business and society expects? According to recent tests scores over 87% of High School students in Washington DC scored at the lowest level in one reading category. How are these young men and women going to be successful in their jobs, college, and life in general?
Schools need to stop passing children on to higher grades that have not mastered the skills necessary in their current grade. This must be controversial or it would not be happening with nearly 50% of our college bound students. Perhaps parents protest loudly when the idea of holding their child back is suggested. Someone should suggest to the parents that they are not doing their child any favors in the long run. This is probably not the only factor that is creating the problem. Experts do not even know why this problem currently exists. In Virginia the government is creating a task force to try to determine why so many students are failing reading. I hope they work quickly to determine the cause and prescribe a workable solution. High level reading skills are essential in today’s information age economy.