The truth is that good early literacy instruction does not inoculate students against struggle or failure later on. Beyond grade 3, adolescent learners in our schools must decipher more complex passages, synthesize information at a higher level, and learn to form independent conclusions based on evidence. They must also develop special skills and strategies for reading text in each of the differing content areas (such as English, science, mathematics and history)—meaning that a student who “naturally” does well in one area may struggle in another.Time to Act: An Agenda for Advancing Adolescent Literacy for College and Career Success begins with that core recognition and moves on to recommend classroom steps, professional collaboration around data, examples of the recommended transformation in schools and districts, and a concluding summary organized as "A Call To Action: Where To Begin."
The full report, developed by the Carnegie Foundation's Council on Advancing Adolescent
Literacy is available here, with an EdWeek overview here.
I did a quick search of all the documents and am fascinated that the word "dyslexia" does not appear anywhere, except twice as an obsure reference to a page or two in the Annuls of Dyslexia.
ReplyDeleteDo check for "disabilities." Appendix A has an inset box, and the bibliography has multiple articles, but I defer to your judgment on how close to the mark--or how far from it--they are.
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