I teach high school, Bruce.
Reading taught at the elementary level, from what I can discern is a hybrid of the old Whole Language and Phonics — and is a mess! A lot of students never do pick up necessary reading skills from this his or miss method and struggle with reading as the curriculum moves ahead into the “read to learn” phase.
It is no wonder that I see SO many 11th graders who read at a 4th -6th grade with limited vocabularies and who tell me they hate reading.
RE: “And is a mess!”
I think your description is generally right. The children don’t come along with more or less the same skill. They are spread out along a huge continuum from can’t-read-at-all to fluent. And these kids are all in the same classrooms together in the 6th, 8th, and 10th grades, often forced to work in cooperative groups.
And the schools design tests (so-called authentic assessment) that CONCEALS how little they can read. There is a lot of support now for Project-Based Learning. This is just another gimmick for hiding how illiterate and ignorant these kids are.
Our Education Establishment has a pure satanic genius for intellectual chaos. I’m right now working on an article about how EASY reading is— if it’s taught correctly.
When I was that age, I (and I'm sure the rest of us were too) was actually reading and writing and doing the Readers Digest spelling and word games. That was just fun "accidental practice".
The only "accidental practice" the kids of today get is via "texting" or emails which use an entirey different vocabulary such as "ur", "lol", "omg". Just look at Twitter responses, some of them I have to study just to figure out whats being said......