I haven’t read it yet, but I will. I just wanted to say that after teaching HS for 5 years and being horrified at the reading level (or lack thereof) for many of my 9th and 10th graders, I thought that after 2nd grade, they should test kids for grade level reading proficiency. If they are not proficient at that time, they should go into a special 3rd grade class, taught by a reading teacher, and ALL OF THEIR SUBJECT MATTER should be taught via teaching them to read. If at the end of 3rd grade they are still not proficient, they should do the same for 4th etc. There is no reason that any but the a few should go to high school unprepared to read basic high school textbooks (perhaps some are incapable of learning to read at high school level, I don’t know, but they are few and far between, I should think).
If you learn to read well and do basic math, you can learn the rest of what you need. If you don’t, you are doomed to failure (at least for the most part—the few things you could be successful at require superior genetics that most of us don’t have).
susie
This is a pretty sad story...could it also be a question of a lack of teachers who inspire? I sure had a bunch when I was in my younger, formative years, and Intel’s Inspired by Education program (www.InspiredByEducation.com) offers a bunch of tools that teachers can use to this end...one would hope that the literacy level won’t get any lower than this dismal figure, but who knows.