A new read on teen literacy
Willard Brown teaches chemistry at Skyline High in Oakland, Calif. But what he really hopes his students master on their way to learning science is a skill most people, the teenagers included, assume they nailed long ago: the ability to read. Too often, he says, students have an incomplete notion of what reading actually means. "They think, 'My eyes passed over the page, and I pronounced all the words.' They don't notice that they really didn't get it."
So rather than simply lecturing and assigning chapters for homework, Brown asks his classes to tackle new material--on how atoms bond, for instance--by marking up written handouts and then wrestling as a group with what the text really means. What can they figure out from the wording and graphics about why atoms join together? What questions occur as they make their way down the page? What does the process look like--can they see it in their heads? What might strange terms such as "Coulomb force" and "covalent bond" mean, given the context?
On the other side of the country, Monica Ouly is taking a similar tack in her family and consumer-science class at Springhouse Middle School in Allentown, Pa. She recently asked students to read articles about calcium, salt, sugar, and gaining weight; underline what they found most important; jot down questions and comments; and note any connections to, say, their own caloric intake. "Hmm, the way I eat, it's probably a lot," she quipped to the class. Language skills are also being stressed by a surprisingly wide range of teachers at New York's Bronx Lab School: Not only do Karena Ostrem's ninth graders routinely translate math equations into word problems, but her colleague Kristin Smith has created a "word wall" in her art room to get students talking about the meaning of terms like "contour" and "perspective."
Underperforming. As President Bush and education policymakers turn their attention to fixing America's underachieving high schools, more districts nationwide will need to address one fundamental--but largely unheralded--cause of student failure: A huge number of teens simply can't make much sense of their textbooks. Close to 70 percent of eighth graders read below the "proficient" level, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, meaning they can't easily spot the purpose of a passage and find supporting evidence. So do nearly two thirds of 12th graders. In an economy increasingly reliant on workers with at least some postsecondary training, these stats have got plenty of people worried.
This week, when the country's governors convene with educators and business leaders in Washington for a summit on reforming high school, improving reading skills will be a key item on the agenda (alongside the more familiar priorities of rethinking the impersonal megaschool and beefing up coursework). "This isn't just about bringing kids up to grade level," says Matthew Gandal, executive vice president of the policy research group and summit cohost Achieve. "If you don't have advanced literacy skills today, you don't have much of a chance at the good life."
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