Long overlooked, reading volume is actually central to the development of reading proficiencies, especially in the development of fluent reading proficiency. Generally no one in schools monitors the actual volume of reading that children engage in. We know that the commonly used commercial core reading programs provide only material that requires…

We know more now than we ever did before about how to make every child a successful reader, write Allington and Gabriel in this research review. Yet, few students regularly receive the best reading instruction we know how to give. The authors present research supporting their recommendation that every child, every day, should (1) read something he…

We now have an evidence base that documents that we could teach every child to read by the end of first grade. However, most schools have almost none of the key aspects of instruction that have been available in the research to ensure we achieve this goal. In this paper I argue that this failure is not the result of inadequate funding but rather…

At the minimum, one of every four middle school students will struggle to cope with the grade-level textbooks they are typically assigned to read. Few reading programs used in middle schools have any research evidence that they actually improve student reading proficiencies. Only three programs had even modest evidence of a positive effect, and…

Despite the fact that two of every three students in U.S. schools have reading proficiencies below the level needed to adequately do grade-level work, schools don't make a point of offering either high-quality professional development for kindergarten teachers nor expert tutorial instruction for at-risk kindergartners. This means that most schools…

School districts have come to think of intervention for struggling readers as something accomplished in a session outside the classroom, one period long, taught by someone other than that student's usual teacher. This often leaves struggling readers in a learning environment where no theory or empirical evidence would predict substantial learning.…

Examines the sources of teachers' questions, as well as the type and quality of questions they ask in different reading groups. (FL)

Reviews the literature concerning oral reading fluency and offers six hypotheses about how beginning readers develop oral fluency and about strategies to help those who do not. (FL)

Presents reservations about reading games and questions whether they actually teach, reinforce, and motivate. (JM)

Discusses the historical and social context of instructional grouping and the assumptions behind it. Offers an alternative approach--a single curriculum with flexible grouping--in which the difficulties children experience with reading are viewed not as signals to slow down, but as signals to enhance and accelerate instruction, by any of several…

Instructional reforms are essentially worthwhile as they help students improve their reading from 13th percentile to the 25th or 34th percentile. Only with an expansion of expert tutoring, the goal of all students reading on grade level can be achieved.

More than five years of research offers little evidence that students who attend federally funded remedial and learning disabled reading programs improve their reading skills. The three assumptions underlying these programs are discussed. Ways teachers and schools can evaluate their programs are listed. (MT)

Contends that teacher education is based on knowledge at the expense of ability and offers alternatives for improving programs leading to reading certification. (TO)

Comments on the literacy rights of all children and the money that is spent on remedial programs. States that the United States needs a unified effort that merges or eliminates the current variety of programs and funding streams to secure the right to sufficient instruction for all children. (MG)

Notes that for most of the past decade, there have been rumblings that the National Reading Conference, the parent organization of this journal, should be involved in influencing educational policy making, but these discussions often seem grounded in one or more unwarranted assumptions. Challenges these assumptions through the use of descriptive…