Dowd and Bartlett (2019) tested the reading competencies of second graders attending Save the Children programs in 11 countries. They used sixty-word passages and comprehension questions without time limits and analyzed data of students reading more than 10 words per minute. They found wide disparities in speed among those who showed high…

Reading programs for low-income populations often give disappointing results. Failures may be partly due to a neglect of practice in decoding letters. Visual stimuli are best learned symbol by symbol, with pattern analogies and much practice to unite smaller components and speed up identification. The prerequisite for comprehending volumes of text…

The international Education for All initiative to bring about universal primary education has resulted in large enrollment increases in lower income countries but with limited outcomes. Due to scarcity in material and human resources, all but the better off often fail to learn basic skills. To improve performance within the very limited capacities…

Reading depends on the speed of visual recognition and capacity of short-term memory. To understand a sentence, the mind must read it fast enough to capture it within the limits of the short-term memory. This means that children must attain a minimum speed of fairly accurate reading to understand a passage. Learning to read involves "tricking" the…