Stand-alone reading intervention courses, or reading classes, are designed to facilitate the literacy development of adolescents who have been deemed "struggling" readers. However, the existence of such courses does not mean that these goals are realized. Decades of qualitative research on youth perspectives and experiences have…

Pedagogical reforms, specifically, the Thematic Curriculum and the Local Language Policy, have failed to improve literacy in Uganda despite a concerted effort from the Government of Uganda and its international development partners. This paper distills the major literacy programs used to scale up the reforms nationwide and summarizes what they did…

In Uganda and other low-resource settings, too few children are learning to read in the early grades. In response, countries have embarked on reading reform programs, often with external support. Unfortunately, rigorous evidence of these programs' impact remains limited. This article presents the causal impact on reading outcomes of the US Agency…

This exploratory investigation examined the transformation of a traditional summer reading intervention (SRI) to synchronous virtual format in response to school closures due to COVID-19. Goals were to adapt and describe the adaptation of the in-person intervention to the virtual environment, examine program outcomes, and understand tutor and…

How can middle-level educators improve reading achievement when digitized texts and tests manage their instruction? Experienced Osage Middle School reading teachers and school administrators addressed this question as they examined their Istation reading curriculum, and higher education faculty partners were invited to portray this work. Teaching…

There is an emerging field in literacy research which acknowledges the potential variances in literacy practices valued by schools and families. This article reports on one instance where the rich literacy practices of a particular home environment were not recognized within the child's school context. The data explores the impact on the child as…

With the release of the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) results, concerns that reading scores of U.S. students have remained flat for the past decade have surfaced again along with suggestions about the source of this problem and how it might be remedied. The…

When leaders in Lewisville Independent School District in Texas saw the district's writing scores on STAAR--the Texas standardized tests introduced in 2011--they panicked. They were not alone. The response from many neighboring districts, and from some of Lewisville's own campuses, was a renewed commitment to summer and after-school drill-and-kill…

As the Public School Forum enters its 31st year, they continue the tradition of forecasting the ten issues most likely to impact public schools across the state in "Top Ten Education Issues for 2017." As they do each year, they have included in the list issues they believe will be the top education issues for the year, as well as issues…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) establish a challenging text-complexity standard for all high school graduates to read at college and workplace text-complexity levels. We argue that implementation of the CCSS standard requires concurrent examination of historical student reading-growth trends. An example of a historical student average…

Recognizing the role of collaboration and multilingual literacy as 21st-century skills, the authors used design research methods to present, analyze, and refine a strategic reading approach for bilingual students. The collaborative translation strategy involves reading an academic text, translating key passages, and evaluating these translations.…

More than twenty years ago reading researchers sought to capture the behaviors good readers demonstrated to make meaning from their reading. By shifting the focus away from what was wrong, researchers were able to study and discuss what worked. A comprehensive list of reading strategies emerged from this research. This was an important discovery.…

The promise is that education technologies will reshape the ways in which we teach and learn, the ways in which we read and write and communicate. Indeed, new hardware and new software are often marketed to schools and libraries with language that stresses their transformative and innovative potential, even when, upon closer inspection, it may…

Michigan is at a critical moment in time -- a historic moment where citizens and leaders must choose whether the state will take advantage of new opportunities to become a top ten education state -- or face a continued and dramatic educational decline. Today, national data reveal that Michigan's public education system is among the poorest…

When David Coleman, one of the authors of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), spoke to New York educators, he stated that over the last forty years 8th grade reading scores have been flat. Despite doubling expenditures on classroom instruction, there has been little growth. Most educators are aware that what worked for the students of the…