One of the key requirements of the Common Core State Standards for Reading is that all students must be able to comprehend texts of steadily increasing complexity as they progress through school. By the time they complete the core, students must be able to read and comprehend independently and proficiently the kinds of complex texts commonly found…

The purpose of this study was to measure whether Christian programs had a positive influence on the academic achievement of low-literate male inmates. The sample consisted of 124 male inmates in a closed security prison in the southeastern United States who were participating in an Adult Basic Education (ABE) program. The researcher grouped the…

In the United States, more than 2 million children in Grades pre-K through 6 speak Spanish as their primary language. Approximately 50% of these students receive academic instruction in Spanish. This tutorial provides research-based recommendations for presenting phonological awareness tasks to children who receive literacy instruction in Spanish.…

This article is a review of the literature related to the reading attitudes and the instructional methods of teaching reading. The article provides a synthesis of previous studies on the reading attitudes of elementary school students in the United States and also addresses a brief review of literature on historic and traditional methods of…

Grade 1 literacy skills of twin children in Australia (New South Wales) and the United States (Colorado) were explored in a genetically sensitive design (N = 319 pairs). Analyses indicated strong genetic influence on word and nonword identification, reading comprehension, and spelling. Rapid naming showed more modest, though reliable, genetic…

This study used an analysis of variance (ANOVA)-like approach to predict reading proficiency with student, teacher, and school-level predictors based on a 3-level hierarchical generalized linear model (HGLM) analysis. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2000 reading data for 4th graders sampled from 46 states of the United States of…

A collection of reports on literacy and literacy issues includes a variety of perspectives and descriptions of diverse programs and is divided into three sections. The first examines broad questions of literacy: "On the Study of Literacy" (David Bendor-Samuel); "Linguistics and Literacy" (Gloria Kindell); and "Literacy in…

The vast majority of American-born adults are exposed to written language from a very early age. Most Americans live in a print-based society where letters and words are everywhere! Drive, walk, or bike down any American street and you will see numerous eye-catching billboards, signs, and storefronts. Our towns, cities, neighborhoods, and homes…

Reviews the research on reading achievement for the last 50 years and concludes that anyone who knows that literacy is declining is ignoring the data. (RB)

The ways in which children learn a language--be it their mother tongue or their second language--can have a strong influence on their success in school. Researchers in linguistics and early child development have tried to determine the factors that can help and hinder language acquisition in young children, with some conflicting results. In this…

Currently, the United States participates in four international assessments: the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), which assesses reading performance in grade 4; the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which assesses the reading, mathematics, and science literacy of 15-year-olds; the Trends in International…

ACT data suggest that the readiness of the nation's high school students for college-level reading is far too low. But ACT data also show that, while it is important for students to be able to comprehend both explicit and implicit material in texts, as well as to understand how various textual elements (such as main ideas, relationships, or…

Students demonstrated their reading comprehension skills by responding to questions about various types of reading passages on the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading assessment. Reading abilities were assessed in the contexts of literary experience, gaining information, and performing a task. A nationally…

This report has two objectives: first, to explore how the demographic and educational characteristics of low-performing students compare to other students within the United States; second, to analyze if the United States differs from the other PISA countries in terms of the characteristics of its low-performing students. The Program for…

Using data provided by approximately 100 second graders each from Beijing, Hong Kong, Korea, and the United States, we investigated relations among phonological awareness, morphological structure awareness, vocabulary, and word recognition. Our results indicate that across languages, phonological awareness and morphological structure awareness are…