Discussions and practices focused on Black boys' literacy development and equity in U.S. classrooms require serious thought and interrogation if the aim is to move these boys toward advanced levels of reading, writing, intellectual development, and human development. Sorely, Black boys have become subjects of educational, programming, and policy…

Oral reading fluency probes are essential for reading assessment, intervention, and progress monitoring. Due to the limited options for choosing oral reading fluency probes, it is important to utilize all available resources such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) like ChatGPT to create oral reading fluency probes. The purpose of this…

In his critique of the Huffman (2014) article, McLean (2016) undertakes an important reflective exercise that is too often missing in the field of second language acquisition and in the social sciences in general: questioning whether the claims made by researchers are warranted by their results. In this article, Jeffrey Huffman says that McLean…

Aka (2019) conducted an year-long large-scale study demonstrating that Japanese high school students who undertook extensive reading performed better than a control group who undertook grammatical instruction. Those showing the greatest gains were those of lower and intermediate proficiency. The students' achievement was measured in terms of…

Reading by third grade is a hot topic. Dozens of state legislatures have passed laws aimed at improving early reading, many of them mandating retention if the job is not done by the end of grade 3. Everyone from philanthropists to publishers, from parents to the press, have fixed on it. And setting aside too many people's assumptions to the…

Thomas Cobb's 2007 applied linguistics paper, "Computing the Vocabulary Demands of L2 Reading" dealt with whether reading alone can build an adequate reading lexicon in a second language, or whether some sort of extra vocabulary training will normally be required. In the article, Cobb proposed that in the case of adult academic ESL…

Since the 2001 passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), test-based accountability has been an organizing principle--perhaps "the" organizing principle--of efforts to improve American schools. But lately, accountability has been under fire from many critics, including Common Core opponents and those calling for more multifaceted…

In this response to Sakurai, Meredith Stephens agrees that Sakurai (2015) raises an important issue of which native English speaking teachers may be unaware; Japanese learners of English typically translate into Japanese while reading English. Sakurai explained, "It is speculated that Japanese students naturally translate English into…

As an early Common Core booster, Michael Petrilli had hoped that by now--10 years after most states adopted the standards--the nation's schools would have logged tangible improvements in teaching and learning that resulted in higher student achievement. In this article, Petrilli reviews what Common Core is and discusses the work ahead that is…

Stuart McLean refers in this commentary to Jeffrey Huffman's article "Reading Rate Gains during a One-Semester Extensive Reading Course" (v26 n2 p17-33 Oct 2014) [See: EJ1044344], in which Huffman reports that extensive reading (ER) was an effective way to provide large amounts of comprehensible input to foreign language learners, but…

This special issue is dedicated to understanding how to best support positive educational outcomes for all students. While reading strategies, course design and methods, testing and assessment, and a variety of other factors are all integral to L2 reading outcomes, policies constructed at the federal, state, district, and school level play an…

Education standards do not flop spectacularly. Their failure gives rise to nothing like the black-and-white films of early aeronautical experiments: no missiles exploding on launch pads or planes tumbling from the sky. But 10 years after 46 of the 50 states adopted the Common Core standards, the lack of evidence that they have improved student…

The 10th anniversary of Common Core's launch offers the opportunity to take stock of the impact these nearly national standards have had on student learning, as well as their future prospects. In this article, Morgan Polikoff shares his view that the standards movement in general, and Common Core in particular, have achieved all they are going to…

In critiquing our paper on "The literacy performance of ex-Reading Recovery students between two and four years following participation in the program: Is this intervention effective for students with early reading difficulties?", Schwartz argues that we have engaged in pursuing political and ideological agendas as part of our ongoing…

The policy reforms over the past 15 years have placed all the responsibility for reading achievement on teachers, with little, if any, support. What many have achieved is declining achievement in comparison with other countries. Moreover, there are increasing teacher shortages, as promising individuals choose other careers and teachers leave the…