Ten years ago, six teachers established a program of literacy intervention and professional learning in remote northwestern Australia based on the Reading Recovery principles. This group of teachers was determined to learn what had to happen in order for them to make a difference with students and then to make it happen. Their work led to getting…

Recently, support has grown for using comic books and graphic novels to enhance and support literacy instruction. In some ways, it's surprising that the medium has only recently enjoyed such support. Stereotyped views of comics as unsophisticated, disposable entertainment or material written to the lowest common denominator fail to consider the…

Title I schools that want desperately to raise student scores on high-stakes tests often have found it hard to resist the lure of scripted literacy programs, especially in the face of pressure from No Child Left Behind to raise test scores. In recent years, many high-poverty elementary schools have adopted such programs in spite of evidence about…

As students move up through the grades, the academic demands on them increase, and a great many of those increases come in the form of reading. The academic tasks students encounter in the upper elementary grades, and even more so in secondary school, involve a great deal of reading in support of learning new and complicated content. As the…

The U.S. work force is changing. Professional and related occupations and service occupations will be the fastest-growing sectors for the foreseeable future. Both demand strong communication skills for sharing complex ideas across diverse communities. In addition, the 21st-century economy will require its members to think creatively and critically…

Describes staff-development plan related to the implementation of the Orange County (Florida) Literacy Project, a research-based literacy-improvement program for middle-school students. Defines literacy as reading, speaking, listening, viewing, and thinking. (PKP)

Discusses some dimensions of the right to read and the promise of American education to make all Americans literate. (Author)

Unfortunately for students, school reading has become an institution-- a powerful, organized machine that dooms the whole educational enterprise to mediocrity. This article presents 31 grievances against the present system and advocates replacing the vacuous, contrived subject called reading with the teaching of genuine subjects. (MLH)

Argues that California's low fourth-grade National Assessment of Educational Progress reading scores between 1987 and 1992 were not related to the whole-language approach to reading instruction introduced in 1987. Suggests that low scores are caused by limited student access to books in school and public libraries. (Contains 36 references.) (PKP)