For decades, the international education community has focused on schools as the primary vehicle of learning. However, learning assessments in dozens of developing nations show that repeated attempts to affect student learning in schools have largely failed. Because students with perfect attendance in low-resource settings spend less than 25…

As the number of schools changing from part- to full-day kindergarten programs increases, state and local education agencies need empirically-based evidence on ways that schools and teachers can best structure the additional instructional time of full-day programs to improve children's early reading skills. This brief uses nationally…

Students not reading proficiently by the end of 3rd grade are four times more likely than proficient readers to drop out of high school. This fact and other recent research on the importance of early literacy skills have culminated in an intense focus on improving 3rd-grade reading proficiency. The challenges of improving literacy are, in turn,…

The audience for this guide is state, local, and program leaders who want to learn more about federal funding sources that can support early literacy programs and systems reform. Funding available through federal programs can help address the underlying causes of children failing to learn to read by the end of third grade, such as limited access…

Recent studies of elementary teachers' knowledge about reading have been built on the premise that teachers need thorough knowledge about language and reading processes, but these studies have provided only limited evidence that teachers' performance on tests of such knowledge contributes to their students' reading achievement. The present study…

In order to be a good reader, your child must be able to do two things at the same time: (1) decode the words on the page and (2) understand what the words mean. Early reading instruction focuses on teaching a child how to read single words. But being good at reading single words is not the only skill your child needs. Once your child has become…

The aim of this study was to determine whether explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and phonemically based decoding skills would be an effective intervention strategy for children with early reading difficulties in a whole language instructional environment. Twenty-four 6- and 7-year-old struggling readers were randomly assigned to an…

Many authors report data showing a high relationship between visual perception and early reading. This study dealt with the prediction of later reading from early Frostig test scores and the determination of existing relationships between Frostig treatment and reading skills two years later. Two hundred and seventy-four beginning first graders in…

The 40 articles in this collection deal with issues and problems in the learning and teaching of reading and offer suggestions for future policy concerning reading. The articles cover the entire reading field, including the relationships among language, intelligence, and reading; early reading schemes; extending reading; reading difficulties,…

This thesis investigated the attitudes toward reading of elementary students in 3rd and 6th grade at a small, rural western Kansas school before and after implementing a read-aloud program. The sample consisted of 58 students--33 boys and 25 girls, including both the study group (n=30) and control group (n=28). Independent variables were…