Black men on a national level have historically demonstrated their inability to read at the appropriate grade level (Tatum, 2015). Upon a closer analysis of this phenomenon, Washington (1998) posits that attitude has a profound effect on literacy rates because it has the power to cause Black men to either be drawn to literature or avoid it.…

Nearly 30 years ago, Chall, Jacobs, and Baldwin (1990) introduced the "fourth-grade slump" to describe the unexpected deceleration of reading skills between first and fourth grades among children growing up in poverty and low-income households. Advances in our understanding of reading development and how race, racism, or other forms of…

Nearly 30 years ago, Chall, Jacobs, and Baldwin introduced the fourth-grade slump to describe the unexpected deceleration of reading skills between first and fourth grades among children growing up in poverty and low-income households. Advances in our understanding of reading development and how race, racism, or other forms of discrimination are…

Background: Poverty-related disparities in school readiness are well documented (Dreyer, 2020). Increasing cognitively stimulating parenting practices can contribute greatly to addressing such disparities, and therefore represent a key modifiable target for preventive interventions beginning early in life (Brooks-Gunn & Markman, 2005).…

College of Education faculty and staff at an HBCU developed an educational justice based reading club for freshmen teacher preparation students in an effort to provide authentic and important retention and reading experiences. The project sought to increase student retention through the building of this community and passion for educational…

Post-matric students from under-resourced (historically disadvantaged) black high schools generally encounter difficulties in their academic work at university. The study reported here was intended to empower first year (post-matric) students from these schools with basic research skills in a bid to counteract the effects of their high school…

The purpose of this applied dissertation study was to determine the relative impact of parental involvement, parental school perception, student generation status, and Caribbean adolescents' own attitudes and behavior towards academic achievement and reading comprehension skills. For this study, 45 Caribbean parents from Grenadian, Guyanese,…

The implication of reading competence in developing reflection and thinking is an important issue for student teachers to consider. Reading is also a competence, in which the language at the disposal of a person is included, to use for social development and mutual understanding. This article is based on a case study and is concerned with how some…

Reports on a study that examined the literacy behavior of 132 elderly Blacks in a large city environment with a high concentration of undereducated adults. Found that the group developed the necessary literacy skills to meet the demands of their social environment. (JOW)

Researchers and teachers often are not privy to the literacy events smuggled into the private lives of urban African-Americans. Yet, these hidden literacies, such as journal writing and reading personal business letters, often reveal deft rhetorical skills as well as intellectual grappling with the social complexities of power, race, and class.…

A study investigated the relationship between phonological features in the oral reading of black West Indians and their reading comprehension. Subjects were 54 college students at the College of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas. Each subject was recorded reading two passages and completed two cloze tests. The tapes then were analyzed for nine…

This article describes how a group of black women read culture, class, and other social relations, analyzing the process and skill of reading linguistic and paralinguistic cues in allowing individuals to navigate across multiple discourses. I draw from one ethnographic study of talk in a Midwestern hair salon. Such research seeks to strengthen…

According to a National Assessment of Educational Progress report, most American school children have mastered reading and writing fundamentals without learning how to analyze, evaluate, and extend ideas they read and write about. To address this "surface understanding" problem, the report recommends literacy programs aimed at high risk…

This book for beginning readers presents the story of the South African Nkosi family. The seven members of the family share their feelings, likes and dislikes, and hopes and dreams. Readers are encouraged to figure out what the characters like, want, feel, and dream and to share their own likes, desires, feelings, and dreams. The book is written…

The reading and writing behavior of nine mentally retarded Black adolescents enrolled in secondary level special education classes in an urban school district were analyzed. Data were collected on 11 language tasks which included drawing, forming letters and numbers, and general print production. Ss were also requested to answer…