"The Knowledge Connection"

Source: E.D. Hirsch Jr., The Washington Post, February 16, 2008.

This looks like a very good article recommending that a scientific panel be convened (again) to recommend improved approaches to teaching kids to read and understand what they have read. He complains that current programs implementing No Child Left Behind intent to improve reading skills are poorly conceived because they are not based on the best understanding of how to teach reading for comprehension.

Hirsch writes:

Why has the No Child Left Behind law left so many children behind? According to the latest scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the reading achievement of eighth-graders has declined since the law was passed in 2001, and the large reading gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children -- "the achievement gap" -- has stayed where it was. Today's eighth-graders had recorded gains in fourth grade, but these have not led to improvements in later grades -- when reading scores actually count for a student's future.......

Consider the eighth-grade NAEP results from Massachusetts, which are a stunning exception to the nationwide pattern of stagnation and decline. Since 1998, the state has improved significantly in the number of eighth-graders reading at the "proficient" or "advanced" levels: Massachusetts now has the largest percentage of students reading at that higher level, and it is No. 1 in average scores for the eighth grade. That is because Massachusetts decided in 1997 that students (and teachers) should learn certain explicit, substantive things about history, science and literature, and that students should be tested on such knowledge.

The sure road to adequate progress in reading is adequate progress in knowledge. Congress and the states should note that the best tests to "teach to" are subject-matter tests based on explicit content standards for each grade. Massachusetts's results confirm that this is the best way to measure and to achieve real progress in reading. The revisers of No Child Left Behind, and all who are connected with our schools, need to be cognizant of -- and do something about -- the critical knowledge connection.

Comment: It seems reasonable to me that children who have basic reading skills will actually learn to comprehend better what they read if they read to learn the content of what they are reading. Of course, well written materials that are accessible to the students and interest them, in the hands of good teachers are also important. Perhaps more important still are communities where parents read, and where all the children read and discuss what they have read for pleasure and edification.

Incidentally, here is another case in which the Bush administration got the science wrong. JAD