Literacy Crisis
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, 2017) found that about two thirds of 4th and 8th graders in the United States were reading below proficiency levels. Moreover, they found that 32 percent of 4th graders and 24 percent of 8th graders were lacking even basic reading skills. The assessment showed striking racial disparities: 45% of White students, 18% of Black students, and 23% of Hispanic students performed at or above reading proficient levels.
Without proper instruction, those who struggle to learn to read in childhood become semi-literate or illiterate adults. According to the National Research Council (NRC, 2012), about 90 million adults in the United States have low English literacy skills. About half of adults in the U.S. cannot read an eighth-grade level book, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2016).
The most effective solution to the literacy crisis is to require that reading be taught using only methods that have been shown to be successful in high-quality research studies (evidence-based practice). Surprisingly, the most widely used methods of teaching reading in the United States are not based on the science of reading (See link below to Education Week Special Report: Getting Reading Right).
References
National Assessment of Educational Progress (2017). https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/assessments/
National Research Council. (2012). Improving adult literacy instruction: Options for practice and research. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
OECD (2016), Skills Matter: Further Results from the Survey of Adult Skills, OECD Skills Studies, OECD Publishing, Paris. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264258051-en
Schwartz, S. (2019). The Most Popular Reading Programs Aren’t Backed by Science. Special Report: Getting Reading Right. Education Week, 39(15), pp. 19-22. https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/12/04/the-most-popular-reading-programs-arent-backed.html
Education Week Special Report: Getting Reading Right
https://www.edweek.org/ew/collections/getting-reading-right/index.html
Gray’s Research
Gray, S., Ehri, L., & Locke, J. (2018). Morpho-phonemic analysis boosts word reading for adult struggling readers. Reading and Writing, 1-24. 10.1007/s11145-017-9774-9. Available online: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11145-017-9774-9?wt_mc=Internal.Event.1.SEM.ArticleAuthorOnlineFirst
Gray, S. H. (2019). Linking root words and derived forms for adult struggling readers. Adult Literacy Education: The International Journal of Literacy, Language and Numeracy, 1(1), 19-36. Available online: https://www.proliteracy.org/Portals/0/pdf/Research/ALE%20Journal/ALE_ResearchJournal-v001_01-2019-19_Gray.pdf?ver=2019-03-27-140055-890
Gray, S. H. (2015). The effects of morpho-phonemic and whole word instruction on the literacy skills of adult struggling readers (Doctoral dissertation, City University of New York). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 140 pages; 3683265. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/565/