The top score on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), our nation’s report card, score is 500. Our nation’s 2022 average for nine-year-olds is 215. In 1992, it was 217. Our top score was 221 in 2017. The NAEP proficient score for nine-year-olds is 238. This means our nation’s average has never reached proficient (read at grade level).
In 2022, 33% of fourth graders performed at or above NAEP Proficient level. 64% of our fourth graders cannot read well or at all.
Ohio developed reading standards that require teachers to teach a lot of skills quickly. The “just do it fast approach”. The teachers are pressured to teach required standards for their grade. Some districts have multiple reading programs. They often conflict with each other like the “Tower of Babble”.
Reading Mastery: Mastery learning is an instructional strategy and educational philosophy, first formally proposed by Benjamin Bloom in 1968. Mastery learning maintains that students must achieve a level of mastery in prerequisite knowledge before moving forward to learn subsequent information.
Science of Reading Programs introduce large numbers of skills in a single year. For example, some published reading curriculums, teach sounds, blends, and even the syllable concept in kindergarten. Instead of focusing on skill mastery, we push kids through curriculum expecting them to keep up.
If a child masters skills, they build confidence and a love of reading. If children are forced to read and spell beyond their skill level, they are frustrated and feel defeated. It causes behavior problems and anxiety.
As a literacy expert, I have seen thousands of children and adults totally defeated by an inability to read. We worked with them by developing their skills to mastery with a system, and fun learning experiences.
Recently, one of our previously nonverbal Autistic students completed two years in our “Sammy and the Magical Reading Chest” program. The parents considered teaching him sign language. Today he can carry a conversation, and read and spell words with many skills. He is excited to begin learning words with multiple syllables. His mastery of skills built his confidence and he is now a different child.
Reading should be a right. Without reading skills, it is difficult to exist in our complex world. If we slow down when teaching reading skills, and give students time to achieve mastery, we can solve our literacy problems in the U.S.