A road map for improving literacy

New research on key elements of programs for secondary schools

By the time they move up to middle school and high school, the vast majority of students have learned to read.

That doesn’t mean, however, that they’ve progressed beyond the basics to comprehending what they read. As academic content gets more complex and challenging, the lack of solid literacy skills presents a tough obstacle to school success—and ultimately is one significant reason why students drop out.

Research has been done on adolescent literacy—not nearly as much as on reading in the early grades, to be sure—but no one had tried to pull that research together in a comprehensive way until the Carnegie Corporation of New York produced such a report for the Alliance for Excellent Education. A panel of noted educational researchers came up with a collection of “key elements” of effective adolescent literacy programs—15 elements, to be exact.

“In an ideal world,” the authors write, “schools would be able to implement all 15 elements, but the list may also be used to construct a unique blend of elements suited to the needs of the students they serve.” The report recommends that people responsible for designing literacy programs “flexibly try out various combinations” of the elements to see what works.

The elements are broken down into two categories, instructional improvements and infrastructure improvements.

Instructional improvements

• Direct, explicit comprehension instruction, which is instruction in the strategies and processes that proficient readers use to understand what they read, including summarizing, keeping track of one’s own understanding and a host of other practices.
• Effective teaching principles embedded in content, including language arts teachers using content-area texts and content-area teachers providing instruction and practice in reading and writing specific to the subject.
• Motivation and self-directed learning, which include building motivation to read and learn, as well as providing students with the instruction and supports needed for independent learning after graduation.
• Text-based collaborative learning, which involves students interacting with one another around a variety of texts.
• Strategic tutoring, which provides students with intense individualized reading, writing and content instruction as needed.
• Diverse texts that span a variety of difficulty levels and topics.
• Intensive writing, including instruction connected to the kinds of writing students will have to perform well in high school and beyond.
• A technology component, which includes technology as a tool for and a topic of literacy instruction.
• Ongoing formative assessment of students: informal, often daily assessment of how students are progressing.

Infrastructure improvements

• Extended time for literacy, which includes two to four hours of literacy instruction and practice that take place in language arts and content-area classes.
• Continuous professional development.
• Ongoing summative assessment of students and programs, which is relatively formal and provides data for accountability and research.
• Interdisciplinary teacher teams that meet regularly to discuss students and align instruction.
• Leadership from teachers and principals who know how to teach reading and writing to all their students.
• A comprehensive and coordinated literacy program, which is interdisciplinary and interdepartmental and may even coordinate with outside organizations and the community.

“No single intervention will ever meet the needs of struggling readers and writers,” the report says. “The need is for better dissemination, evaluation and comparison of interventions that work, so administrators and teachers can better select the interventions that are most appropriate for their individual students.”

The full report, “Reading Next: A Vision for Action and Research in Middle and High School Literacy,” is available online at www.all4ed.org.