LITERACY SKILLS Literacy—the ability to read, write, and comprehend—is a formidable linchpin to school, work, and life success. Numerous studies provide powerful evidence that early reading achievement is strongly and positively associated with high school completion, college attendance, increased earnings, and better health: • Kindergarten reading scores predict later earnings, higher education completion, home ownership, and retirement (Chetty et al., 2011). • Children who do not read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school by age 19 than their proficient peers (Hernandez, 2011). • Individuals with lower literacy rates are less likely to receive regular preventative healthcare (Bennett et al., 2009). • People who read books live almost 23 months longer than nonliterate people (Bavishi et al., 2016). Despite its importance, many students leave elementary school struggling to read (National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2022). While low literacy rates have been a source of concern for over a decade in the United States, the level of urgency and need has increased greatly in recent years due primarily to unfinished learning caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated school closures. This context reveals why providing high-quality, impactful learning opportunities and literacy instruction to children at any opportunity is critical for their short- and long- term success as an individual. Effective reading instruction requires the systematic and explicit teaching of code-based skills (phonics knowledge, decoding skills) and meaning-focused skills (content knowledge, literacy knowledge, vocabulary, language structure) as well as processes that bridge these two areas (print concepts, fluency, etc.) and self-regulation (Duke & Cartwright, 2021; Connor, 2019). Beyond this traditional type of instruction, research has also shown that expanding access to books at home (Evans et al., 2010) and guiding students through focused, high-quality discussions of text (Shanahan et al., 2010) can lead to better educational outcomes.
SCHOLASTIC R.E.A.L. FOUNDATION PAPER 10
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