Few could muster the sustained concentration required to decipher the complex sentences and challenging ideas he encountered daily in his one-room schoolhouse. Over the last 90 years American society has made great strides on most fronts. Yet our children's literacy skills have not kept pace. Despite the oceans of money we spend on education, fully 43 percent of today's students read below grade level. Employers grumble about high school graduates' woeful skills, and college remedial classes are overflowing.
People point the finger at everything from class size to immigration to family breakdown.
But Harvard researcher Sandra Stotsky has identified one culprit most of us haven't considered. According to Stotsky, basal readers are the single most important key to academic performance. Used in grades I through 6, they lay a lifelong foundation for reading, writing and thinking. They are especially vital for poor and disadvantaged children, who may read few other books during their elementary years. Stotsky traces recent declines to multicultural reading instruction, which in her view hurts most the very kids it aims to help.