Students who use newspapers in their classes tend to become adult newspaper readers. Newspaper use in classes increases student interest in the knowledge of current events. Students who use newspapers in their classes tend to talk with their peers and their parents about what they read. Newspaper use increases students' vocabularies and word recognition skills, and increases reading comprehension. Students who uses newspapers in their classes tend to score higher on standardized tests.
Students overwhelmingly support newspaper use as a supplement to textbooks.
Newspaper use in class helps students learn how to read a newspaper more effectively, how to use it for additional learning and how to use it to solve problems because they recognize the services it provides. Newspaper use in classes may help students improve their arithmetic skills, especially fractions, decimals, currency and averages. The Newspapers in Education program began in the early 1980s in the United Kingdom. Its alliance with schools rapidly spread to communities throughout the world, providing newspapers and educational materials not readily available to school systems. Kerr said extra copies of The Herald-Dispatch are distributed to the Cabell County Reading Council and the Cabell County Board of Education.