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It's a scandal: 20 percent of our region's children cannot read well enough to become educated. We can no longer tolerate this failure
Wednesday, November 01, 2000
By Maxwell King
You can almost hear the rumble, feel the vibration, as Pittsburgh builds momentum again. A new and more diverse economy is growing, Downtown is emerging as a more dynamic center of culture and commerce, our long-neglected waterfront is being reimagined as an exciting center of community life, and the regional map is spotted with major new construction projects, many of them fine examples of strong architecture and green design.
Maxwell King is executive director of The Heinz Endowments.
But there is one sense in which Pittsburgh hasn't changed at all in three decades: Some 40 percent of the region's schoolchildren still read below grade level -- half of that number reading so far below grade that they are effectively unable to learn, according to the Education Policy and Issues Center.
We are not alone in this. The same numbers hold true for the nation as a whole. When it comes to teaching its young children to read, America, a country that prides itself on progress, has made precisely none in 30 years.
How can that be? How can such a powerful society fail so abysmally on such an important issue?
It's not that we don't know how to teach children to read. We do. The so-called Literacy Wars that plagued education for decades have essentially been settled, and a consensus is emerging about the best methods to promote reading.
It's not that people aren't interested in helping children learn to read. Earlier this month, The Heinz Endowments convened many of the region's community and education leaders for a "literacy summit." So many people wanted to participate we actually had to cap attendance and start a waiting list.
It's not that the importance of helping young children to read hasn't been clearly established. It has, time and again. Children who read significantly below grade level by fourth or fifth grade lack the foundation for later success.
And it's not that some children are simply hopeless, lacking in the natural ability to master reading as a skill. Most experts agree that, if we started right now, virtually every child born today could be reading at grade level by the time he reaches fourth grade.
So you have to wonder. If we know that almost every child can learn to read, and if we know how to teach them to do so, and if we know it's important -- why are so many children not reading at grade level?
Unfortunately, there can be only one explanation: a failure of will. As a society, we have not acted on what we know. And the cost of our inaction is terrible.
Here in southwestern Pennsylvania, the Education Policy and Issues Center calculates that 20 percent -- that's one out of five -- of fifth-graders have reading skills so poor they have no hope of succeeding in school. In the real world, of course, these are not percentage points; these are just children struggling to keep up.
In our region, 20 percent equates to 5,000 children. Every year, 5,000 young minds, filled with great hopes and hidden talents, reach fifth grade actually primed for failure. And because that number remains fairly constant through the later grades, it means that, at any one time, there may be some 35,000 children in our region's schools who lack the most basic skill necessary for learning.
There is no conceivable standard by which this is acceptable. Our society tolerated it in the past primarily because we had an economy based as much on brawn as on brains. Children who didn't excel in school still could grow up to do important work and earn decent wages in the nation's mills and factories.
But today's reality is different. Now, the currency of economic success is knowledge. To continue accepting the sacrifice of even one-fifth of our young minds, as if in tithe to some malevolent god of ignorance and mediocrity, is to invite disaster. It is not only morally reprehensible, but also economically suicidal.
Around the world, regions such as ours are equipping themselves to do battle in the global economy. It is already abundantly clear that the winners will be those regions whose citizens come the best armed with knowledge and skills. They will be those regions that value every mind as an essential and invaluable part of their economic arsenal.
Our region does not have to wait for the rest of the nation to make this issue a priority, nor should we. Giving every child in our region the literacy skills he or she needs to succeed in school is not an impossible goal. To the contrary, it is an entirely reasonable expectation. All it requires of us is the often elusive will to act on what we know.
At our literacy summit, experts suggested a number of straightforward steps we could take right now to improve literacy in our region. Here are five:
Do a better job of training new teachers in literacy. Most schools of education require their students to take only a single course in how to teach reading. This is like requiring a future aerospace engineer to take only a single course in physics. Reading is the fundamental skill needed for successful learning, and schools of education should make the ability to teach it a central goal of their curriculum.
Do a better job of training existing teachers. Most practicing teachers take literacy extremely seriously, but many were trained in techniques that no longer represent the state of the art. Much more is known today about how to teach reading than was known 10 or 20 years ago. Every teacher in the region, particularly in the early grades, should be given training in the most current methods to promote literacy.
Improve the quality of early education. Our society continues to make a distinction between child care and education. But children begin learning, or at least developing the capacity to learn, at birth. We need to start expecting more of child care, insisting that it provide quality learning experiences for children. In particular, we should support training programs for caregivers. One example is Heads Up Reading, a college course designed by the National Head Start Association that provides pre-school teachers with up-to-date instruction.
Surround children with quality books and other literacy resources. Giving children access to high-quality books helps them become better readers. Yet in too many of our region's classrooms, you would be hard-pressed to find even a single book, let alone a supply that children can read and that teachers know how to use to best effect.
The same can be said of software resources that can be used to aid in teaching. With help from The Heinz Endowments, the Pittsburgh schools are introducing the Waterford Early Reading program, a proven computer-aided literacy program, into all 42 elementary schools. More schools should have access to technology such as this, and to the most relevant technology of all: good books in the hands of well-trained teachers.
Engage parents. The first and arguably most important teachers in a child's life are the child's parents. But many parents either don't appreciate the importance of their role in promoting reading or don't know what to do. We should direct more effort to educating parents and, through programs like Pittsburgh's Beginning with Books, providing them with the quality books and confidence they need to help their children learn to read.
By acting in these five areas, our region could become a national leader -- not just educationally, but economically. After years of hardship and stagnation, the Pittsburgh region is on the move again. The future looks brighter than it has in decades. This is precisely the moment at which we should be asking ourselves who will get to participate in that brighter future. Will we share it with every child, or will we go on accepting failure as we have in the past?
Pittsburgh should set its sights on becoming the first region in the country where virtually every child learns to read well enough to succeed in school. It is a goal we can reach, and a standard that is long overdue.
