Our nation is facing a literacy crisis at all levels of the U.S. educational system.
You Are Not Alone, The Literacy Crisis Affects All of Us
Forty-three million Americans have low literacy skillsand many others know someone who struggles with reading. Now due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students are struggling to read more than ever. The 2022 NAEP Scores show that there was a nationwide decline in literacy scores. The literacy crisis is a tragedy that has been affecting our country since we began measuring the data. Devastatingly, this is still happening during a time in history when jobs are increasingly technical, and the need for highly skilled workers is continually rising.
Illiteracy impacts millions of people daily and is connected to almost every socio-economic issue in the United States. It affects physical and mental health, employment opportunities and quality of life. It impacts our classrooms, our workforce, our sense of community and belonging.
Together we can reverse the literacy crisis facing America today.
Researchers have demonstrated that virtually all children can learn to read when using methods based on the Science of Reading. We believe everyone should have access to accurate phonograms and spelling rules, which are the key to decoding and spelling.
In 2000, the National Reading Panel reviewed over 100,000 studies and came to the conclusion that there are five essential skills to teach reading: phonemic awareness, systematic phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. If these skills are incorporated into our language arts programs, our students will learn to read and write. Teaching letter-sound correspondences is the fastest way to develop the neural pathways associated with skilled reading.
When the phonograms and rules of English are taught in a systematic manner through solid, multimodality teaching methods that develop visual muscle memory, prevent reversals, and address the needs of all types of learners, we will be on our way to solving the literacy crisis for all its current victims and preventing it in future generations. The logic of English needs to be taught from the very beginning of every child's education so that everyone can succeed.
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Eide, Denise. 2012. Uncovering the Logic of English. Second. Minnesota: Logic of English.
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"Literacy Behind Prison Walls." National Center for Education Statistics. U.S. Department of Education, October 1994. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs94/94102.pdf.
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Seidenberg, Mark. 2018. Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can't, and What Can Be Done About It. Basic Books.
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