Read across America returns!

NEA Today, Jan 1999 by Chase, Bob

The dapper Cat in the Hat and the definitive National Academy of Sciences make a great team.

Last year on March 2, the late Dr. Seuss's birthday, NEA and its friends organized a national read-in.

We wanted to concentrate the minds of adults on the importance and joy of reading books to small children.

We called our event Read Across America, and, frankly, it succeeded beyond our wildest expectations. Almost a million NEA members and 10 million children took part.

Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels, once wrote: "When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me." Never before had Swift's famous words been tested on such a grand scale. Read Across America was truly a Swiftian experience.

And this year we're doing it again. Read Across America returns because really important messages bear repeating, and few messages are more important: Read a book to a child, and you'll be making a world of difference in that child's life.

What's more, we're convinced that we can use this year's Read Across America as a springboard to do something even more lasting in the cause of literacy.

Last year, with a protean boost from the wonderful Dr. Seuss, Read Across America connected public educators with people from every walk of American life. This year's celebration promises to be even bigger, better, and bolder-as you'll see on page 6.

But there's only so much we can accomplish in one day, once a year.

We need to think beyond one day, and now is an excellent time for us to be taking the initiative in reading. The mini-war between phonics and whole language is ending. The recent release of the National Academy of Sciences report on reading brought down the curtain on this ridiculous conflict. Common sense, research, and pragmatism are winning out over ideology.

In reading the Academy's report, Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, I kept hearing the words of the reading teacher who has endeavored to educate me, a middle school teacher with no training in the teaching of reading.

"Bob, it's not an either-or proposition. An effective reading program integrates both whole language-literature-and phonics."

Well, after the most thorough examination to date of research about reading, a "balanced" reading program is what the Academy recommends, too.

"Research consistently shows that children who get off to a good start in reading rarely stumble," the Academy report notes. "Those who fall behind tend to stay behind for the rest of their academic lives."

We already know that some children are far more likely than others to have difficulties learning to read. Let's be prepared, the Academy urges, to get these children the help they needbefore they fail in school, before they are labeled, and before costly remediation is necessary.

I also recommend to you the National Research Council's somewhat more user-friendly spin-off of the Academy's report, Starting Out Right, A Guide to Promoting Children's Reading Success.

Starting Out Right emphasizes the complex nature of teaching reading: "In just about every school in America, some kids enter the first grade reading on a third grade level, whereas others are not able to reliably recognize all the letters of the alphabet. Teachers, most of them faced with more than 20 children, have to find ways to make sure that each child makes progress every day."

In other words, the teaching of reading is, in fact, rocket science.

Since every child should be reading at grade level by the beginning of the fourth grade-and about 40 percent are not-the challenge for America's professional educators is clear: What can we do to help every child become a skilled and enthusiastic reader?

If you have suggestions, send them to our NEA reading initiative coordinator Barbara Yentzer at byentzer@nea.org.

The historian Edward Gibbon once said that an "early and invincible love of reading" was worth more to him than all the treasures of India. A nation of invincible young readers-now there's a goal worth striving for.

Comments? You can E-mail me directly at BobChase@nea.org.

For copies of Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children and Starting Out Right, contact National Academy Press, 2101 Constitution Ave., N.W, Lockbox 285, Washington, DC 20005, 800/624-6242. On the Web: www:nap.edu.