Must Reading

Richard Colvin makes the case against allowing the scandals around Reading First and the less than glowing results of the recently released Impact Study of the program to launch a new reading wars. We concur. The lesson from Impact Study is not that we’ve placed too much emphasis on decoding (Kids who can’t decode have no hope of comprehending, and the Impact Study does show that Reading First works to improve first graders’ decoding skills), but that we also have to do much more to improve children’s background knowledge and vocabulary so that they can understand what they read.