New Column: Word Gaps and Education Reform

Think about education politics for a moment. Think about big fights over education policy.

If you’re like most Americans, you’re thinking about policies touching K–12 schooling. That’s where we spend the bulk of our energy and ammunition. But we’ve known for years that many K–12 achievement gaps have their roots in language development gaps that start in the first months of life. Why don’t we include the early years in our big K–12 debates? In a new column for The 74 Million, I explore some of the ways that we could better incorporate early learning into K–12 debates:

Education discourse is a long way from responding to the challenge posed by early word gaps. It should define so much of how we talk about reforming education policies, but it rarely gets that sort of attention.

Here’s one example: a few years ago it was fashionable for governors to pass laws raising the stakes for getting all kids reading on grade level by third grade. This made — and makes — sense, since research shows that third-graders who are weak readers are less likely to graduate from high school. But if early word gaps presage later achievement gaps, it follows that efforts to get students reading on grade level in elementary school should address children before they start kindergarten at age five. Consider: for all the focus on third-grade reading levels, just one in ten first-graders who are reading below grade level will ever catch up. The point isn’t that we should convert third-grade reading laws into first-grade reading laws. It’s that defining a desired outcome (grade-level reading) isn’t the same as designing effective programs that start early enough to help schools, educators, and students reach it.

Click here to read the whole column!

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