Dropouts and Young Adolescent Reading: A Crisis with a Solution
Jack W. Humphrey and Carol Lynn Thomas
American students in today’s pressure cooker society face a myriad of problems. Drugs. Violence. Poverty. Shattered home lives. The list is sobering and seemingly endless. There is one problem, however, that could possibly be eliminated. It’s not often that we can feel that confident about the likelihood of eradicating a serious problem. But this is surely one that could and should face extinction.
There is no escaping the fact we have an abysmal high school graduation rate, bad enough, in fact, to be considered a national disgrace. How can it be that almost one-third of American students do not graduate from high school? It is just as troubling to realize that most students who drop out are struggling readers. Why should our country, with its vast resources, have so many students who can’t read well?
Research indicates that dropouts readily blame uncaring teachers and lack of family support for their failure to graduate. A close look at the statistics also reveals the dropouts’ weak reading skills and subsequent dislike and avoidance of reading. Let’s face it. If you can’t read well, you are not destined for a bright future.
Let’s examine some reasons for the reading crisis and solutions toward solving it. Even though our nation’s elementary schools place significant emphasis on the teaching of reading, it would be naïve to assume all students who move on to middle schools are reading on grade level. Look at almost any middle school to discover many students in need of intensive reading instruction. Considering the severity of the problem, you would expect schools to place great emphasis on reading prior to high school. However, most students in middle grades are not enrolled in reading classes taught by licensed or certified reading teachers.
There exists the problem of where to place reading in the middle grades. Reading is often a part of a young adolescent literacy program or an English/language arts program with teachers probably trained with a literacy perspective rather than a reading perspective. (See http://mgrn.evansville.edu/lit2006.htm for an article concerning the difference between young adolescent literacy and young adolescent reading.) It costs no more to provide reading classes than any other subject, but due to a variety of needs, most American middle grades students are enrolled in English/language arts classes with English/language arts trained teachers. To add reading classes, schools need to have time in the schedule and, of course, they also need trained reading teachers. There is no denying the difficulty in achieving this arrangement.
Another problem for young adolescents is the lack of current, appealing, high-interest and useful books and other reading materials in their classrooms, homes, and school libraries. American school libraries purchase an average of about one-half book per student per year. This ensures that many school libraries have a large number of books that do not appeal to today’s young adolescents.
The Indiana University Center for Evaluation and Education Policy has tracked a program by the state of Indiana concerning book acquisitions and circulation. (http://mgrn.evansville.edu/Library%20Report%202006.pdf). Circulation rose from a per student average of 33.8 in 1997 to 43.1 in 2002 as a result of a state program that provided matching funds for new books. With the loss of funding for new books in 2002, the average circulation per student is now 32.7.
School libraries are important for potential dropouts because many do not have access to newspapers in their homes, do not have public library cards, and rarely if ever purchase books at a bookstore. These students may be reading several reading grade levels below their grade placement, so school libraries should have many high interest/low readability books and should provide lots of opportunities for potential dropouts to become engaged with the books. For a list of middle grades high interest/low readability books, see (http://mgrn.evansville.edu/vocabulary.htm).
If we want to increase our national high school graduation rate, we absolutely must empower our students with strong reading skills. We must revitalize the quality of middle school reading programs. We must renew efforts by schools systems and college teacher preparation programs to ensure that middle grades students have positive reading experiences with skilled reading teachers. To let middle school reading programs slip away would be a mistake that would haunt us for generations to come. We must not let this happen.
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