The September 2004 issue of the Middle School Journal contains an article entitled Using Literacy Leadership to Improve the Achievement of Struggling Students.  The article explains how to develop a literacy action plan and how to achieve literacy leadership.  The word ”reading” can’t seem find an important and exclusive place as a middle school topic.

     The newest catalog from Stenhouse Publishers contains information about a 144 page book entitled Do I Really Have to Teach Reading? Content Comprehension, Grades 6-12.  This book’s title shows how futile it is to not have reading classes.  There is certainly a role for content area teachers to apply reading strategies, but this should be in addition to the daily work done by skilled reading teachers in reading classes.   

     The uncertainty about reading comes at a time when over one-fourth of the nation’s students who enter the ninth grade do not graduate in four years.  There is probably no football stadium in the United States that could hold all of the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students within each state that will enter high school but not graduate in four years.  For example, the football stadium at Indiana University seats 52,354, Notre Dame University seats 59,075, Purdue University seats 62,500, and the RCA Dome of the Indianapolis Colts seats 57,890, but with 26 percent of Indiana students who will not graduate from high school in four years if the present percentages continue, the 63,930 would be too many for the seats available.

     Indiana has only two percent of the nation’s population and has a little above average graduation rate, so it is obvious that many of the nation’s middle grades students will not complete high school.  And sadly to say, middle grades schools often do not have licensed reading teachers and reading courses but rather find time for other subjects and activities by placing students in language arts classes where the teachers are expected to teach writing and literacy/reading in half the time usually allotted to reading and English in K-8 schools prior to the advent of middle and junior high schools. 

     This may be why middle schools are under attack in Georgia.  The state's largest newspaper, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, said in a recent editorial that the failure of the state's middle schools to demonstrate significant academic progress is grounds for returning to a K-8 model.  But the 6-8 grade configuration is not the problem.  Reading courses can be provided in any grade-level configuration.

     If all middle grades students were enrolled in reading classes with licensed reading teachers through the eighth grade and all entering high school students who are potential dropouts were enrolled in reading classes with skilled reading teachers, we should expect reading teachers to have the tools to find out who needs special help, provide appropriate levels of reading materials, use direct instruction as needed, give boys special attention, help students improve their study skills, connect students with newspapers and school and public libraries, be reading role models, and continue learning about the teaching of reading.           

      More students need to be successful in high school and graduate on time.  To do this, they need to read well enough to succeed in all of their classes.  The job of reading educators is to make certain that the students in their classes, during the time they spend with them, are kept on target to graduate from high school. 

      Ultimately, ensuring that reading is not the reason that a student drops out of school is not about worry concerning all the negative problems associated with our communities and schools.  It is not about playing esoteric games with reading by obscuring it under language arts or literacy.  It is not about spending time engaging the impossible.  It is, or should be, about identifying and taking the steps necessary to allow a larger percentage of students to have the reading skills necessary for success in high school and life.  The first step is to provide middle grades reading classes separate from English/language arts classes and employ skilled, licensed reading teachers.  This will not prevent all students from graduating from high school, but it will significantly reduce the number.