The State of Adolescent
Literacy Today
Which Adolescents Are Most At Risk?
“In today’s data-happy era
of accountability, testing and No Child Left Behind, here
is the most astonishing statistic in the whole field of education:
an increasing number of researchers are saying that 1 out
of 3 public high school students won’t graduate, not
just in Shelbyville but around the nation. For Latinos and
African Americans, the rate approaches an alarming 50%. Virtually
no community, small or large, rural or urban, has escaped
the problem.”
-- Nathan Thorbough, “Dropout Nation” in the April
9, 2006 issue of Time Magazine1
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Suggested Reading
Diane August and Timothy Shanahan (Eds.). Developing Literacy
in Second-Language Learners: Report of the National Literacy
Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, 2006.
Lucy Hood. Immigrant
Students, Urban High Schools: The Challenge Continues. New
York, NY: Carnegie Corporation of New York, 2003.
Anne Grosse de León. “The
Urban High School’s Challenge: Ensuring Literacy for Every
Child.” New York, NY: Carnegie Corporation of New York,
2002.
Andrés Henríquez. Principals
Can Help Improve Literacy for English Learners. National
Association of Secondary School Principals, NewsLeader, December
2006.
Creating
a Culture of Literacy: A Guide for Middle and High School Principals.
Reston VA: National Association of Secondary School Principals,
2005.
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President George W. Bush’s “Education: The Promise of America
— Education Policy Book” begins by restating a core part of
the American identity, “Education has always been a fundamental part
of achieving the American Dream. An educated citizen is more likely to
hold a good job, escape poverty, own a home, start a business, be free
from crime, and participate in America's democracy.
2”
For generations, the world’s “tired, poor and huddled masses
yearning to breathe free
3”
have traveled to America in the belief that this voyage would enable them
to make this dream a reality for their children.
A key plank of the Bush Administration’s education policy is the
“No Child Left Behind” Act, which holds schools accountable
for delivering measurably effective literacy training through third grade.
This act has brought enormous change to American elementary education.
But with less emphasis being placed on teaching students who have been
taught to read in kindergarten through third grade to “read to learn”
in fourth to twelfth grades, today’s secondary schools are not serving
as an effective launching pad to the American dream for enough children
of immigrants. Nor are they serving as an effective launching pad to the
American dream for enough native-born African-American, Latino, low-income,
urban or learning disabled students.
4
How badly are our schools failing these students?
- “A 2004 report compiled jointly by the Harvard Civil Rights
Project, the Urban Institute and Advocates for Children of New York
found that the graduation rate was 50 percent for African Americans,
51 percent for American Indians and 53 percent for Hispanics. For
whites and Asian students, it was 75 percent and 77 percent respectively.”5
- African-American and Latino youth, students from low-income families,
students from urban “On the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills
in 2002, 66% of limited English proficient (LEP) 10th graders met
the minimum expectations on the reading test- 28% below the percentage
of students from the total population meeting those expectations…English
language learners have some of the highest drop-out rates and are
more frequently placed in lower ability groups and academic tracks
than language majority students (Latinos in Education, 1999; Ruiz-de-Velasco
& Fix, 2000; Steinberg & Almeida, 2004).”6
- “According to the National Center for Education Statistics,
kids from the lower income quarter are more than six times as likely
to drop out of high school as kids from the highest.”7
- 24% of dropouts cited needing to work to earn money as the reason
for their decision.8
- “Whereas 38 percent of 4th graders nationally were below basic
on the 2002 NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress)- i.e.,
could not meet the standard for their grade- the percentages ranged
from 52 percent to 69 percent in six large urban districts.”9
- “More than one in ten students are now identified for special
education services.”10
- As of 2001, 37.2 percent of students with disabilities had been
suspended or expelled from school and roughly 24 percent of students
with disabilities reported being physically attacked at school.11
And, while students listed in the subgroups above are at particularly
high risk for receiving low reading test scores and — as a corollary
— dropping out of high school, the picture for the fourth to twelfth
grade population of the country as a whole is not notably less bleak:
- Approximately 8 million of the 32.5 million students in fourth through
twelfth grade read below the National Assessment of Educational Progress’s
minimum or “basic” standards for their grade level. (Analysis
of the National Center for Education Statistics, 2003)
- Only 31 percent of eighth graders and 34 percent of twelfth graders
meet the National Assessment of Educational Progress standard of reading
“proficiency” for their grade level. (National Assessment
of Educational Progress, 2002)
These are alarming statistics. The days in which a mediocre or disinterested
student could drop out of high school and hope to attain lifetime financial
security at a company like General Motors or Ford are largely over. As
we move into the twenty-first century, it is ever more necessary for young
people to be educated not only in reading, but also in reading to learn…so
that they are prepared to get and keep jobs that will support themselves
and their families (“and, dare I say it — …fulfill their
own happiness.”
12)
Yet while it may be ever more necessary, young people are not graduating
from our schools equipped to read to learn:
What can be done about this problem? Carnegie Corporation of New York
is committed to exploring this question.
Next: Carnegie Corporation’s Advancing
Literacy Initiative
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