America's Reading Crisis

Strong reading skills propel us to achieve success in school and advance through postsecondary education, get a job and keep it, increase our level of earnings, and more. Conversely, difficulty with basic reading skills and comprehension can throw one obstacle after another in our path. In fact, research shows that a lack of literacy proficiency can have compounding negative impacts on future life outcomes. 

 So, it is deeply troubling that at a time when it is becoming increasingly clear that proficient reading and comprehension skills are critical steppingstones toward long-term success, many American students fail to adequately comprehend what they read. Learning to read, of course, does not occur at one age or one place. It is a deeply complex journey with many hurdles along the way—each with the potential to derail a new reader's progress. Many American children make this journey successfully, if not with a little difficulty, and are able to reap the benefits of having access to effective skills. But a large number of 5th- through 10th-grade children struggle to develop key foundational skills, without which developing effective reading and comprehension becomes nearly insurmountable. Some of these children face immense obstacles on their journey due to constraints related to their socioeconomic status; others fall prey to a maladaptive cycle where failure to read feeds on itself. There will also be those who disengage from reading, lacking interest in the material or the background knowledge necessary for meaningful engagement. Some confront challenges on all of these fronts. 

The purpose of this paper is to more deeply explore reasons for low reading proficiency and, importantly, offer tangible recommendations in one sector— assessment—for improving the prospects of less skilled readers. The authors start with an overview of America's reading crisis, discussing the scope of the problem and providing context for the troubling results we see. They then turn our attention to a discussion of skill-based explanations for low reading and comprehension ability, and then go on to describe how some students can be caught in a maladaptive cycle when it comes to developing reading skills.  Among the things they look at is how to increase students' desire to read and gain opportunities for early success, thus increasing their chances of continual development of reading skills.