Why do so few American kids read well?, a teacher asks literacy researcher Timothy Shanahan. Only 37 percent of 4th graders are proficient readers, according to the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Blaming poverty or parents or screen time is a way of dodging responsibility, Shanahan writes. Some U.S. schools do a much better job teaching children from low-income families; some countries do much better than the U.S.

Most U.S. schools don’t spend enough time on “explicit teaching and guided practice aimed at developing knowledge of words (including phonemic awareness, phonics, letter names, spelling, morphology, vocabulary); oral reading fluency; reading comprehension; and writing,” writes Shanahan. “And, for English learners (and perhaps poverty kids too)—explicit oral language teaching.”

I’ve argued that at least half of the instructional time (perhaps more) should be spent reading and writing.

That means in a reading comprehension lesson, there will be teacher-led demonstrations and explanations, and guided discussions, and so on—but the kids would be reading throughout these activities. The same is true for decoding instruction; a big chunk of that time should involve the kids in decoding and encoding words.

Shanahan doesn’t believe in reading levels, except for absolute beginners. “Teaching kids at their supposed ‘reading levels’ hasn’t been found to facilitate learning, but it does lower the sophistication and complexity of the content and language kids are working with,” he argues.

He also cites “lack of a knowledge-focused curriculum,” including science and Social Studies.

Writing in Education Week, Susan Pimentel agrees that “students’ reading comprehension depends heavily on their background knowledge about the world — knowledge that comes largely from learning about science and social studies topics.” Yet, elementary teachers are spending less time teaching science and social studies.

Emily Hanford’s APM story, Why aren’t kids being taught to read?, has had a big impact.