Literacy

This policy brief from the Alliance for Excellent Education makes a number of federal policy recommendations that might support states’ comprehensive literacy plans, including: support for college and career ready standards, support for state level literacy teams, support for teacher education and professional development focused on content literacy, and investment in ongoing research and evaluation. Authors argue that major commitments are necessary from state and federal agencies to make substantial improvements in literacy achievement.

This policy report from the Southern Region Education Board discusses the importance of increasing students’ adolescent literacy skills. The committee that authored the report provides a set of recommendations for middle and high schools that will help achieve this goal, and in turn, help students achieve higher success in other areas as well.

This report discusses the importance of early literacy in order to prepare adolescents to be college and career ready. It states that literacy crosses over into other subject areas such as science and math and problem solving skills in life. The authors suggest that linking instruction to the growing knowledge base on literacy and using current outcome data and best practices can help bridge this gap and lead to more prepared students.

This report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) examines findings from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessment of 12th graders in public and private high schools across the U.S. and reports on reading and mathematics scores and trends for that group of students. The report found that average mathematics scores were higher in 2009 than in 2005 overall, and that the overall average reading score was also higher in 2009 than in 2005.

This fact sheet is an overview of the current state of high school literacy instruction and achievement as well as the importance of obtaining a high level of literacy prior to leaving high school.

This synthesis reviews the research on adolescent literacy from the past 20 years. Implications for classroom practice are discussed and organized as follows: Instructional Implications, Curricular/Program Implications, Structural/Systemic Implications, Professional Development Implications, and Assessment Implications. Implications for classroom practice based on this review are discussed.

This research brief from the National High School Center summarizes student and teacher outcomes, lessons learned, and other findings from an American Institutes for Research evaluation of the Alabama Reading Initiative at the secondary school level. The Alabama Reading Initiative (ARI) addresses literacy and includes a focus on high school students.

This meta-analysis of 31 studies examined whether reading interventions could assist elementary, middle, and high school students with reading difficulties and learning disabilities. Overall, results showed that students who received a reading intervention outperformed students in the control group. This positive effect was also found for students with disabilities across all measures. Further, with few exceptions, studies that examined reading comprehension found that reading interventions could have a positive effect on reading comprehension.

This Alliance for Excellent Education policy brief provides an overview of the data collected on student writing achievement, recommends more opportunities for students to practice writing in school, encourages schools to teach better writing instruction, and offers policymakers suggestions on how to support school improvement efforts in this area.