Study effectiveness of reading programs

I am a passionate teacher who tries to inspire students to make reading part of their daily lifestyle by discussing books and helping them make meaningful connections to their own lives.

More than anything, I want my students to get excited about reading, whether it’s a fictional narrative novel or the Sunday newspaper. Passionate readers naturally read more, and reluctant readers, or readers who feel forced to read texts that bore them or are too challenging for them, tend to read less.

There is no secret there, folks. Reading programs for years have done a lot to butcher a child’s interest in reading. Sometimes after preschool, maybe kindergarten, reading becomes a chore for kids because of the monotonous question/answer formats to which they are subjected regularly.

Reading is no longer fun or enjoyable for them. The choice of reading material is often taken away and demands are made upon them that reduce their interest in reading.

The reason districts and whole communities are taking the third-grade reading guarantee seriously is because of fear, not because they support it. They are scared of the consequences of kids not passing a test.

Students are being bombarded with tedious reading assignments that do everything to diminish their interest in reading and nothing to create a lifelong passion for it. Reading assignments involve questions that often are outrageously above students’ developmental capabilities. Young children are asked to substantiate implied meanings that are well beyond their life experiences or too sophisticated for developing brains.

I implore the General Assembly to do much more research on what is developmentally appropriate and what should be expected of kids at each given age. There is a reason why so many young Ohio children might not pass “the test.”

Simply put, it’s because what legislators are expecting of kids in terms of reading ability is extraordinary.


Grandview Heights