Now that a scientific consensus has been reached on how best to teach children to decode words, the time has come to move on to challenge of boosting their reading comprehension. The Spring 2003 issue of American Educator focuses on this topic. The lead article, by E.D. Hirsch, explains how weak comprehension ruins poor children's chances to achieve academic success. Kate Walsh of the National Council for Teacher Quality looks at how elementary textbooks fail to teach the kind of sustained building of word and domain knowledge that's essential for increased reading comprehension. Other articles review research on poor youngster's fourth-grade slump in literacy development and on the vast gap between the number of words heard by three-year-olds depending on whether they are living in wealthy or poor households.
"Reading Comprehension Requires Knowledge-of Words and the World," by E.D. Hirsch; "Lost Opportunity," by Kate Walsh, "Poor Children's Fourth-Grade Slump," by Jeanne Chall and Vicki Jacobs; "The Early Catastrophe," by Betty Hart and Todd Risley; and other articles are available at http://www.aft.org/american_educator/.