Fordham’s Reading and Writing Instruction in America’s Schools looks at how teaching has changed in the Common Core era. Middle and high school teachers report students are better at citing evidence from the text, a Core priority, the report finds. However, teachers are “more likely to assign texts based on students’ current reading levels—as opposed to their grade levels—contrary to the intent of the standards.” In addition teachers are assigning fewer classic works of liter

By the age of three, children growing up in poverty hear 30 million fewer words than the children of educated parents, concluded a study published in 1992. Since then, encouraging low-income, less-educated mothers to talk more to their young children has been seen as a way to narrow the achievement gap, writes Anya Kamenetz on NPR. The “word gap” research “inspired early intervention programs, including the citywide effort Providence Talks in Rhode Island, the Boston-based Re

We’re teaching reading wrong, writes Natalie Wexler in The Atlantic. U.S. schools spend a lot of time on reading skills in the early grades, very little teaching history, science or the arts. If students struggle with comprehension, “history and science may continue to be relegated to the far back burner through middle school.” Reading proficiency hasn’t improved in 20 years on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), writes Wexler. The latest results showed gain