Why Do Some Young People Struggle With Literacy?

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Some blame elementary teachers for failing to teach reading effectively, and this may be true in some cases.

However, it is more likely that older youth have not received instruction to help them read increasingly complex texts as they've progressed through the grades. With some exceptions, older youth can usually sound out words and understand the literal meaning of their reading.

They are more likely to struggle with understanding needed vocabulary, background, or organization of arguments in the texts they encounter in their day-to-day activities. When this happens motivation often begins to wane. Such young people construct identities as "poor" or "struggling" readers, affecting their actions in and out of school ...
... (Alvermann, 2001).

In addition, most middle and high school students engage in very little sustained reading. When they do read, it is mainly from brief, teacher-created handouts and, to a lesser degree, from textbooks (Cuban, 1984; Hull & Rose, 1989; Orange & Horowitz, 1999; Weinstein, 2002). Most secondary school teachers require limited reading of primary sources or real-world materials (Wade & Moje, 2000). Most students engage in very little discussion of what they have read, how to write, or how to interpret, analyze, or otherwise respond to texts (Applebee & Langer, 2006; Hillocks, 1986).

Examinations and curriculum demands pressure secondary school subject-area teachers to cover content quickly. When they are confronted with individuals who are reluctant to read, many find it more expeditious to tell students about required content than to organize scaffolded text-based inquiry to foster understanding of content and discipline-specific literacy.

When teachers do orchestrate content area literacy instruction, they may not have the expertise or time to attend to the more significant literacy needs of some young people. Content area literacy instruction can be beneficial for all students, including those who struggle; done well, it provides them with needed guidance in using a broad range of texts and literacy practices. Despite this, some schools have reduced time spent on such instruction to provide remediation for students with limited literacy achievement (Center on Education Policy, 2007; Moje, 2008).

For some students, content area literacy instruction is necessary but not sufficient, and additional intervention is needed. But not all interventions are equally helpful. Most content teachers do not have the expertise or time to attend to youth's more significant literacy needs. Some young people who struggle with reading are identified for special education services where their needs for ongoing literacy instruction are displaced by a focus on completing class work (MacDonald, 2007). Others' needs are addressed with "quick fix" undifferentiated programs.

Such approaches are typically directed to constrained, easily measured skills, such as decoding or oral reading fluency. However, older students' difficulties vary considerably (Hinchman, 2008), and are more likely related to unconstrained, harder-to-measure skills, such as comprehension (Paris, 2005). Although some students need judicious support with constrained skills, they do not benefit when scripted decoding or fluency-focused drills are the only response offered (Allington & Walmsley, 2007).

Even when adolescents' literacy needs are recognized and funding is provided to support students who are two years or more behind grade level, U.S. educators and policymakers seem wedded to a "fix-it" remedial mentality. If researched literacy interventions do not bring students to grade level within a year, educators and policymakers deem efforts an inadequate return on investment (Viadero, 2009). Yet educators in New Zealand recently offered an alternative vision (Lai, McNaughton, Amituanai-Toloa, Turner, & Hsiao, 2009).

These authors described a sustained acceleration of comprehension achievement among the Maori and Pacifika populations that represented the New Zealand minority achievement gap. The New Zealand intervention—an ongoing teacher-research collaborative and professional learning community—invested in building teachers' adaptive expertise (Bransford, Derry, Berliner, & Hammerness, 2005) through evidence-based inquiry and by developing teachers' knowledge and repertoires of practice.

By sustaining this work over four years, the Maori and Pacifika students' performance reached grade level, results that have been replicated across several studies (McNaughton & Lai, 2009).