Kentucky Department of Education

View the latest reports on literacy topics from a variety of national groups and researchers.

Reading Next--Reading Next, a report to the Carnegie Corporation of New York combines the best research currently available with strategies for turning research into practice. Outlined are 15 key elements of an effective literacy intervention for middle and high school students.

Writing Next-- Writing Next: Effective Strategies to Improve Writing of Adolescents in Middle and High Schools, commissioned by Carnegie Corporation of New York and published by the Alliance for Excellent Education, discusses eleven specific teaching techniques that research suggests will help improve the writing abilities of the country’s 4th- to 12th-grade students.
 
Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas: Getting to the Core of Middle and High School Improvement
According to the Carnegie Corporation, "Today, more than six million of the nation’s secondary school students fall well short of grade-level expectations in reading and writing. Recognizing the urgency of this literacy crisis among middle and high school students, policymakers in all parts of the country have begun to implement a wide range of new programs and services designed to help struggling adolescent readers catch up in essential literacy skills, particularly reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. However—and as this report argues—if students are to be truly prepared for the sophisticated intellectual demands of college, work, and citizenship, then these reforms will not be enough. Even as their schools help them to catch up in the basics, students also must be taught the advanced literacy skills that will enable them to succeed in the academic content areas—particularly the core content areas of math, science, English, and history."
 
The Next Chapter:  A School Board Guide to Improving Adolescent Literacy
According to Susan Frost in the introduction to this report, "Literacy is the key to high school graduation. We know that an eighth-grader’s reading level is the strongest
predictor of whether he or she will succeed in high school. Students reading in the bottom quartile are 20 times more likely to drop out of high school than students reading in the top quartile.
Literacy is the driver of academic improvement across all subjects. In its recent report, Reading Between the Lines, ACT found that student readiness for college-level reading appears to substantially affect readiness for college-level work in other areas, specifically English, mathematics, and science. Yet, few middle and high school content-area teachers today know how to reinforce literacy skills while teaching in their own subject areas."