Adolescent Literacy in America

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The need for basic literacy skills is vital in order for our nation to continue to operate successfully. With approximately 5 million students, graduating below the National Standard for Literacy and unable to read, we must take a look at the curriculum and teaching techniques to assess whether the current systems need to be revised to better assure ALL students are successful. (Adolescent Literacy: A Policy Research Belief p. 1) The issue begins first with the definition of “Literacy”, and the fact that there are several aspects of literacy which are not currently included in the curriculum. Another issue is the “old” standards which are in place do not support the level of diversity which is now seen in many school systems. Then comes the issue of funding for schools and many schools in better neighborhoods obtain the highest level of private, and public funding and therefore are able to provide the higher level of education. However, in “The Literacy Education for All, Results for the Nation (LEARN) Act”, Senator Patty Murray states, “Research also shows that low income children are less likely to have access to high quality, literacy rich environments. These same children perform 40% lower on assessments of literacy achievement even before they start kindergarten.” (Murray) So, whose responsibility is it to ensure the success of the upcoming generations? Will the Federal Government step in to create a better system for the generations to come? There are quite a few solutions which have been used by Teachers, but with such an “old” system in place the issues of diversity, financial demand, inflexibility of the curriculum to assist individual students, classroom sizes increasing on a yearly basis, pressure to achieve sp...

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...bly when it comes to the success of our nation for years to come.

Works Cited

"Adolescent Literacy: A Policy Research Belief." Adolescent Literacy. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2007.

Camangian, Patrick. "Adolescent Literacy Policy; Making People Our Policy: Grounding Literacy in Lives." Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy (2011): 458-460.

Haynes, Mariana. "The Federal Role in Confronting the Crisis in Adolescent Literacy." Education Digest (2011): 10 (6).

Jtneill. Wikipedia. 02 10 2009. 24 07 2011 .

Murray, Senator Patty. "The Literacy Education for All, Results for the Nation (LEARN) Act." S. 929. Washington, DC: United States Senate; 112th Congress, 10 05 2011.

Standards for the English Language Arts. Newark, DE: International Reading Association, 1996.

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