Literacy development begins at birth as babies listen to speech around them.
Students at risk for reading failure can be helped as early as preschool and kindergarten.
Early intervention can enable many children to become skilled readers and be ready to learn.
Both teaching children to read and learning to read can be extremely difficult.
Teachers want to help their students succeed but many don’t know how.
Most teachers have not been taught how to teach reading effectively.
Research indicates the best way to teach reading emphasizes both phonics and meaning.
New elementary school teachers in Connecticut must pass the Connecticut Foundations of Reading Test to show that they understand literacy development and can apply research-based methods in the classroom.
Connecticut public schools are encouraged to use the Response to Intervention (RTI) model to prevent literacy difficulties and to identify students for special education. Connecticut’s RTI framework, Scientific Research-Based Interventions (SRBI), is grounded in research-based teaching practices that are essential for all students.
Children who don’t read by then only have a 1 in 8 chance of catching up.
That’s when children move on from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn’ and use more challenging texts. Yet, only 4 out of 10 of Connecticut’s fourth graders scored at grade level for reading.
Connecticut’s fourth grade achievement gap is one of the largest in the nation.
Kids who can’t read well are more likely to drop out, be limited to low paying jobs and never reach their full potential. Illiteracy is common among inmates.
The 2005-06 average cost per inmate in Connecticut was about $30,500 a year. The average cost to educate a child in Connecticut was less than half as much.
This will empower them to succeed.
The lack of literacy costs businesses and taxpayers an estimated $20 billion annually.