NEA:: To Read or Not To Read

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) released, To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence, on Nov. 19th. A new and comprehensive analysis of reading patterns in the United States. To Read or Not To Read gathers statistics from more than 40 studies on the reading habits and skills of children, teenagers, and adults. The report reveals recent declines in voluntary reading and test scores alike, exposing trends that have severe consequences for American society.

"The new NEA study is the first to bring together reliable, nationally representative data, including everything the federal government knows about reading," said NEA Chairman Dana Gioia. "This study shows the startling declines, in how much and how well Americans read, that are adversely affecting this country's culture, economy, and civic life as well as our children's educational achievement."

Americans are reading less - teens and young adults read less often and for shorter amounts of time compared with other age groups and with Americans of previous years.

~ Less than 33% of 13-year-olds are daily readers, a 14% decline from 20 years earlier.

~ Among 17-year-olds, the % of non-readers doubled over a 20-year period, from 9% in 1984 to 19 % in 2004.

~ On average, Americans ages 15-24 spend almost 2 hours a day watching TV, and only 7 minutes of their daily leisure time on reading.

Americans are reading less well – reading scores continue to worsen, especially among teenagers and young males. By contrast, the average reading score of 9-year-olds has improved.

~ Reading scores for 12th-grade readers fell significantly from 1992 to 2005, with the sharpest declines among lower-level readers.

~ 2005 reading scores for male 12th-graders are 13 points lower than for female 12th-graders, and that gender gap has widened since 1992.

~ Reading scores for American adults of almost all education levels have deteriorated, notably among the best-educated groups.

~ From 1992 to 2003, the % of adults with graduate school experience who were rated proficient in prose reading dropped by 10 points, a 20% rate of decline.

The declines in reading have civic, social, and economic implications – Advanced readers accrue personal, professional, and social advantages. Deficient readers run higher risks of failure in all three areas.

~ Nearly 2/3rd’s of employers ranked reading comprehension "very important" for high school graduates. Yet 38% consider most high school graduates deficient in this basic skill.

~ American 15-year-olds ranked 15th in average reading scores for 31 industrialized nations, behind Poland, Korea, France, and Canada, among others.

~ Literary readers are more likely than non-readers to engage in positive civic and individual activities – such as volunteering, attending sports or cultural events, and exercising.

To Read or Not To Read expands the investigation of the NEA's landmark 2004 report, Reading at Risk. While that report focused mainly on literary reading trends, To Read or Not To Read looks at all varieties of reading, including fiction and nonfiction genres in various formats such as books, magazines, newspapers, and online reading. Whereas the earlier report assessed reading among adults age 18 and older, To Read or Not To Read analyzes reading trends for youth and adults, and readers of various education levels.

some reactions:

Are we reading less? Are we reading worse? Probably not.
Stephen Krashen

The new report is likely to provoke as much debate as the previous one. Stephen Krashen, a professor emeritus of education at the University of Southern California, said that based on his analysis of other data, reading was not on the decline. He added that the endowment appeared to be exaggerating the decline in reading scores and said that according to federal education statistics, the bulk of decreases in 12th-grade reading scores had occurred in the early 1990s, and that compared with 1994 average reading scores in 2005 were only one point lower.

Timothy Shanahan, past president of the International Reading Association and a professor of urban education and reading at the University of Illinois at Chicago, suggested that the endowment’s report was not nuanced enough. “I don’t disagree with the N.E.A.’s notion that reading is important, but I’m not as quick to discount the reading that I think young people are really doing,” he said, referring to reading on the Internet. He added, “I don’t think the solutions are as simple as a report like this might be encouraging folks to think they might be.”

Reading & Writing @ Adult Literacy Programs:

Writer To Writer - CLLS, SCLLN, BALIT

Write to Read, Alameda County Library’s Adult Literacy Program, is proud to announce the publication of several student and staff writings in the September 2007 issue of The Change Agent, a national adult education newspaper for social justice.

DLC Adult Literacy Community:
We need to learn read and write as if our lives depended on it.

Read Write Now video: Learning is Power