Younger kids are reading better:
Credit Harry Potter, higher standards or tough-as-nails elementary school teachers, but a new federal report says the typical 9-year-old in the USA now reads more each day than a 17-year-old. The difference shows: Statistics released Thursday show that 9-year-olds' reading skills have risen since 1971, and the biggest jump has come in the past five years.Reading skills of high schoolers have actually dipped since 1999 and are essentially unchanged in a generation. The results come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a congressionally mandated standardized test. They show that 17-year-olds' skills actually declined in both math and reading, while the scores of younger students improved in both. Math scores for 13-year-olds rose sharply, but their reading scores didn't.
Part of the reason for the 9-year-olds' advances might be tucked into a survey released along with the scores. It shows that 25% of elementary schoolers now read more than 20 pages a day in school and for homework, nearly double the percentage of 1984.
Meanwhile, 17-year-olds' reading habits have barely budged. Only 23% of high schoolers read 20 pages or more a day, up from 21% in 1984.
Good Lord. It's hard to be happy for the 9-year-olds when you realize that older teens, despite the recent explosion of young adult literature, are barely cracking the books. The older kids could be putting down ridiculous numbers on the NAEP, which doesn't directly affect them, but the overall picture is still pretty sad.
I'd be interested in a longitudinal analysis of this kind of data. Will the current 9-year-olds continue to do well as they age? Or is there something still flawed in the system that will cause their performance to drop off as they reach the higher grades?
Posted by kswygert at July 15, 2005 07:40 AM