Why Does the Volume of Reading Matter?
See how the volume of reading influences reading comprehension. Could the volume of reading matter more than intelligence in reading comprehension?
What did Anne S. Cunningham and Keith Stanovich discover in their research?
https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/cunningham.pdf
What are the barriers to more reading which Cunningham and Stanovich advocate?
How do literacy practices influence the achievement gap in high schools?
Why do school districts rely so heavily on textbooks in high school history classrooms? What are the consequences of this decision?
The excerpt below is from The Wasted Years: American Youth, Race, and the Literacy Gap by James McCabe. Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. It describes the decision of the Montgomery County school system to depend on textbooks alone in most of the history courses being offered in high schools, and what the consequences of this decision are. While the spending numbers in this chapter are out-of-date, the recommendations at the end of the chapter may still useful to you as you work improve the reading skills of the students in your high school.
And for a very recent look at the barriers teachers face ordering books in Montgomery County, Maryland, see this abbreviated description of the instructional materials review process. The total process is here. It looks like nineteen steps are involved. Each must be fulfilled before a simple biography can arrive in a classroom. Obviously, the process makes it extremely difficult for teachers to obtain exciting books for their classes.
Here is the chapter with the recommendations about changing literacy practices.
