It’s pretty obvious that our schools really struggle to teach kids how to read because many students never learn to read very well.

For example, in the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the NAEP Data Explorer online web tool shows fewer than half of the nation’s white public school fourth grade students (46 percent) read proficiently. Meanwhile, in Kentucky the white proficiency rate was even lower at just 41 percent. That’s all after 27 expensive years of Kentucky Education Act of 1990 (KERA) reforms.

Things are much worse for black students. Nationwide, only 19 percent were proficient while Kentucky’s black fourth graders only posted a 16 percent proficiency rate in 2017.(Side Note: Notice that once scores are broken out by race, both Kentucky’s white and black students DO NOT perform above the national average for NAEP fourth grade reading in 2017. In fact the white difference is statistically significant)Because school curricula are designed with the assumption that by the fourth grade students can read to learn – even though that isn’t true in far too many cases – many students complete their last nine years of school in a sort of learning fog where not just reading, but all subjects, are difficult to comprehend.

So, why does this tragedy continue? Click the "Read more" link and find out.

Forbes has jumped in with an article titled “Hard But Important Words About Why So Many Kids Struggle To Read” that gets to the heart of the matter: too many of our teachers, and even our education school faculty, simply ignore tons of research and just don’t know how to teach reading effectively.

Forbes lays it right out:

“Many teachers have never learned how to teach reading using the method that science has determined to be effective” and “Others simply reject the evidence.”

But, there is more. The Forbes article actually builds on an American Public Media (APM) piece that has even more information.

One interesting point from the APM article is that poverty really isn’t an excuse based on research conducted in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania schools. It turns out that wealthy students there also were having reading problems.

Part of the real problem, as APM points out, is that:

“The basic assumption that underlies typical reading instruction in many schools is that learning to read is a natural process, much like learning to talk. But decades of scientific research have revealed that reading doesn't come naturally. The human brain isn't wired to read. Kids must be explicitly taught how to connect sounds with letters — phonics.”

APM talks about tons of research that shows phonics instruction is key and then continues:

“But this research hasn't made its way into many elementary school classrooms. The prevailing approaches to reading instruction in American schools are inconsistent with basic things scientists have discovered about how children learn to read.”

How is this possible? APM says:

“Many educators don't know the science, and in some cases actively resist it. The resistance is the result of beliefs about reading that have been deeply held in the educational establishment for decades, even though those beliefs have been proven wrong by scientists over and over again.”

Can you believe it. After more than 2-1/2 decades of KERA reforms in Kentucky, during which we were told again and again that our schools were using what research shows works (current buzzword, “Balanced Literacy,” also discussed by APM), the truth is with far more than half of our kids still not reading adequately by the fourth grade, it’s clear that what we’ve been told just isn’t right.

Instead, is seems like too many of Kentucky’s kids are being taught using ineffective, unscientific ideas. Meanwhile, many of our teachers might not have ever been taught and do not know what decades of real reading research shows.

It’s time for some changes. That needs to start with a serious exploration of what, exactly, Kentucky’s education schools are teaching about reading instruction. Because, unless Kentucky is somehow unusual, the Forbes and APM articles indicate that Ed School instruction might be sorely lacking in a solid foundation about what works for reading instruction and that needs to change, now.