Reading Next: A Vision for Action and Research in Middle and High School Literacy combines the best research available with well-crafted strategies for turning that research into practice. Informed by five of the nation’s leading researchers, Reading Next charts an immediate route to improving adolescent literacy. The authors outline 15 key elements of an effective literacy intervention, and call on public and private stakeholders to invest in the literacy of middle and high school students today, while simultaneously building the knowledge base.
Along with reading comprehension, writing skill is a predictor of academic success and a basic requirement for participation in civic life and in the global economy. Yet every year in the United States, large numbers of adolescents graduate from high school unable to write at the basic levels required by colleges and employers. Writing Next: Effective Strategies to Improve Writing of Adolescents in Middle and High Schools, commissioned by Carnegie Corporation of New York and published by the Alliance for Excellent Education, discusses eleven specific teaching techniques that research suggests will help improve the writing abilities of the country’s 4th- to 12th-grade students.
