From a NYT piece on the NEA report on reading that we linked yesterday:
...Mr. Iyengar noted that students who lived in homes with more than 100 books but whose parents only completed high school scored higher on math tests than those students whose parents held college degrees (and were therefore likely to earn higher incomes) but who lived in homes with fewer than 10 books.
and
Among the findings is that although reading scores among elementary school students have been improving, scores are flat among middle school students and slightly declining among high school seniors. These trends are concurrent with a falloff in daily pleasure reading among young people as they progress from elementary to high school, a drop that appears to continue once they enter college. The data also showed that students who read for fun nearly every day performed better on reading tests than those who reported reading never or hardly at all.
I guess this is new news: kids who have parents who like to learn also like to learn, but it's a crisis now. I blame global warming.
As a solution to the Reading Crisis, I suggest a $1 billion Federal education program called "Books Are Fun!," a fun-filled, interactive, fast-moving multi-media curriculum-enhancement module ("MMCEM"), to be designed by leading expert reading consultants from teaching colleges and then introduced into every Middle School "curriculum" by Federal law. Approximately 40,000 new union-certified "Books are Fun!" specialists will be hired to guide schools through the application of this exciting new kid-friendly program through every course of study.
Crisis solved!
