Reading Scores

The jump in children’s reading scores is very good news (Feb. 11). I do hope Times editors, perhaps drawing on their whole-language skills, will read the U.S. Education Department’s report carefully. The study reveals that children score higher when their teachers ask them to explain and discuss what they are reading--placing the ideas and emotions evoked by the text into their own context. When students wrote creatively about the content of their reading, even in the early grades, they learned more.

Your article summarized the strong effects stemming from kids’ social class backgrounds and from home practices that vary independently of class origins. Children learn to read more quickly when their parents talk with them about the meaning of what they are reading. All this confirms research by the National Academy of Sciences showing that what works is to combine whole language and phonics, then intensively involve parents.

BRUCE FULLER, Associate Professor, Education and Public Policy, UC Berkeley