The Shocking Reality of Literacy in America

In Extended Learning, students in Ms. Shaw's FUSION Reading Intervention have started the decoding strategy titled "The Bridging Strategy". In today's lesson, students learned about the 2004 American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino and her shocking secret of being functionally illiterate. After our discussion how the shock that a celebrity (or any other American) is functionally illiterate, students watched the following video clip. Students were shocked to learn that over 40 million Americans lack the basic skills in literacy society demands. Students gasped at the fact that 4 out of 10 reading-aged students in American schools could not read the video.

While interventions might not always be popular with our students and their families, largely out of fear of labeling or ostracizing them, FUSION Reading has brought great gains to the strategic group of freshmen and sophomores at Clayton Ridge High School. Upon completing "The Prediction Strategy", each student made significant gains on the Winter Benchmark assessment, each student has advanced in bi-weekly progress monitoring (some so much so that their data is off the charts AIMSweb graphs), and each student significantly improved from the pre-test to the post-test of "The Prediction Strategy". Several students' scores in each of these areas suggest that FUSION Reading has improved these students' basic skills in reading and brought them a sense of achievement they may not otherwise have been rewarded.

As you'll see in this video, we have to have a reading revolution. And, we need students' support. We need parents' support. We need teachers' support. We need board support. We need political support. And with this support, we CAN make a difference and change our nation's current trends.