Children's Literacy: The Basis of Learning

Being literate means knowing how to use language with confidence, whether listening, speaking, reading, or writing. Literacy skills are taught in school, but there are many ways that parents—a child's first and most influential teachers—can start children out on the road to success and help them enjoy the trip.

Access to books is fundamental to reading success.

• Increasing access to print material is the most successful way to improve the reading achievement of children. Communities ranking high on achievement tests have several factors in common:  an abundance of books in public libraries, easy access to books in the community at large, and a large number of text books per student.

• According to a recent study by Educational Testing Service, the more types of reading materials there are in the home, the higher students achieve in reading proficiency. A positive relationship was found between the number of different types of reading materials reported in students' homes and their average scores on the 1999 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Reading for grade 4.

• On the 2001 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), having children's books in the home appeared more important for fostering literacy among young children than having books in general. Students from homes with more than 10 children's books had average scores of 86 points higher than scores of students from homes with 10 or less children's books.

Children who read frequently are better readers and better students.

• The NAEP 2000 reading assessment of fourth-grade students found that reading for fun had a positive relationship to NAEP reading scores. The 87 percent of students who reported reading for fun on their own time once a month or more performed mostly at the Proficient level, while students who never or hardly ever read for fun performed typically at the Basic level. Students who read for fun every day tended to score the highest.

• The NAEP data also indicated that fourth graders who reported reading 11 or more pages daily for school and for homework had higher reading test scores than students who read fewer pages daily. Sixty percent of fourth graders reported reading 11 or more pages daily for school and for homework in 2000 compared to 54 percent in 1994 and 56 percent in 1992.

• Generally, the more students read for fun on their own time, the higher their reading scores. A recent NAEP study found that between 1984 and 1999, however, the percentage of twelfth-graders who reported that they "never" or "hardly ever" read for fun increased from 9 percent to 16 percent.

Parents play a crucial role in their children's education. Taking time to read with a child is one of the most important activities that adults can share with their children.

• Children who report that their parents encourage them to read are more likely to read a higher volume of books (63 percent read more than 10 books a year) than those who say that their parents leave it up to them (51 percent read more than 10 books a year).

• When asked to compare the amount of time that they spend reading with the amount of time their parents spend reading, more than a third (36 percent) of young people, including 42 percent of young women and 30 percent of young men, report that they read more in their spare time than their parents.

• A study reviewing parents' provision of early reading activities—such as word games, alphabet songs, and drawings—found that the number of literacy activities in the home was positively related to reading achievement in every country that participated in the 2001 PIRLS study. On average, students who had a high level of home activities enjoyed a 20-point advantage in reading performance over students in the medium level category who, in turn, scored an average of 20 points above students in the low category.

• In 1999, 26 percent of children who were read to three or more times in the last week by a family member recognized all letters of the alphabet compared to 14 percent of children read to less frequently. According to recent figures by the National Center for Education Statistics, children who were read to frequently also are more likely than those who were not to count to 20 or higher (60 percent versus 44 percent), to write their own names (54 percent versus 40 percent), and to read or pretend to read (77 percent versus 57 percent).