The article references CCAAL's Time to Act: which concludes "that adolescents need a higher level of literacy than ever before, both for college-readiness and employment in the new gloabal knowledge economy".
Also, Reading Next (2004) which says "very few of these older struggling readers need help to read the words on a page; their most common problem is that they are not able to comprehend what they read." The report idenitifes 15 elements of effective instruction: direct, explicit ecomprehension instruction, strategies instruction, comprehension monitoring, metacognitive instruction, teacher modeling, scaffolded instruction, apprenticeship models.
Motivation was a topic that should be hot, according to those who were surveyed. Taboada (2009) identifed 5 dimensions of reading: perceived control, interest, self-efficacy, involvement, and social collaboration.
Ending quote from Brozo: "To me it is at the heart of why programmatic initiatives are failing. They are decontextualized; meaningful learning is not taking place. Students today have so many options for gaining information other than print. We need to focus on ways to engage students with their texts."
