Bending the Reading Growth Trajectory: Instructional Strategies to Promote Reading Skills and Close the Readiness Gap

An Education Week article summarizes the postsecondary readiness gap in unequivocal terms: “High school completion does not equal college readiness”(Gewertz, 2011). In particular, research findings that quantify how well students need to read in order to succeed in postsecondary pursuits have finally dispelled the false assumption that graduating high school is sufficient to prepare students for the challenges of college and careers. In his investigation of postsecondary reading demands, MetaMetrics Research Scientist Gary L.Williamson, Ph.D. discovered a substantial leap in reading expectations and text complexity from high school to postsecondary domains— a gap large enough to help account for high remediation rates and disheartening graduation statistics (Williamson, 2008)