Popular programs stay entrenched even after admitting flaws. Gatekeepers prefer familiar dogma over the hard work of changing course.
Half a century after the book “Why Johnny Can’t Read” sounded an alarm about the rise of illiteracy in the U.S., the problem has only gotten worse. A quarter of all young adults, many of them high-school graduates, are now functionally illiterate. Unable to read more than basic, short sentences, their prospects in today’s information economy are bleak.
This crisis gave rise to a movement that embraced the science of reading and produced a surprising success story in the Deep South, a region dogged by the highest rates of childhood illiteracy in the nation. State leaders and education reformers in Mississippi and Louisiana led a remarkable improvement in elementary reading scores that now rank among the highest in the nation.
