The costs and benefits of sponsoring literacy learning

Here's a short analysis piece from the New York Times that illuminates some of the issues that Deborah Brandt's article from this week tried to analyze: the costs and benefits of sponsoring literacy learning, especially across communities and school districts that vary widely in their wealth and resources:

People disagree, quite strenuously, on the best curriculum for teaching children to read. But all participants in the reading wars agree on some other things: Early reading is crucial — a child who does not read proficiently by third grade will probably fall further and further behind each year. American schools are failing: two out of three fourth graders don’t read at grade level.

And they agree on something else: any reading curriculum works better if children who are struggling get the chance to work, one on one, with a tutor. [...]

The problem, of course, is that very few principals can afford it. A single teacher dedicated to individual tutoring can work effectively with a small number of children each week. How many teachers would be needed to help all struggling students? The schools where tutoring is most needed, moreover, are those that can least afford it.

Is there a cheaper substitute that’s still effective? Health care in places where resources are short benefits from task-shifting: moving jobs to the lowest-trained and lowest-paid people who can do them well. That way, the expensive professionals can concentrate on the things that only they can do.

Resources are always short in education. So it is welcome news that two recent studies show that task-shifting tutoring programs can work on a wide scale — and that scale can be achieved relatively affordably.

Check out the whole piece and tell us what you think in the comments.