My former colleague at USA Today, Greg Toppo, offers this great piece today.

I haven’t blogged on Beth Fertig’s new book, Why Can’t U Teach Me 2 Read? because I’m still reading it. Toppo was always a fast reader. I was only able to capture part of this article; I suggest going to the link to pick up Greg’s Q&A.

U.S. illiteracy: Why Johnny still can’t read

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
By the time he was 17, Antonio Rocha had bounced among 11 New York City schools and was reading at a first-grade level.
It wasn’t until he told school officials “I want a lawyer!” that things began to change.

STUDY: 1 in 7 U.S. adults can’t read this story
TWITTER: Follow this reporter @gtoppo
With the help of an advocacy group, Rocha pressured the city to pay for 480 hours of private tutoring, which eventually helped him read at a functional level. Now 20 and working for United Parcel Service, he’s one of three people profiled (and the only one comfortable with being identified) in WNYC Radio reporter Beth Fertig’s new book, Why Cant U Teach Me 2 Read?.

“Compensatory education” complaints are increasingly being used by parents who say school districts have a legal responsibility to educate children in spite of disabilities. The 2002 No Child Left Behind law dictated that schools must use “research-based” programs to teach these children to read, says Philadelphia-area attorney Dennis McAndrews. Reading comes naturally for many children, he says, but not for Rocha and others: “Putting print in front of them and hoping they’ll crack the code is useless.”

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Edweek reporter Mary Ann Zehr attended and filed this report:

Authors Share Tips on How to Hook Boys on Books
By Mary Ann Zehr

Winchester, Va.
Boys like to read books about trucks, boys who get into trouble, sports, animals, and war. More than girls, they lean toward nonfiction. And don’t forget the humor or action in stories.

Those are some of the insights that well-acclaimed children’s authors and illustrators­-most of them men-conveyed to about 300 teachers and librarians-most of them women-at a conference here this week hosted by Shenandoah University about how to get boys hooked on reading.

At the same time, a couple of authors and an illustrator stressed how boys are drawn as well to books with a strong emotional quality.

For an illustration in a book to be effective, “there has to be some emotional appeal,” said Jerry Pinkney, who is known for his illustrations that show a strong connection between people and animals. “What’s important in my work is not just the action but what’s around the action,” the artist said, showing the audience one of his illustrations from the picture book, Black Cowboy, Wild Horses, in which a cowboy is feeding his horse an apple.

Mr. Pinkney explained that he created a feeling of intimacy in the scene by having the cowboy give his horse the apple after he’s taken the time to remove the bridle and reins.

Boys, said Jack Gantos, who writes books about bad boys, “like the emotional stuff as much as the physical stuff.” The author of the Rotten Ralph and Joey Pigza series says that half the content in his books is about what happens on the outside of the character, including lots of action, and half is about what happens inside the character. A theme in his books is that the characters are loved unconditionally, even if they mess up a lot, which he said is something that children can identify with.

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But I just learned about this conference  on reading/boys in my home state. If it helps anyone lining up speakers for their own conference, here’s the agenda of Reading…It’s a Guy Thing:

Agenda
24th Annual Children’s Literature Conference
Shenandoah University
June 29-July 3, 2009

Reading… It’s A Guy Thing: Hooking Boys on Books

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Getting Boys to Read lays out the facts and offers practical advice to parents and teachers. The U.S. Department of Education should have started quarterbacking efforts such as this years ago. And yet, not a single effort to date. Considering the evidence, that’s pretty amazing.

Here’s how this group (which seems to have a contingent from Rochester, N.Y., where I once worked as a newspaper reporter) describe themselves:

Getting Boys to Read is a website dedicated to supporting parents, teachers and librarians help boys learn to love reading. (This blogger happens to contribute to the site. She thinks it’s a worthy cause. ) The site was founded by librarian Mike McQueen, who is a school librarian in the great state of Colorado. The site provides informative articles, interviews, and a forum for discussion about all topics related to boys, reading, writing and other literacy-related topics. The site tackles national issues, like the serious literacy gap between boys and girls in the United States, strategies to help get boys reading, information about children’s author Jon Scieszka’s Guys Read Group, informative books reviews, and a host of other interesting information, as well.

Boys Literacy Skills are Suffering

Compared with girls, boys’ literacy skills across the country are floundering. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, teen females have increasingly outperformed teen males on literacy assessments since 1971. In the wake of feminism, local and national programs have ignored this serious literacy gender gap. There is a pressing need for parents and educators to a) be informed of this literacy gap and b) to gain understanding and knowledge as to WHY this gap and exists and how we can fix it. GettingBoystoRead.com is a great resource that informs parents and educators how approaches to help getting boys to love reading should differ from approaches to getting girls to love reading.

Rochester Boys and Literacy Problems

Rochester, whose city schools have among the lowest graduation rates in the country, is not immune to this national problem. If you look at individual school districts in Monroe County, you will see that females have consistently higher ELA and English Regents scores than their male counterparts. Visit the New York State Department of Education’s report cards of each school district. No matter WHAT THE DISTRICT, females perform at a higher rate.

This article by Bill Costello from Making Minds Matter lays out the fresh numbers from the latest NAEP tests. From the article:

The good news is that reading scores for 9 and 13-year-olds are the highest ever according to results released this week from the 2008 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

The bad news is that boys trail girls in reading performance at all age levels. The gap at age 9 is 8 points, at age 13 is 8 points, and at age 17 is 11 points. This is not a new trend-boys have been scoring lower than girls on U.S. Department of Education reading tests for more than 30 years.

The reading gender gap spans every racial and ethnic group, and categorically finds boys underperforming girls regardless of income, disability, or English-speaking ability.

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Here’s another example of a school tackling the gender gap in the right spot, literacy. This from the Denver Post:

WINDSOR - A new after-school book club at Mountain View Elementary School has just a few simple rules: Be enthusiastic; be prepared to discuss a selected book’s plot and characters; and absolutely, positively no girls allowed.

Four male teachers at the school, with the help of school librarian Joann Perko, started the all-boys book club this year to give reading a boost among the guys.

Girls, according to club members, would only be a distraction.

“They would pick a book that would be boring, and I wouldn’t read it at all,” said Trevor Webb, 9.

That seems to be the crux of a growing problem among male students in the U.S., say some education and reading experts. Boys like certain books - especially those featuring action and adventure - and anything else kills their willingness to curl up with a good yarn.

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This article from the Arizona Republic  explores the issue, mostly by relying on the excellent new Bright Beginnings  book published by the International Reading Association. From the article:

… neuropsychological research into the “hard-wiring” of the brain has tended to show that motor skills, hearing and vision work differently in the young male brain.

MRI scans show that young girls have 11 percent more neurons in brain areas devoted to language than boys, Zambo said; boys do far better focusing on movement, preferring books and teaching techniques that allow them to visualize and use spatial skills - not areas that come into play in the rigorous standardized testing demanded by No Child Left Behind legislation.

“It’s nature and nurture,” Zambo said. “But one thing for teachers to think about is how we teach boys, to help boys cope better instead of failing them or sending them to the back of the room.”

Zambo, Brozo and others advocate using a variety of techniques to lure primary-school boys into the world of reading. Stories - even comic books - with active, male role models grab boys’ attention, they say, as do active, engaging teaching methods.

…early literacy skills being demanded of preschoolers and kindergartners is a recent phenomenon. That’s what makes this NPR piece on women reading more than men interesting. Actually, this recent sampling of reading habits shows the gender gap holding steady. Women had been pulling away. Of course to believe this “good news” you also have to believe that men suddenly started reading more poems and plays. Well, if the government tells us it’s true, it must be true. I believed Ronald Reagan when he told me catsup was a vegetable.

Jay Mathews, the crack education reporter for the WPost, sifts through some thoughtful evidence here. I credit him for not fingering a culprit (some among us are more likely to give into the temptation to settle on black and white answers…not that I’m naming names here…ok, on occasion, maybe me).

Yet another story about this volunteer movement, this time from Fort Wayne, Ind.

‘Real men’ to show boys reading is cool

Amanda Iacone The Journal Gazette

The United Way of Allen County is looking for a few good men.

Make that 35 male volunteers to read to local third-graders through a new program called Real Men Read.

Organizers hope to assign one man to each third-grade classroom in Fort Wayne Community Schools and East Allen County Schools. The volunteers will spend one hour a month with their classroom reading a set of books geared to get boys interested in reading.

United Way officials hope to improve literacy among low-income boys and provide good male role models who aren’t athletes or entertainers. “The idea is to get them to enjoy reading,” said J.J. Foster, a youth director with the Fort Wayne Urban League.

Less than half of low-income boys read at an age-appropriate level compared with 61 percent of low-income girls, said Brent Wake, a congressional staffer who is working with Foster to co-chair the program.

Most early-elementary school teachers are women who subconsciously pick books more interesting to girls, said Jamie Garwood, with the United Way. Boys like reality-based books and books about real people - not magical fairy tales that girls enjoy, she said.

This spring, the men will read books about Duke Ellington and the Underground Railroad. The students, both boys and girls, will get to keep a copy of the books, Garwood said.

With no men in the classroom, and often not at home, boys turn to athletes and entertainers, role models who don’t send a message that reading is cool, Garwood said.

But the initiative isn’t just about providing role models. Having an educated workforce will have an effect on the economy in the future, Wake said.

Future jobs will require at least some advanced education. The chances of studying beyond high school are slim if students don’t have solid reading skills, Garwood said.

Allen County Commissioner Bill Brown believes that reading will ensure that children will be able to support themselves as adults, stay out of the county jail and away from government-assistance programs.

Underemployed people are more likely to need government help or be incarcerated at the expense of taxpayers, he said.

Because of that, Brown is one of 110 local business leaders and elected officials who plan to volunteer for Real Men Read, he said.

The program is part of a 10-year commitment called Learn United to increase literacy in Allen County. The United Way created a Web page to help those interested in volunteering find ways to connect with students who need help, said Mary Tyndall, spokeswoman for the United Way.

The Real Men Read program kicks off in March, but training begins next week.