If you are a Colorado librarian and you were at the state CAL conference last year and you heard keynote speaker Stephen Krashen, you already know this.

But for those of you who missed out (and you really did miss out on a stellar speech), research looking at 250 in Florida shows that–

Poverty is the biggest predictor of a child’s reading level. The higher the poverty, the lower the reading level.

Join Krashen’s Twitter feed, read his book The Power of Reading, hear him speak and you will hear him say it over and over again–It’s the poverty. Krashen’s been preaching this for years.

It’s not how early or late we start the reading instruction, it’s not how or how often children are assessed, it’s not class size, teacher resources, ethnicity–It’s the poverty.

Read more here, Poverty, Reading Scores, and Resilient Schools. It confirms what we know. It’s clear and straightforward. It’s our challenge as a society to be truthful and focus on the real problem and not be sidetracked.

Spread the word,

Babette