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Without improvements in literacy proficiency among U.S. students, our country will not be poised to compete economically with international peers. Positions that require college and higher level literacy skills will generate about 46 percent of all job growth between 2004 and 2014. Yet, in 2007, only 31 percent of eighth-graders performed at proficiency on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), and score gaps between white and minority students have not budged since 2005. In recognition of the need to boost literacy and academic performance in the next generation of the American workforce, governors and state policymakers are establishing statewide literacy plans. These plans can help states meet critical education goals: achieving adequate yearly progress targets, raising high school graduation rates, increasing the value of the high school diploma, and closing the achievement gap. This brief enhances recommendations and policy strategies from the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) publication Reading to Achieve: A Governor’s Guide to Adolescent Literacy. It reflects lessons from recent research and best practices from states selected to receive NGA Center support to develop statewide K-12 literacy plans. These plans build upon states’ early literacy (kindergarten through third grade) approaches by adding components to support adolescent literacy (fourth grade through twelfth grade). Consistent with the governor’s guide developed by the NGA Center Adolescent Literacy Advisory Panel, this brief recommends five policy strategies and provides examples of steps states can take to improve adolescent literacy: - Build support for a state focus on adolescent literacy;
- Raise literacy expectations across the curriculum;
- Encourage and support school and district literacy plans;
- Build educators’ capacity to provide adolescent literacy instruction; and
- Measure progress in adolescent literacy at the school, district and state levels.
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