Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It by Kelly Gallagher

Below is a sample from the notes/quotes I have begun to take out of the book Readicide.  With all the conversations about high stakes testing.  This book makes a STRONG CASE for why more reading is vital to have in the classroom.  Click on the pages link with title to see quotes from more chapters.  They will be added as I am assigned them.

Chapter 1- The Elephant in the Room (pg. 7)

A Vicious Cycle (pg. 21)

As a teacher I’ve always had an intuition that the high-stakes testing wasn’t best for students or education but I couldn’t articulate exactly why.  Readicide is providing some concrete ideas.  For example, the Paige Paradox and WYTIWYG.  In my mind these processes explain why the standards/testing movement is simply continuing to escalate in pressure but not results.  There were no gains in reading from 5 years of NCLB.  I also never realized how ironic it is that in trying to increase reading proficiency that we are taking away reading from the students.  In regards to all of this I agree that we have definitely “lost our way” (pg. 23).

What Can You Do to Prevent Readicide (pg. 24)

“A terrible price is paid when schools value the development of test-takers more than they value the development of readers” (pg. 26).

Chapter 2- Endangered Minds (pg. 27)

This chapter continues to emphasize how the most struggling of readers need to be reading the most.  Yet what the school is doing about this issue may never even come up during staff meetings.  

How do we get them to read then?

“…they need to be immersed in a pool of high-interest reading material. (pg. 30).

“Readers who are undernourished need good books.  Lots of them.  Instead, what do many undernourished readers get?  They are often placed in remedial classes where the pace is slowed and where the reading focus moved away from books to a steady diet of small chunks of reading.  In an effort to “help” prepare them for reading tests, we starve readers. (pg. 32-33).