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High School Literacy
Defining High School Literacy Issues | High School Literacy Strategies | Support for ELL Students | Resources for Teachers | Research on this Topic 
High school literacy is key to a high school student's overall prospects for success. Out of a student’s ability to read comes the capacity to graduate and the opportunity to gain access to the workplace and/or post-secondary education.
The tie between graduation rates and literacy rates is evident when we look at the reading skills of those students who fail to finish high school. The National Assessment of Adult Literacy reports that 19% of students that dropout are only able to perform at basic or below-basic levels when presented with prose literacy tasks like reading editorials, news stories, and instructional materials.1 The implications of illiteracy extend outside of the classroom as the student moves into the workforce. Research shows that a student’s inability to read at a functional level while in school has drastic implications for his or her life in the future.
To help educators, parents, and the general public gain awareness on this topic, the National High School Center has compiled key documents that present resources and best practices on how to effectively combat illiteracy in schools.
Defining High School Literacy Issues
Quick Stats Fact Sheet: High School Literacy
This fact sheet serves as an easy-to-read overview of the current state of high school literacy instruction and achievement as well as the importance of obtaining a high level of literacy prior to leaving high school. (January 2009)
2008 National High School Center Summer Institute Breakout on High School Literacy
This session focused on the obstacles and solutions to improving high school literacy among both the general population of students as well as adolescent English Language Learners.
2007 National High School Center Summer Institute Panel Discussion on High School Literacy
Building on a common definition for high school literacy, this panel offers a lively conversation highlighting the various elements that encompass high school literacy. Presenters provide a conceptual framework, theories of action, and latest research for this topic, while sharing best practices to assist those students who struggle in this area.
A Critical Mission: Making Adolescent Reading an Immediate Priority in SREB States
This new Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) report on adolescent literacy discusses the urgency of the problem of students in middle and high school grades failing to develop the reading and writing skills they need, presents specific solutions for SREB states based on the recommendations of the SREB Committee to Improve Reading and Writing in Middle and High Schools.
Five States’ Efforts to Improve Adolescent Literacy
This report, from the Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands, describes efforts by five states—Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, New Jersey, and Rhode Island—to improve adolescent literacy. Highlighting common challenges and lessons, the report examines how each state has engaged key stakeholders, set rigorous goals and standards, aligned resources to support adolescent literacy goals, built educator capacity, and used data to measure progress.
Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas: Getting to the Core of Middle and High School Improvement
This report from the Alliance for Excellent Education contends that content teachers at the middle and secondary levels should engage their students in literacy training through integrated reading and writing activities that teach students how to recognize the particular conventions specific to the different subjects. The report concludes with practical policy goals to foster a greater integration of literacy training and content matter.
Reading Between the Lines: What the ACT Reveals About College Readiness in Reading
This report from ACT recommends that considerable experience with complex reading texts in high school is the key to development of college-level reading skills, and is the clearest differentiator of students who are ready for the post-secondary world of college and/or work versus those who are not. The report also defines the types of materials that need to be included in all high school courses, and offers recommendations to educators and policymakers on how to help to increase the numbers of high school graduates who are ready for college-level reading.
Reading in the Disciplines: The Challenges of Adolescent Literacy
This issue brief provides an overview of the challenges that struggling readers in high school may face when reading texts in science, history, English, and mathematics courses. It also discusses how instruction could incorporate disciplinary literacy strategies and provides examples of research-based interventions for content-based adolescent literacy.
Time to Act: An Agenda for Advancing Adolescent Literacy for College and Career Success (Carnegie Corporation, September 2009). Time to Act pinpoints adolescent literacy as a cornerstone of the current education reform movement, upon which efforts such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act must be built. The report's recommendations intersect with the $4.35 billion Race to the Top competitive grant guidelines with their emphasis on standards and assessments, data systems, great teachers and leaders, and re-engineering struggling schools. Time to Act is released with five corresponding reports, which delve deeper into how to advance literacy and learning for all students, including such topics as the cost of implementing adolescent literacy programs and reading in the disciplines: Reading in the Disciplines: The Challenges of Adolescent Literacy; Adolescent Literacy Development in Out of School Time: A Practitioner's Guide; Measure for Measure: A Critical Consumer's Guide to Reading Comprehension Assessments for Adolescents; Adolescent Literacy Programs: Costs of Implementation; and Adolescent Literacy and Textbooks: An Annotated Bibliography.
1 National Adult Literacy Survey, NCES, U.S. Department of Education; courtesy of the Education Statistics Quarterly (Vol. 3, Issue 4, Topic: Lifelong Learning).
