This paper contains excerpts from a report by the National Endowment for the Arts, issued by its Office of Research, headed by Mark Bauerlein, a contributor to "Arts Education Policy Review." The excerpts do not include the report's tables, figures, or appendices, but numbers have been retained in their original sequence (see notes).

School library media specialists are the first to witness the malaise that permeates American schools threatening the future of our society. Believing that personal lack of aspirations, our failure to encourage reading for pure enjoyment, and society's disrespect toward education has left a void in our children that is filled with apathy.

This document discusses the author's personal opinion and feelings on teaching. She expresses her love for literacy and the hope to engage her students with the same feeling, yet not force it upon them.

National data were utilized to examine the influence of reading for pleasure on African American high school students' reading achievement. Overall, the study found that reading for pleasure positively impacted African American students' scores on a standardized measure of reading. Implications for teachers and parents were discussed. (Contains 2…

Computer-based technologies offer promise as a means to assess students and provide teachers with better understandings of their students' achievement. This article describes recent developments in computer-based and web-based reading and literacy assessment, focusing on assessment administration, information management, and report creation. In…

The activities and self-direction allowed after school provide children in different countries with distinct developmental opportunities that promote culturally valued orientations and outcomes. Fourth-grade children in Bulgaria, Taiwan, and the United States (countries with contrasting social values and expectations) reported their usual…

A practicum was designed to motivate first-grade students in a rural community in the southeastern United States to read independently for pleasure in the classroom and at home. A whole language program was implemented which did not include the use of basal readers or workbooks. Children's literature was the primary source used for reading…

A study investigated whether middle-school students who identify recreational reading as a hobby obtain significantly higher reading achievement scores than those middle-school students who have not identified recreational reading as a hobby. Subjects, 55 students in grades 4, 5, and 6 at the Earle Elementary Public School located in a…

Three famous writers--Eudora Welty, Madeleine L'Engle, and Jack London--used their silent reading experiences to survive not only their childhoods, but also to become adult chroniclers of human lives. Pulitzer-prize winning author Eudora Welty credits an extended period of silent reading when she was 7 years old (and home from school for nearly a…

Predicated on the idea that one of the best ways to support individuals' book sharing with a special child in their lives is to establish a family book sharing group with people in the community, this book offers specific suggestions for organizing such a group and provides plans for at least six gatherings. According to the book, this book…

Even though Swedish students (age 9 and 14 years) placed third in the recent IEA study, reading instruction in Swedish schools is apparently no better than in other countries taking part in the IEA study. No strong correlations between type of reading instruction and students' reading skills have been found. Schools in Nordic countries work under…

Designed to make the job of encouraging adolescents to read less of a challenge, this book provides descriptions of all of the approximately 150 examples of young adult literature that were selected "Young Adults' Choices" in the yearly voting by teenagers conducted from 1987 to 1992. Each entry in the book includes bibliographic…

A practicum aimed to improve the attitudes toward recreational reading of 12 intermediate grade level English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students so that they would share their enthusiasm and interests in pleasure reading, as well as devote more time to reading. The writer met with parents of ESL students to discuss ways they could encourage…

This study assessed the readability of popular print material (newspapers, magazines, and books) published in 1920. Selected passages from these books and articles were analyzed using the Flesch Reading Ease test and other, more theoretically interesting and relevant, readability formulas. Results indicated that "highbrow" publications…

This advisory list includes annotations for 88 works of fiction, a list of 105 books favorably reviewed in other reviewing sources, and a directory of publishers mentioned. The list also includes suggested grade levels and the price of each book. (RS)