Monday, January 03, 2005

NICHD (NIH) director lecture on helping children to read (1999)

Learning Disabilities OnLine: LD In-Depth: NCLD Summit 1999

A 1999 lecture by Duane Alexander Director, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health:
Learning to read is critical to a child's (and an adult's) well-being. The child and adult who cannot read at a comfortable level experience significant difficulties mastering many types of academic content, are at substantial risk for failure in school, and are frequently unable to reach their potential in the vocational and occupational arena....

The page has a like to a RealAudio file and the text of the speech. The date and location of the speech does not appear on the page content, but it can be found in the browser title (sigh).

We're finding a large gap between reading researchers and school knowledge. It makes the gap between clinical research and clinical practice seem modest by comparison. I have to guess there's just not enough money in education to support effective dissemination of knowledge.

BTW, this appears to have been a limited late 90s initiative of this branch of the NIH. The current NICHD web site has no material on reading education or the science of teaching reading.

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