Why Our Children Can’t Read and What We Can Do about It

In America today, 43 percent of our children test below grade level in reading. Among adults, 42 million are functionally illiterate. The numbers are staggering, but in our schools, the problem is only getting worse. The old methods don’t work, and this book will tell you why. Psychologist Diane McGuinness draws on twenty-five years of solid reading research that shows exactly how the current system fails and how to fix it. She explains that the ability to read depends on the ability to hear the sounds of our language correctly, and on a working knowledge of something called the spelling code, which is the key to how English spelling works: what letters and letter combinations go with which sounds. This connection of sounds and the symbols that represent them is crucial to learning how to read, and McGuinness explains it with rigor, clarity, and expertise. Moreover, she shows how this method is scientifically proven and has transformed so-called dyslexics and troubled readers into expert readers and spellers, often in astoundingly short periods of time. Diane McGuinness has given us the blueprint for a reading revolution - one that offers real hope to the millions of children and adults who are failing needlessly in school and in life.