Reviews
Professional Resources

Roni Jo Draper

Douglas Fisher

Is Literacy Enough? Pathways to Academic Success for Adolescents

Catherine E. Snow, Michelle V. Porche, Patton O. Tabors, and Stephanie Ross Harris. 2007. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes. 153 pp. US$29.95.

I love the television show MythBusters on the Discovery channel. The program stars special effects guys Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, who seek to confirm or bust popular myths: a duck's quack can echo (busted), overheating water in the microwave can make the glass container explode (confirmed), it is possible to catch a shark with piano wire (busted). Jamie and Adam do the research required, even if it means building crazy gismos (such as an ejection chair in an automobile). In education we often perpetuate popular myths that, likewise, deserve to be either confirmed or busted. This is one of the functions of educational research.

One popular education myth is that if children achieve at least basic levels of literacy by the fourth grade, they will be sufficiently prepared to face the academic challenges of middle and high school. Educators embrace this myth because it makes good common sense and we really want to believe it. The myth motivates us to work hard, to reduce early elementary class sizes, and to fund educational programs and materials for young children with the hope that these efforts will support students and ensure their future success in school and, eventually, in life. Indeed, this hope drives educational policies in the United States such as the No Child Left Behind Act and associated funded initiatives like Reading First.

Educational researchers often complain that their work is not read by teachers, the very individuals who are best prepared to make a difference in the lives of children and adolescents (for example see Pressley, 2002). Perhaps educational researchers can take a lesson from Jamie and Adam and the MythBusters team and find ways to present their studies and their results in a way that is both entertaining and informative. To be sure, educational researchers often write in a way that does not allow the general public, including teachers, to access findings from studies and translate research conclusions into sound practice. This is what makes Is Literacy Enough? an exceptional work. Snow and her team offer teachers, and others interested in the wellbeing of children and adolescents, a report of a compelling study that is relatively free of the description of statistical analyses and methodological jargon that often make research reports difficult and uninteresting to readers.

Snow, Porche, Tabors, and Harris act as myth busters with this book. Snow and her team of researchers followed 83 impoverished 3-year-olds in Boston from preschool into high school and beyond. Snow and her colleagues were able to collect complete longitudinal data from 41 of the students. They observed the students, assessed their literacy skills and their motivation, and interviewed them, their teachers, and their parents. The results of their data collection and analyses—some of which were quantitative and some of which were qualitative—demonstrate that while certainly children who don't read well are “unlikely to perform adequately in academically challenging courses,…literacy skills do not translate automatically into school success” (p. 68).

Each chapter in the book can stand alone. Although the chapters certainly complement one another, a reader can open the book to any chapter and make sense of it without reading the others. This is possible because Snow and her colleagues provide sufficient background information in each chapter. Because of this, the volume would be appropriate for a study group in which individuals read different chapters and discuss the book.

In the first two chapters of the book, the authors describe literacy development and its relationship to academic success. They demonstrate that the factors that contribute to student success in elementary school increase in importance as students move into middle school and beyond. The descriptions of literacy and academic achievement are both smart and readable and would be of value to educators who work with adolescents. The general information also provides a helpful backdrop for the description of the children in the study and the explanation of how Snow, Porche, Tabors, and Harris chose the children and the methods used to study them.

The results of the study are shared in Chapters 3 through 7. Snow and her coauthors share information about the statistical analyses used for the study in a reader-friendly way. Furthermore, there are three chapters in which Snow and her colleagues share case studies based on more in-depth analyses of data on a few of the students from their study. Indeed, the authors move adeptly from general results based on the entire group of students to discussion of particular students. In this way they put a face on the children they studied. Undoubtedly readers who have worked in middle and high schools will recognize the similarities between students in their classes and the cases shared in the book.