While educators have made good progress in teaching children to decode (that is, turn print into speech sounds), it’s disheartening that we still have not overcome the “fourth-grade slump ” in reading comprehension. We’re finding that even though the vast majority of our youngest readers can manage simple texts, many students—particularly those from low-income families—struggle when it comes time in grade four to tackle more advanced academic texts. To help these students, we must fully understand just where this “fourth-grade slump ” comes from. The “slump” was the name that the great reading researcher Jeanne Chall used to describe the apparently sudden drop-off between third and fourth grade in the reading scores of low-income students. In her research, Chall found that low-income students in the second and third grades tended to score at (and even above) national averages in reading tests and related measures such as spelling and word meaning. But at the fourth grade, low-income students ’ scores began a steady drop that grew steeper as the students moved into the higher grades. 1 (For a more detailed discussion of Chall’s landmark E. D. Hirsch, Jr., is founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation and professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia. He has written several acclaimed books, including
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