E. D. Hirsch, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, used his distinguished lecture session to outline some of the problems with current approaches to reading instruction. In his presentation, Improving Reading Scores and Learning Without Teaching to the Test, Hirsch showed a graph of 12th grade reading scores over time and noted that the scores were flat despite NCLB's focus on reading in recent years.
One of the problems has been the how-to mentality—the idea that you teach students to read through teaching strategies such as "find the main idea, summarize, clarify, and predict."
Even though children spend hours learning such strategies, too often the content is scattered to such an extent that children don't learn to comprehend what they read.
Hirsch believes the National Reading Panel ignored research that shows the importance of relevant prior knowledge as a prerequisite to comprehension. Hirsch noted reading tests often test students' background knowledge as much as their reading skills.
"Reading is not completely a how-to skill. It's a knowledge-based skill," Hirsch said. He believes that if schools spent as much time imparting content as they spend teaching reading strategies, students would develop the language and knowledge they need.