As necessary as reading is to the success of a child—and entire nations—many low-income countries overlook the fundamental duty of their school systems to produce readers. Galvanized by the Education For All(EFA) mission to provide universal access to primary education by 2015, donors and low-income countries have focused on scaling up inputs to the education process—classrooms, teachers, textbooks. Meanwhile, teachers are not trained to teach reading. Assessments of student performance do not appropriately measure reading. Parents do not demand that their children know how to read. And for too long, low-income countries and the international education community—so focused on universal access—have neglected reading as a gauge of education quality. As a result, nearly whole generations of children at a time are falling behind the learning curve. This report shines a light on the efforts of the individuals and organizations motivating and modeling a response to the reading crisis.
