In
classrooms
today,
teachers
need
to
learn
how
to
motivate
their
students
to
comprehend
texts
for
both
scholarly
purposes
and
for
pleasure,
abandoning
instructional
practices
that
are
out-‐dated
and
ineffectual.
If
teachers
can
discover
how
to
engage
students
in
academic
discourse
by
appealing
to
students’
interests,
rather
than
dissecting
texts
for
regurgitation
of
facts
and
superficial
details,
we
will
transform
the
paradigm
of
reading
instruction
from
literary
famine
to
a
literary
feast
with
a
rich
variety
of
aesthetically
appealing,
high-‐quality
relevant
texts,
served
with
instructional
strategies
that
promote
critical
thinking
and
lifelong
learning.
Practices
that
Result
in
Literacy
Famine
High-‐stakes
testing
and
accountability
have
contributed
to
the
literary
famine
seen
in
many
secondary
classrooms.
The
bureaucratic
nature
of
schools
places
pressure
on
test
scores
and
high-‐stakes
performance
causing
many
teachers
to
feel
pressure
and
even
fear
for
their
jobs
if
their
students
don’t
perform
well
on
standardized
tests.
Most
school
districts
disaggregate
data
to
determine
which
teachers
are
effective
in
preparing
students
for
high-‐stakes
tests
and
which
are
not.
Teachers
become
fearful
of
this
public
acknowledgement
of
test
results
which
are
easily
misinterpreted
when
removed
from
context
and
are
often
equated
with
teaching
aptitude
in
the
classroom.
Such
concerns
result
in
instruction
that
focuses
on
test
preparation
and
quick
improvement
in
scores
rather
than
in
constructs
that
are
not
easily
measured
but
vitally
important
such
as
motivation
for
reading
and
developing
life-‐long
readers.
The
current
famine
in
reading
instruction
is
evident
in
an
examination
of
educational
statistics
and
suggests
that
the
need
for
change
in
secondary
reading
instruction
in
today’s
classroom
is
at
a
critical
point.
Despite
increased
efforts
to
improve
reading
ability
in
adolescents,
results
from
the
2005
National
Assessment
of
Educational
Progress
(NAEP)
indicate
significant
numbers
of
secondary
school
students
read
below
proficient
levels
and
that
the
literacy
scores
of
high
school
graduates
actually
dropped
in
the
decade
of
the
90s
(NAEP,
2005).
The
achievement
gap
between
racial/ethnic/economic
groups
continues
to
be
significant
(NCTE,
2006)
and
one
in
four
secondary
students
is
unable
to
read
and
comprehend
the
material
in
their
textbooks
independently
(Alliance
for
Excellent
Education,
2004).
Only
half
of
the
students
who
took
the
2005
ACT
Readiness
for
Reading
Benchmark
were
ready
for
college-‐level
reading,
and
more
significantly,
that
number
had
declined
from
previous
years
(NCTE,
2006
).
Many
school
districts
place
emphasis
on
‘reading
scores’
and
showing
improvement
on
state-‐
mandated
standardized
tests,
but
few
school
districts
actually
train
teachers
in
effective
reading
instruction
and
strategies
that
create
life-‐long,
independent
readers
(Gallagher,
2009).
Test-‐taking
skills
are
important
for
students
to
master,
but
instruction
should
not
be
restricted
to
this
subset
of
reading
objectives.
As
Gallagher
(2009)
points
out,
“the
overemphasis
of
teaching
reading
through
the
lens
of
preparing
students
for
the
state-‐
mandated
tests
has
become
so
completely
unbalanced
that
it
is
drowning
any
chance
our
adolescents
have
of
developing
into
lifelong
readers”
(p.7).
Instruction
with
such
a
narrow
focus
is
dry
and
tasteless
to
students
and
certainly
does
not
create
an
appetite
for
more
reading.
We
may
develop
proficient
test-‐takers
with
this
approach,
but
not
proficient
and
motivated
readers
(Gallagher,
2009).
Because
the
accountability
emphasis
of
the
age
where
“No
Child
Left
Behind”
era
still
governs
education,
school
districts
focus
on
test
scores
rather
than
building
independent
readers.
Instruction
of
this
type
led
Gallagher
(2009)
to
coin
the
word,
“readicide”
which
he
defined
as
“the
systematic
killing $4