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For immediate release, Contact: Mary Jo Frelke, 715-426-7363, anaped44@sbcglobal.net
Leaving Johnny Behind is a gift to anyone who desires to understand why so many of our most vulnerable citizens—our children—struggle to learn to read, and why we, as a country, have let them down.
-Dr. G. Reid Lyon, former branch chief, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
A BREACH OF FAITH
Reading Science and the Judas Principle
Our country faces a host of challenges including high unemployment, an expanding drug culture, high drop out rates, voter apathy and other threats to our safety and well being.
But there is another, one that has a direct influence on all of the above. The issue is reading failure. The latest figures from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that nearly two-thirds of American fourth graders are below level readers while poor and minorities lag behind middle class children by a whopping 30 percentage points.
While it represents a public health crisis of monumental proportions, reading failure nevertheless remains mired in an ideological battle that leaves children as collateral damage – victims of those with careers to validate, egos to salve and axes to grind.
All of that might sound like hyperbole, but it’s not. The reading establishment generally rejects the product of legitimate science, schools of education omit reading science from their core curricula, states and districts find ingenious ways to circumvent accountability and children are left to suffer in the aftermath.
Laying blame for this unfortunate circumstance, however, is not what Leaving Johnny Behind is all about. In fact, an entire chapter is devoted to showing how the data accommodates diverse perspectives. Rather it is an appeal to the reading community to let research guide practice and make the oft heard mantra - children first – a reality rather than just an expression of political correctness.
Anthony J. Pedriana is a retired elementary school principal who spent over 30 years working with children in Milwaukee’s central city. His frustration at the lack of reading progress by students from poor backgrounds prompted him to look beyond the conventional wisdom of reading methodology. His discoveries eventually prompted him to write Johnny.
Leaving Johnny Behind is available for $16.95 through Learning Dynamics Press, 715-426-7363, online at leavingjohnnybehind.com and other major online sources.
Leaving Johnny Behind by Anthony Pedriana. Original edition. 5.5 X 8.5, 288 pages, ISBN 978-0-9822005-4-4. See the Pressroom at leavingjohnnybehind.com for a 300 dpi TIF of the cover.
