Dave Tayloe: Read to Achieve is too little too late

Regarding the June 27 Point of View on Read to Achieve: As a pediatrician in a rural Eastern North Carolina county, I am aware of the poor outcomes of students who are not reading at grade level by fourth grade: school drop-out, criminal behavior, unemployment, irresponsible sexual behavior, substance abuse.

When I read an Annie Casey Foundation report in 2013 showing that 66 percent (82 percent for children in poverty) of fourth-graders in the U.S. were not reading proficiently, I met with Wayne County Public School administrators to find out what this meant in our county. They carefully looked at data and found that just over 50 percent of our fourth-graders were not reading at grade level. Furthermore, just over 50 percent of our kindergarten students did not have the language skills they need to learn to read. It appears that we have a birth-to-5-years-old problem that begets an elementary school reading crisis.

As I studied research on school-readiness, I learned that some children hear their parents say 10 times as many words as other children during the first two years of life, and that those children are reading in kindergarten. I also learned that when the TV is on in the home, adult conversation drops significantly.

I gathered community partners together to launch a campaign to improve school readiness. We are now building on the Reach Out and Read program to educate families about the importance of turning off all TV and technology when their babies and preschool children are awake and about the urgent need for parents to talk with their children as much as possible.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has research-based policy that states that parents should read to their children from the moment of birth and that children should not view any screen-based media in the first two years of life.

Our state should invest in programs for birth-to-age-5 children so that every child is enrolled in a primary care medical home that promotes school readiness through Reach Out and Read, whose are able to educate parents about the importance of sharing books and language with children. During each checkup, doctors give age and culturally appropriate books to children and educate parents about the critical need to read to and talk with their children as much as possible to promote early language and brain development and to assure school readiness. The Reach Out and Read intervention is evidence-based, and scalable.

Fewer than 25 percent of preschool children in our state are participating in Reach Out and Read. Only about one-third of our at-risk preschool children are enrolled in enrichment programs through Smart Start, Head Start and NC PreK.

Our state is not likely to improve elementary school reading achievement unless it invests heavily in programs to assure that children are given every opportunity to develop the language skills necessary to learn to read when they enter kindergarten.

The length limit was waived to permit a fuller response to the Point of View.

This story was originally published July 2, 2015 at 5:17 PM with the headline "Dave Tayloe: Read to Achieve is too little too late."