Readicide Intro/Ch.1

So far, I have liked the book. It is reinforcing what I already knew; that students are becoming increasingly inadequate at reading. I find it hard to believe that this country and our schools are still sticking with measuring reading based on a mulitple-choice exam. I can't blame the teachers because if their students do poorly on the test then that means they can find themselves out of a job. It truly is a decision to make: raise reading scores and kill a love for reading OR teach kids to read and enjoy it and don't worry about the multiple-choice test scores. Some students simply are not good test takers.
I was fortunate enough to not have to deal with any end of course tests or reading exams. Since I was in private school, we were encouraged to read what we wanted to, across many genres. Teachers encouraged students to try new authors and when we did have to read a book as a class, it was based on discussion and essay style answering. Very few quizzes we took had any multiple choice questions on it.
I really liked the part where Gallagher said that teaching toward the test is a good thing, if done correctly. When I begin teaching, I really like the idea of giving the students the final question/goal of understanding for the reading. A teacher probably will not be able to cover all of the standards asked of them, but I believe some standards are more important than others and more time should be spent on them. I do plan to incorporate more reading into my science classrooms, and maybe that will help them out on reading scores, but more importantly in reading comprehension.