From The Director

By Elaine Albert

Once a poor reader, always a poor reader. Many people insist on the truth of this very pessimistic statement. However, Dr. Stephen Krashen, Professor of Education at USC, does not agree. His research has shown that “Once a child gets interested in reading, and reading material is available, that child can ‘catch up’ easily and it can happen anytime. In other words, ‘once a good reader, always a good reader.’ “ (Karshen and McQuillan, “The Case for Late Intervention”, 1996)  The question then becomes, how do we interest a “reluctant reader”? There is a great deal of research that shows that a rich supply of high-interest books is the best way to accomplish this goal.

There are two main ways to ensure children a rich supply of high-interest books:  Books at home and books at school. Unfortunately, there is a huge disparity among children in access to books. Affluent children have more books at home (50-100 of their own books by the time they are teens versus 22 books for the entire family in less affluent homes). Most of the children we work with come from homes without print-rich environments, a clear impediment to literacy.

Elementary school libraries should have 19 books per child. In Los Angeles, the average is 9 books per child and in many low-performing schools (where most of our KOREH L.A. volunteers are working) the average can dip as low as 2-3 books per child. Correlations between books per student and reading fall dramatically when access is limited and collections are out of date. (Dr. Stephen Karshen, “Every Person a Reader”, 1996)

KOREH L.A. is attempting to address this problem in two ways:

  • Restocking of elementary school libraries – Through a partnership with Toyota Motor Sales, USA, KOREH L.A. has restocked 7 of our neediest libraries with 1,000’s of new, high-interest, books. With Toyota’s help, we plan to continue restocking libraries at a rate of 3 per year.
  • Distributing of new books to our volunteers – Through our annual “Wrap-It-Up” event and during our five follow-up trainings throughout the year, beautiful new books are distributed to our volunteers to give to their students (for their own personal libraries) and to the teachers (for their classroom libraries).

    In addition to the wonderful one-on-one mentoring our volunteers do with their students, we are proud that KOREH L.A. has taken active steps to ensure that children have a rich supply of high-interest books. These are two paths to one goal – creating “good readers”.