Information about Free Choice Reading

"Once in New York, I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons — a huge growth industry in America. The prison industry needs to plan its future growth — how many cells are they going to need? How many prisoners are there going to be, fifteen years from now? And they found they could predict it very easily, using a pretty simple algorithm, based about asking what percentage of ten- and eleven-year-olds couldn’t read. And certainly couldn’t read for pleasure. " 
Neil Gaiman

When people say, “”Research does not support sustained silent reading”, they are referring to the National Reading Panel findings from 2000 which helped design NCLB and Reading First. The resulting programs did not increase reading comprehension by any statistical amount.  Much positive and supportive research has been done on sustained silent reading and free choice reading since that time.   

“If you pay kids to read you’ll get them to read,” said Edward Deci, the author of “Why We Do What We Do” and a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. “They’ll continue to read until you end the experiment, and then they’ll stop.” Rewards encourage children to think of reading as something you have to be paid to do, not something that brings pleasure in itself, he says.
New York Times 7.23.16

"Levels were never meant to confine a child’s reading choices or life, they were meant to help them on their way.  Much like we remove training wheels from a bike when a child is old enough, we must remove the levels as well." Pernille Ripp, author

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