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Kelly Gallagher's Readicide


            Kelly Gallagher’s book, Readicide introduces the term as “The systematic killing of a love of reading, often exacerbated by the innate mind-numbing practices found in schools.” (Gallagher 7) Gallagher demonstrates a wealth of causes for this problem, chief among them being the way standardized tests are addressed regarding reading. Gallagher presents this as the overarching problem that acts as the reason for many of the additional problems that lead to readicide. One of the most shocking things that I found regarding the involvement of standardized tests with this problem is that the intense pressures that standardized tests put on schools can cause struggling readers to be swept under the rug within testing data, thus marginalizing them and preventing them from getting a lot of the help that they desperately need. Gallagher points out this issue and explains how this circumstance occurs within the following excerpt about the rising scores of Texas within state tests. “School officials did not count many students who gave up and dropped out. (…) Scales of struggling students disappeared. Scores were raised, but it appears that these drastic increases in test scores were achieved by keeping struggling students from taking the test.” (Gallagher 19) It’s not hard to see why this could be an issue for struggling students, by omitting their scores and keeping them from taking the standardized tests, schools are hiding the evidence that these struggling readers need help, and thus they are potentially prevented from getting the help that they require, this would most likely only serve to further drive them towards readicide as they continue to slip through the cracks and continue to not get the help that they need to become better readers.

            Gallagher makes very strong arguments about how standardized tests add to the onset of readicide. The marginalization of low scoring students is certainly one of his strongest. This is because by not showing their scores, schools hide evidence that they need help and thus, they are prevented from getting it.

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