Washington Post: The famous ‘word gap’ doesn’t hurt only the young. It affects many educators, too.

Also cited in: http://earlychildhoodnyc.org/newswatch/the-famous-word-gap-affects-the-…
 

The Washington Post article states that as many as one million state-licensed and nationally-credentialed early childhood educators are at-risk for functional illiteracy across the country. This means that their reading and writing skills are insufficient to handle the daily living and employment duties that necessitate reading skills beyond the basic level that they know. If true, this would likely surprise many Americans.

The article argues that we are missing an important step to achieving our goal to close the word gap. In order for us to close the word gap for low-income children, we must first focus on closing the gap for functionally illiterate early childhood educators. This means that we must increase and, perhaps, update professional development approaches to ensure we utilize adult literacy testing that measures and improves low-literacy in early childhood educators. This important step will help close the achievement and opportunity gaps for educators and the children in their care.