"10 City Schools to Focus Reading Skills on Content" (NYTimes)

A recently announced pilot program is expected to overhaul the way children in 10 city schools are taught to read. The pilot program, which will involve about 1,000 children, represents a shift from the Bloomberg administration’s longstanding approach to teaching children to read, known as “balanced literacy.” Under that approach, children are encouraged to select books that interest them, at their own reading levels, from classroom libraries. The theory behind the approach is that it is more important to ensure that young children are truly engaged by books than to dictate that everyone read the same thing.