Many baby boomers improved their reading comprehension with in-class, color-coded Science Research Associates (SRA) cards. Gen-Xers heard many television and radio commercials for RIF (Reading Is Fundamental), a nationwide children's literacy nonprofit which delivers free books and literacy resources to children and families who need them most.
Today, Dolly Parton's Imagination Library promotes early childhood literacy around the country by providing free age-appropriate books to children from birth to age 5. Locally, the United Way of Greater Chattanooga is involved in a variety of education initiatives that promote reading.
Indeed, reading and reading comprehension are keys to every child's education. Without mastering those skills, students are not likely to grasp the basic tenets of, or find much interest in, other subjects. And if reading doesn't become fundamental early in a child's education, it's much more difficult -- though not impossible -- to pick up later.
Thus, Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke's intentions, and those of Mayor Ron Littlefield before him, were good in spending money on Lexia, a computer-based program that focuses on six skills of reading for students from prekindergarten through fifth grade.
However, a Times Free Press analysis of the Lexia program doesn't support Berke's statement earlier this year, in his State of the City address, that 50 percent of the children participating in the city's Youth & Family Development Department's first-year reading initiative in recreation centers and after-school programs are reading at or above grade level.
In fact, for all Lexia users during this school year, only 10 percent of the 5,501 elementary school students who used the program improved. That included those who started and finished "on target" and those who improved from a higher level of risk to a lower level of risk.
The numbers showed 82 percent of students either remained at "high risk" or fell to "high risk" during their use of the program.
Whether the number of children making significant improvements is worth the $150,000 the City Council unanimously voted to spend (with the local United Way picking up $122,000 of the tab) in the fiscal 2016 budget last week is another question.
Assuming the Internet-based Lexia program does continue, some realities should be clear:
* If reading is not emphasized and practiced and appreciated at home, the likelihood of Lexia making a significant difference is small.
* If, as Times Free Press interviews found, more emphasis is put on increasing Lexia enrollment numbers of children in recreation center programs but less on follow-up, little will be gained.
* When children arrive at recreation centers, with pent-up energy from sitting in school for seven hours, their understandable inclination is play and not more study.
* If, as anecdotal evidence found, not enough computers are available for individual children to spend the time they otherwise might on the program, they likely will lose interest.
* If, again as interviews found, incentives are needed to have children complete their Lexia work, little gain is likely in the long run because the incentives and not the material will have become primary.
Times Free Press interviews indicate Hamilton County Schools administrators, and past supporters of the program, don't believe Lexia lines up well enough with the county school's curriculum. And one national reading expert pointed to a study that found the program didn't have any effect on students' general reading achievement or reading fluency.
Can Lexia help? Yes. Might another year or two see improved numbers? Yes. But the program is not likely to ever achieve the results Berke would like to see in the number of children in which he would like to see it occur. And that raises the question of how much more money the mayor and City Council should put into the program.
Berke and City Council members understand how important reading is -- that good readers make smarter students who make better employment candidates who fulfill better jobs which make for a better and more prosperous city.
And they -- and we -- should never stop trying to interest children in reading. But it may be the best place in which to plant the importance of reading values is in the mayor's Baby University program -- for parents with children from birth to 2 years old -- and in other educational programs that reach children in prekindergarten years.
Because if reading is not a building block children use early, it will be a stumbling block in their future.