Tom Friedman, New York Times reporter, wrote an interesting article this week about how American students highest in the world or near to it in 4th grade, but by 10th grade they are 25th in the OECD. He goes into theories about charter schools and money and teachers, but how about this?

1/ American kids don't want it as much. This is Clayton Christenson's idea in "Disrupting Class". They see their parents life, it's fine for them, and so they cruise assuming it will be handed to them on a silver platter. And chances are they are right about that. South Korean kids do not like what they see when they look at their parents life, they want more and so they work hard.

2/ Kids do not connect reading with fun and so as they get older and more independent they do less and less of it, leading to general academic decline.

The fact is American kids have a big educational disadvantage. They are "fat and happy" -- this is a pretty difficult motivation to over-turn.

But parents can influence point 2/. The answer to falling 12th grade standards seems to be to start on content earlier and earlier. Wrong! Because schools and parents do this, children do not get their foundations set. If they were not quite reading comfortably, in a way that can lead to reading enjoyment, too bad --there's homework to do and tests to pass. This is not the school's fault -- schools reflect the desires of their communities.

Foundations are important. The primary goal of Elementary School should be to secure the foundations so that children can prosper later on. Because this is not being done fewer and fewer students learn to love reading and avoid the tough subjects like science and math.

What can parents do? The old standard "The Read Out Loud Handbook" (Jim Trelease) argues the connection between reading and fun is best maintained through reading out loud to your child as late into life as possible, certainly through 5th grade but beyond that also. Another suggestion is to keep investing in reading skills -- if your child does not enjoy reading, try course like the Fast ForWord program, Lindamood Bell or other programs that will help provide reading comfort. Reading comfort will lead to more reading (just as closed captioning helps Finnish kids lead the world in reading!) and hopefully reading enjoyment, a virtuous circle.

Metacognition
An elusive but defining element of learning success.

Without metacognition -- learning awareness -- your child cannot achieve at his or her potential. Delays in developing this most crucial of learning skills explains why many struggling early graders go on to under-achieve at high school and college.

What is it?
Metacognition refers to a level of thinking about what you are learning as you learn (listening to a teacher, reading or studying): Am I getting this? Does this fit with my current knowledge? If I am not getting it, what should I do right now -- re-read, get help?

Planning the way to approach a learning task, monitoring comprehension, and evaluating the progress towards the completion of a task: these require metacognition. Similarly, maintaining motivation to see a task to completion is a metacognitive skill.

Why Is It Important?
Students who demonstrate a wide range of metacognitive skills perform better on exams and complete work more efficiently. They are self-regulated learners who utilize the "right tool for the job" and modify learning strategies and skills based on their awareness of effectiveness.

A student with metacognition is aware of his or her own strengths and weaknesses, the nature of the task at hand, and available "tools" or skills. Individuals with a high level of metacognitive knowledge and skill identify blocks to learning as early as possible and change "tools" or strategies to ensure goal attainment.

Why Many Students Do Not Develop Metacognition
Metacognition when reading/listening to a teacher requires free brain capacity, headroom to think over and above the listening or reading. And so the information needs to be coming to the student automatically, subconsciously like riding a bike.

If child's learning mechanism is overloaded --if reading is not automatic, if listening in class, i.e., auditory processing, is inefficient -- then metacognition cannot develop as it should.

About half of all students in the US leave 8th grade below grade level. The vast majority have delayed metacognitive skills. They may well have functional reading and listening skills but these skills are inefficient, taking up too much conscious brain space, crowding out metacognitive development.

Our Programs Aim to Develop Metacognition
Gemm Learning uses Fast ForWord software to help the brain learn to process efficiently, which frees up brain capacity for development of metacognition.

These skills take years to develop. Time lost learning the basics such as efficient listening or reading with automaticity impacts metacognitive skills later. If you think your child has an over-loaded learning mechanism that could lead to a metacognitive gap later in life, fill in this screening to see if we can help.

For more on metacognition when reading click here.