As a professional organization, NCTE is committed to the development of excellent literacy education through all grade levels. Approximately 8 million students in grades 4-12 are reading below grade level, and limited literacy skills cause 3,000 students to drop out of high school every school day. While the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 triggered highly publicized reports on low levels of reading achievement in America’s elementary schools, middle and high school students face different but no less important literacy challenges.
Adolescent Literacy Pathways
This online professional development opportunity helps teachers, schools, and districts address the unique needs of adolescent learners with content on key areas such as 21st century literacy, closing the achievement gap, testing, and accountability.
Consulting Network
Bring an experienced NCTE Consultant to your school to engage your staff in a workshop or presentation on adolescent literacy today!
Web Seminars
NCTE Web Seminars are a convenient and meaningful form of professional development. On Demand Web seminars provide the recorded version of the live virtual event and include all audio, video, chat discussion, and actions within the presentation.
These classroom-tested lesson plans provide ready resources for teachers working with students from kindergarten to high school.
Check out these podcasts which provide families, educators, out-of-school practitioners, and tutors reading recommendations they can pass along to teen readers.
The Principles in Practice imprint series offers teachers concrete illustrations of effective classroom practices based in NCTE research briefs and policy statements.
The PIP series offers an Adolescent Literacy strand which discusses the research, links the research to an NCTE brief or policy statement, and then demonstrates how those principles come alive in practice.
Additional Adolescent Literacy Books
NCTE Position Statements
Read about the NCTE Guideline for Preparing Teachers with Knowledge of Children's and Adolescent Literature.
This NCTE Policy Research Brief offers updates on research with implications for policy decisions that affect teaching and learning in the area of adolescent literacy. Research Clips are short research-based responses to questions about practice and is a supplement to this policy brief.
NCTE Principles of Adolescent Literacy Reform
This policy research brief delineates the problems of adolescent literacy and outlines reforms NCTE has identified as necessary to address them.
The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of NCTE (ALAN) promotes communication and cooperation among all individuals who have a special interest in adolescent literature, presents programs and conferences on this subject, promotes and increases the number of articles and publications devoted to it and integrates the efforts of all those with an interest in this literature. Members receive three issues annually of The ALAN Review, a journal emphasizing new books, research, and methods of teaching adolescent literature. Visit the ALAN Web page at http://community.alan-ya.org/Home/.