How to Stop the Drop in Verbal Scores

The following op-ed article, published in the September 19, 2011 issue of  "The New York Times," refers to the new decline in reading and writing scores on the SATs. The reason for this continuing decline since the 1970s seems to be, according to the most credible analyses, "vast curricular changes, especially in the critical early grades." Language competence needs to be restored in early childhood years, in order to evolve at a reasonable pace in later years. A similar analysis may also be helpful to understand the need to enrich Armenian language skills from an early stage, if we interpret "low-income children," in our case, as children with little or no knowledge of the language from home. The emphasized passages are ours.