Learning to read—amazing as it is to small children and their parents—is one thing. Reading
to learn, explains Susan Goldman of the University of Illinois at Chicago, is quite another.
Are today’s students able to use reading and writing to acquire knowledge, solve problems,
and make decisions in academic, personal, and professional arenas? Do they have the literacy
skills necessary to meet the demands of the twenty-first century? To answer these questions,
Goldman describes the increasingly complex comprehension, reasoning skills, and knowledge
that students need as they progress through school and surveys what researchers and educators
know about how to teach those skills.