Giving Compass' Take:

• Chalkbeat explores what late-stage literacy instruction looks like, emphasizing that it requires a lot of time, patience and resources from school districts.

• While providing support for high schools helping remedial teen readers is important, this is why we need to invest in early childhood education initiatives as well, so students don't fall behind in the first place.

• Here are some literacy tools that bring equity and energy to the classroom.

Experts say it’s not impossible to teach older students how to read.

But late-stage intervention for students like Javion Grayer — a 16-year-old  who reads at a second-grade level after more than a decade in Chicago schools — takes daily practice and consistent one-to-one lessons with instructors trained to teach reading.

Such remediation, which expert say can’t happen in a general education setting or a large classroom, is something that most budget-strapped urban school districts, such as Chicago Public Schools, are ill-equipped to provide.

The district, though, insists it is taking steps to bolster literacy instruction. Just an hour after Chalkbeat published its profile of Javion — looking at how the teen fell so far behind and revealing the anguishing effects of his low literacy skills — Chicago Public Schools said it is developing a central reading curriculum that should be completed in the next two to three years. The goal: to ensure high-quality reading instruction and online library resources district-wide to support equitable access to content for readers at all grade levels, according to a district spokesperson.

Read the full article about why it takes serious investment to teach teenagers to read by Adeshina Emmanuel at Chalkbeat.