As educators, we do all we can in the classroom. But we know we can only do so much. If things are not on track at home, it is hard to get them back on track at school.

A recent study concluded that the majority of factors contributing to below-level eighth-grade performance were related to family life. The Educational Testing Service (ETS), the group behind standardized tests like the SATs, released the report, called "The Family: America's Smallest School," identifying key factors associated with academic performance. Those factors, positive and negative, included children living with one parent; eighth-graders being absent from school at least three times a month; eighth-graders watching five or more hours of television daily; and parents reading daily to children ages 5 and younger.

The bottom line, according to the study, is that children whose parents do not read to them often are already behind at age 5, and those children tend to stay behind. In poor families and single-parent homes, there are lower-level readers on average because working parents often do not have as much time to spend reading with their children.

The moral of the story: Just as we must focus on improving the time students spend in schools, as a society we need to help parents find ways to spend critical time with their children.

Connecticut educators recently had their first reading summit and put some numbers to what those of us in the trenches know all too well: Student reading skills are nowhere near good enough. About a quarter of Connecticut third-graders tested at or below basic reading levels, and educators saw huge gaps between the performance of poor students and economically stable students, and between minority students and white students.

The real problem, according to Nancy Cappello, head of the State Department of Education, is that students typically don't get intervention until age 9. That's too late. Kids who have to wait that long for help continue to struggle with reading through high school.

So we need to get kids excited about reading early on and keep them reading. Some schools can provide some students with coaches, but support for extra academic help is very limited. That is why Learning A–Z provides printable leveled readers on hundreds of topics; books with fun animation kids can read or listen to online; and tutor packets, complete with books, activities, and games. Our goal is to have resources at every developmental level to help every child reach reading proficiency.

Indeed, appearances can be deceiving. Educational testing and academic standards are no exception to that old adage. In fact, studies in the last couple of years have shown significant discrepancies between how students perform on tests developed at the state level and how they perform on grade-level tests developed at a national level.

One study by Stanford University and the University of California, which looked at how 12 states conducted their testing programs from 1992 through 2006, found that students performed well on their state tests in reading and math and, in comparison, quite poorly on the federal NAEP test. In some of the states, score differentials between the state tests and the NAEP reading and math tests exceeded 50 points.

A study from the Fordham Institute identified Colorado and Wisconsin as among those with the lowest state standards, and California, Massachusetts, and Indiana as among those with the highest standards. One reason for the difference is that some states are designing tests to ensure high scores and continued No Child Left Behind (NCLB) funding.

Receiving the NCLB funds is contingent on a state's agreeing to test students, measure student improvement, and meet certain academic standards. That is precisely why some states have found their own ways to guarantee a share of the NCLB funds. States have lowered the standards for evaluating whether their students are making adequate yearly progress, the NCLB standard for funding, and have devised weak tests intended to assure their students meet those lowered standards.

This situation is not going to change until we have national standards and national tests in math and reading adopted by all states. Only then can we measure progress accurately and fairly, and only then can we truly compare student performance on a national scope.

(Problems with NCLB extend beyond testing, but that story is for another day. The expectations of NCLB are not the problem. They are good standards to which to aspire and standards that will do our children justice. But the law has created too many challenges--not only inequitable testing concerns, but also issues around funding the initiative adequately and meeting the needs of a diverse student population.)

A recent international test of reading indicates fourth-graders in the United States have lost ground to their counterparts in other countries. Students in eight of the 45 countries assessed showed improvement since the 2001 test. Student performance in the United States remained flat despite the increased emphasis on reading mandated by the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act.

This lack of improvement in the world arena is especially alarming, given that educators in the United States reported spending more than six hours a week on reading instruction, whereas teachers in other countries spent less than six hours a week teaching reading.

These findings could well indicate that students in other countries are spending more of their leisure time reading than are students in the United States. I am inclined to believe that kids in the United States forgo reading because they have far more interest in television, electronic games, and online and cell phone messaging.

Another reason we may be lagging in reading improvement compared with other nations is that teachers in the United States are instructing inordinately greater numbers of English language learners. There are probably many, many reasons that impact a country’s ranking on the world education field. And, I would be interested in knowing your thoughts on why the United States is among the non-improved and what we can do to change the playing field.