From The Answer Sheet blog at the Washington Post
We tend to teach comprehension as a series of “reading strategies” that can be practiced and mastered. Unfortunately it really doesn’t work that way.
This style of teaching reading as a set of “strategies” is true even in the top-ranked school district in California. I suspect that it is true in many private schools as well. Parents are strongly encouraged to make sure that children read regularly at home, with explicit prescriptions for daily reading time and reading logs. The school makes no effort to recommend particular content, so parents are left with the job of ensuring that our children acquire sufficient background knowledge through reading at home that they can pass the routine classroom tests.
