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Crystal ball test says it can predict child’s literacy skill at 3 years old

LA School Report | July 21, 2015



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NPR

By Corey Turner

If this isn’t an honest-to-goodness crystal ball, it’s close.

Neurobiologist Nina Kraus believes she and her team at Northwestern University have found a way — a half-hour test — to predict kids’ literacy skill long before they’re old enough to begin reading.

When I first read the study in the journal PLOS Biology, two words came to mind: science fiction.

Because flagging some 3-year-olds as potentially troubled readers — before they’ve even tried reading — feels eerily like being handcuffed by Tom Cruise in Minority Report for a crime that hasn’t happened yet.

Kraus herself says the test is nothing short of “a biological looking glass into a child’s literacy potential.”

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