Elementary Principal’s Meeting

January 2012

Reading

Key Requirement of CCSSAll students must be able to comprehend texts of steadily increasing complexity as they progress through school.

All students must be able to read and comprehend independently and proficiently texts commonly found in college and careers.

Why Text Complexity Matters

ACT Research, 2006

Reading Between the Lines

The clearest differentiator in students making the benchmark score and students not making the benchmark score is the student’s ability to read complex text.

Why Text Complexity Matters

Most important implication: Pedagogy focused only on “higher order” or “critical” thinking is insufficient to determine college and career readiness.

What students can read in terms of its complexity is at least as important as what they can do with what they read.

Why Text Complexity Matters

Reading demands of college, workforce training programs, and citizenship have held steady or risen over the past 50 years. K-12 texts, if anything, have become less demanding.

This finding is the impetus behind the Standards’ strong emphasis on text complexity.

Steady or Increasing Complexity of Texts/Tasks in College Careers, and Citizenship

As measured by Lexiles, the difficulty of college textbooks has not decreased since 1962. It has increased.

College professors assign more readings from periodicals than do high school teachers.

Students receive much less scaffolding at the college level.

Students are held more accountable for what they read independently at the college level.

The variations in text complexity and task demands make for a significant gap.

K-12 Schooling - Declining Complexity of Texts and a Lack of Reading of Complex Text Independently

Chall (1977) found a 13 year decrease in text complexity from 1963 - 1975 in grades 1, 6 and especially, 11.

Extending to 1991, precipitous declines were noted in average sentence length and vocabulary level in reading textbooks for a variety of grades.

Hayes (1991) found that AP textbooks had vocabulary levels equivalent to those of newspapers at the time.

Williamson (2006) noted a 350 Lexile gap between the end of high school text and college level text.

Questions about measurements? What is important is the general, steady decline over time and across grades in difficulty and sophistication documented by several sources.

The Consequences

Taking one or more remedial/developmental courses lowers a student’s chance of eventually earning a degree.

The need for remedial reading appears to be the most serious barrier to degree completion.

Only 30% of students required to take a remedial reading course actually complete a degree.

Fifty-seven percent of students who take a remedial course in an area other than reading complete a degree.

Sixty-nine percent of students not requiring a remedial course in any area actually complete a degree.

The Consequences

The percent of “proficient” readers has actually declined in a statistically significant way from 1992 - 15 percent.

The low and declining achievement rate may be connected to a general lack of reading.

The Consequences

Being able to read complex texts independently and proficiently is essential for high achievement in college and the workplace.

Students must develop the skill of reading challenging texts with understanding.

If students do not develop the concentration and stamina to read complex texts, they will read less in general.

The Consequences

If students cannot read complex expository text to gain significant knowledge, they will turn to text-free or text-light sources.

These sources cannot capture the nuance, subtlety, depth or breadth of ideas in a complex text.

The Standards’ Approach - Text Complexity

Three-part model

Qualitative

Quantitative

Reader and Task

Grade-by-grade specifications (Standard 10)

Connections to standards 1-9

Three-Part Model

Qualitative - best measured by an attentive human reader, such as levels of meaning or purpose;structure; language conventionality and clarity; knowledge demands.

Quantitative - Aspects of text complexity, such as word length or frequency, sentence length, and text cohesion- difficult-if not impossible-for a human reader to evaluate efficiently.

Reader and Task Considerations - variables specific to particular readers-motivation, knowledge, experiences, and to particular tasks-such as purpose and complexity of the task assigned.

Qualitative and Quantitative Measures of Text Complexity

Representative of the best tools available

Only provisional

More tools are urgently needed.

Useful, yet imperfect

Qualitative Measures

Informed decisions

Trained judgment

Necessary complement (and sometimes corrective measure) to quantitative measures

Qualitative Measures

Levels of Meaning or Purpose

Structure

Language Conventionality and Clarity

Knowledge Demands: Life Experiences

Knowledge Demands: Cultural/Literary Knowledge

Knowledge Demands: Content/Discipline Knowledge

Qualitative Measures

Quantitative Measures

New and/or improved measures are needed quickly

CCSS does not endorse any particular measure.

Formulas

Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level Test - word length and sentence length

Dale-Chall Readability Formula - word frequency and sentence length

Lexile - word frequency and sentence length

ATOS (AR) - word difficulty, word length, sentence length, and text length

Lexiles and ATOS assign levels to both the text and the reader. (Entire text vs. Beginning, Middle, End)

Reader and Task Considerations

Cognitive Abilities - attention, memory, critical analytic ability, inferencing, visualization

Motivation - purpose for reading, interest in the content, self-efficacy as a reader

Knowledge - vocabulary and topic knowledge, linguistic and discourse knowledge, comprehension strategies knowledge

Experiences

Task-related variables and outcomes

Key Considerations in Implementing Text Complexity

When evaluating the complexity of text, use multiple quantitative methods and confirm or overrule with qualitative analysis.

Key Considerations in Implementing Text Complexity

Certain measures are less valid or are inappropriate for certain kinds of text.

Poems

K and 1 materials

Complex narrative fictionQualitative measures are very important in grades 6 and up.

Key Considerations in Implementing Text Complexity

Readers and Tasks

Students ability to read complex text does not always develop in a linear fashion.

Development is unlikely to occur at an unbroken pace.

Students need opportunities to stretch their reading abilities, but they also need opportunities to experience the satisfaction and pleasure of easy, fluent reading.

Key Considerations in Implementing Text Complexity

Students reading well above and well below grade level need additional support. (Guided reading groups)

However, the goal is to always be moving toward texts of higher complexity.

To meet the standards students must be reading texts that meet the level of complexity of the assigned grade band.