Stop Worrying About Grade-Level Reading Growth
Photo by Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu, unsplash.com
By Mark W.F. Condon, Unite for Literacy vice president
The concerns about making sure that all children progress at the same pace in their reading test score growth have always been misplaced, misguided, and deeply rooted in U.S. schooling practices.
Literacy instruction needn’t be organized like marching band practice where everyone must be in step with each other. Yet reading groups and grade-level book assignments have been that way forever and we still end up with a totally normal range of test scores for the kids at each elementary grade. Those natural outcomes of children’s progress should be totally expected and accounted for as predictable and even healthy. The traditions and arguments for our instructional regimentation are bound up with assigning every child the same grade-level reading book based upon their grade assignment rather than their individual growth as readers.
Think about how it is that we came to this point. Publishers sell school districts books in stairstep batches, with each grade’s books more complex. That’s nice and neat for publishers and school district book purchasers, but instructionally goofy and nearly catastrophic for teachers who are required to crack the whip all year to get as many kids as possible scoring at “grade level” for the springtime test. This process takes the place of nurturing each child to love books and become ever more eager to read more of them, which is the most productive path to solid children’s reading growth.
Isn’t that what we should want and work toward? To grow readers instead of boosting reading scores? What if, instead of anxiously reviewing disappointing school test scores in our newspapers each year, communities embrace the eager readers waiting their turn in the library to select their next engaging title? And that the ever-expanding interest in reading causes schools to add more great books for children to enjoy along with more cheerful librarians to support those readers?
This will take a sea change in how books are selected for classrooms and school libraries, how they are organized, how and what best-teaching practices are taught to teachers, and how administrators arrange and conduct teaching support in schools. It will mean a bottom to top change in how communities think of the jobs we give teachers to do in bringing children into fully, happy, and eager lifelong readership, which of course is the overarching goal of all education. It will dramatically restructure how we assess and adapt for the steady, if often, unpredictable growth of each child as they become eager, lifelong readers.
It will be a huge undertaking to sell this kind of literacy instruction to communities in which almost every parent and member of the business community experienced the historically staid traditions of their own schooling. They’ll naturally carry their own experiences into expectations for their kids’ schools, continuing practices that create agony for children, families and teachers of “failing” kids to another full year of insensitivity to the struggles of a troubling portion of the children. That occurs not because they are candidates for special needs assistance necessarily, but because they were simply too different from the norm. Further, publishers will vehemently oppose such changes. On the other hand, school librarians will start dancing in the hallways. (Wouldn’t that be cool?!)
The challenge is clear. Either we stop the madnesses of being chained to our traditions where each autumn we watch the bright-eyed and nervous little kids going off to school on that first day, knowing that far too many of them will experience failure. Or we can take steps to eliminate nearly all of those kids’ school-created discomforts, increase their sense of belonging with friends, and boost every child’s literacy across the grades.
Fully informed communities, dedicated administrators, classroom educators and librarians must join hands and decide to get that accomplished by eliminating standard book assignment practices and helping kids find books they want to read and enjoy.
Unite for Literacy is here to help.