AI’s take: “Essentially, the intense focus on basic reading and math skills, driven by federal accountability laws, created a practical need for more digestible, shorter informational texts in other subjects…”
- President Bush’s 2002 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) made accountability a buzzword with its requisite standardized testing in math and reading. By putting those two subjects center stage, science and social studies took a back seat in elementary classrooms before being absorbed into English/Language Arts blocks. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-
- The Obama-era 2010 Common Core Standards took NCLB further. Elementary teachers now had to split reading instruction time: 50% on literary works and 50% on informational texts, often based on social studies and science classroom materials. ht
- The Obama-era Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), in effect as of the 2017-18 school year, kept NCLB’s mandated standardized testing, its site explaining and unedited by me: “… The law moved the federal accountability aspect to the States. The State, in turn, still submit an accountability plan to the Education Department, however ESSA allows for local educational agencies may apply for subgrants for local accountability plans.”
And with that, AI reminds us, “…The rich, narrative texts and in-depth project-based inquiry that once characterized these subjects were often replaced by shorter, more manageable information texts that could be used for reading comprehension exercises.”
And so…
*** Writes Hoover Institute’s Eric A. Hanushek and Excelin Education’s Christy Hovanetz, “The research from Stanford University estimates that the learning loss over the past decade has cost our country over $90 trillion in future growth…”
*** On the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 29% of 8th graders and 30% of 4th graders were proficient in reading.
*** Although most elementary schools spend 2 hours of daily reading instruction, 90% is mostly delivered to small groups of students 3 to 5 times a week, amounting to just 25 minutes of instruction, and not nearly enough to teach the essentials of reading instruction, such as fluency and vocabulary.
*** As Education Week’s Sarah Schwartz reports, “There are signs that some classrooms are shifting away from long-form reading much earlier, as far back as elementary school…”
- In 2023, 25% of teachers of 3rd to 8th graders said that classroom reading relies primarily on excerpts,
- BUT, say reading researchers, “Novels and longer works in general are powerful teaching tools for children in upper elementary grades and beyond.”
- Reminds Maryanne Wolf, director of the Dyslexia, Diverse Learners and Social Justice of California: “The reading brain needs to be exercised. One of the major ways to exercise it is prolonged, denser reading that is continuous.
*** Middle school literacy district literacy coach Janeth Cornejo says most middle school teachers now replace Shakespeare plays with “modern-day” graphic novels or plan to skip them altogether. The reason, “Shakespeare is too steep a struggle. And teaching fewer long works leaves more time for shorter, informational texts focused on science and social studies, which align more with what students might see on an end-of-year standardized test.”
- She adds, “I hate teaching to the test, but that’s where we are right now.”
*** Former English teacher and principal, now superintendent of Pennsylvania’s Brookville Area School District Erich May’s “Stop Assigning Boring Books in English Class,” describes Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter as “long and convoluted sentences about old men and prison.” “Wuthering Heights,” he says, “is just as ugly…Forget about Charles Dickens and Jane Austen; forget about Chaucer and Shakespeare.”
Check all that you agree with:
- _______ Shorter, informational texts, not longer, outdated ones, are essential in today’s digital world.
- _______ Going shorter represents a dumbing down of our kids.
- _______ Shakespeare should be out; way too hard to make any sense out of.
- _______ Teaching to the test helps kids do well on standardized tests.
- _______ Online standardized testing is essential, telling us where kids stand in reading.
- _______ NCLB, ESSA, and the Common Core promote learning and equity.
- _______ Low expectations result in low standards and poor results.
- _______ Kids can handle longer, more complex texts with teacher support.
- _______ Even with teacher support, longer works set kids up to fail.
- _______ Online reading is just as effective, comprehension-wise, as print versions.
With thanks, please share your thoughts, Carol
