Common Core Standard For English Language Arts (Page 3 of 43) in pdf

Common Core State StandardS for engliSh language artS & literaCy in hiStory/SoCial StudieS, SCienCe, and teChniCal SubjeCtS

rarely held accountable for what they are able to read independently (Heller & Greenleaf, 2007). This discrepancy in

task demand, coupled with what we see below is a vast gap in text complexity, may help explain why only about half

of the students taking the ACT Test in the 2004–2005 academic year could meet the benchmark score in reading

(which also was the case in 2008–2009, the most recent year for which data are available) and why so few students

in general are prepared for postsecondary reading (ACT, Inc., 2006, 2009).

K–12 Schooling: Declining Complexity of Texts

and a Lack of Reading of Complex Texts Independently

Despite steady or growing reading demands from various sources, K–12 reading texts have actually trended downward

in difficulty in the last half century. Jeanne Chall and her colleagues (Chall, Conard, & Harris, 1977) found a thirteen-

year decrease from 1963 to 1975 in the difficulty of grade 1, grade 6, and (especially) grade 11 texts. Extending the

period to 1991, Hayes, Wolfer, and Wolfe (1996) found precipitous declines (relative to the period from 1946 to 1962) in

average sentence length and vocabulary level in reading textbooks for a variety of grades. Hayes also found that while

science books were more difficult to read than literature books, only books for Advanced Placement (AP) classes had

vocabulary levels equivalent to those of even newspapers of the time (Hayes & Ward, 1992). Carrying the research

closer to the present day, Gary L. Williamson (2006) found a 350L (Lexile) gap between the difficulty of end-of-high

school and college texts—a gap equivalent to 1.5 standard deviations and more than the Lexile difference between

grade 4 and grade 8 texts on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Although legitimate questions

can be raised about the tools used to measure text complexity (e.g., Mesmer, 2008), what is relevant in these numbers

is the general, steady decline—over time, across grades, and substantiated by several sources—in the difficulty and

likely also the sophistication of content of the texts students have been asked to read in school since 1962.

There is also evidence that current standards, curriculum, and instructional practice have not done enough to foster

the independent reading of complex texts so crucial for college and career readiness, particularly in the case of infor-

mational texts. K–12 students are, in general, given considerable scaffolding—assistance from teachers, class discus-

sions, and the texts themselves (in such forms as summaries, glossaries, and other text features)—with reading that is

already less complex overall than that typically required of students prior to 1962.

What is more, students today are

asked to read very little expository text—as little as 7 and 15 percent of elementary and middle school instructional

reading, for example, is expository (Hoffman, Sabo, Bliss, & Hoy, 1994; Moss & Newton, 2002; Yopp & Yopp, 2006)—

yet much research supports the conclusion that such text is harder for most students to read than is narrative text

(Bowen & Roth, 1999; Bowen, Roth, & McGinn, 1999, 2002; Heller & Greenleaf, 2007; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008),

that students need sustained exposure to expository text to develop important reading strategies (Afflerbach, Pear-

son, & Paris, 2008; Kintsch, 1998, 2009; McNamara, Graesser, & Louwerse, in press; Perfetti, Landi, & Oakhill, 2005;

van den Broek, Lorch, Linderholm, & Gustafson, 2001; van den Broek, Risden, & Husebye-Hartmann, 1995), and that

expository text makes up the vast majority of the required reading in college and the workplace (Achieve, Inc., 2007).

Worse still, what little expository reading students are asked to do is too often of the superficial variety that involves

skimming and scanning for particular, discrete pieces of information; such reading is unlikely to prepare students for

the cognitive demand of true understanding of complex text.

The Consequences: Too Many Students Reading at Too Low a Level

The impact that low reading achievement has on students’ readiness for college, careers, and life in general is signifi-

cant. To put the matter bluntly, a high school graduate who is a poor reader is a postsecondary student who must

struggle mightily to succeed. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) (Wirt, Choy, Rooney, Provasnik, Sen,

& Tobin, 2004) reports that although needing to take one or more remedial/developmental courses of any sort low-

ers a student’s chance of eventually earning a degree or certificate, “the need for remedial reading appears to be the

most serious barrier to degree completion” (p. 63). Only 30 percent of 1992 high school seniors who went on to enroll

in postsecondary education between 1992 and 2000 and then took any remedial reading course went on to receive a

degree or certificate, compared to 69 percent of the 1992 seniors who took no postsecondary remedial courses and

57 percent of those who took one remedial course in a subject other than reading or mathematics. Considering that 11

percent of those high school seniors required at least one remedial reading course, the societal impact of low reading

achievement is as profound as its impact on the aspirations of individual students.

Reading levels among the adult population are also disturbingly low. The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy

(Kutner, Greenberg, Jin, Boyle, Hsu, & Dunleavy, 2007) reported that 14 percent of adults read prose texts at “below

basic” level, meaning they could exhibit “no more than the most simple and concrete literacy skills”; a similarly small

number (13 percent) could read prose texts at the “proficient level,” meaning they could perform “more complex

and challenging literacy activities” (p. 4). The percent of “proficient” readers had actually declined in a statistically

significant way from 1992 (15 percent). This low and declining achievement rate may be connected to a general lack

of reading. As reported by the National Endowment for the Arts (2004), the percent of U.S. adults reading literature

dropped from 54.0 in 1992 to 46.7 in 2002, while the percent of adults reading any book also declined by 7 percent

As also noted in “Key Considerations in Implementing Text Complexity,” below, it is important to recognize that scaffolding

often is entirely appropriate. The expectation that scaffolding will occur with particularly challenging texts is built into the

Standards’ grade-by-grade text complexity expectations, for example. The general movement, however, should be toward de-

creasing scaffolding and increasing independence both within and across the text complexity bands defined in the Standards.

Common Core Standard For English Language Arts Page 3

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