Text Complexity & the Research behind the Common Core

          My goal today was to write about the fiction / nonfiction reading requirements within the Common Core.  However, as I began to look at the reasoning for the breakdown (as described in Appendix A of the English Language Arts Standards) and the research presented as backing up such a distribution (found at the end of Appendix A), I was sidetracked by one of the indicated studies.  My intention was to skim through a few of the studies to see if I could find where the 70/30 percentages had been derived and whether they were in any way representative of college and career expectations.  Instead, I ended up engrossed in a paper written by Marilyn Jager Adams entitled The Challenge of Advanced Texts: The Interdependence of Reading and Learning.

          I had previously read parts of Appendix A and was surprised by some of the information about reading comprehension.  I was particularly interested to learn that while text complexity of newsprint, college texts and scientific papers has remained stable or increased slightly since 1970, the text complexity of K-12 texts has decreased significantly over the same time period.  It makes sense, then, that a growing number of our students are not prepared for college and career reading demands when they have not previously been exposed to such complex texts in the K-12 setting.

          The study that so thoroughly captured my attention is one that drives home these points and talks extensively about the research procedures that led to these conclusions.  It furthermore offers suggestions of how to rectify the problem within our schools.  So while today's post does not deal directly with Common Core, it speaks to the motivation for inclusion of text complexity requirements.  If you have a couple hours to pour over the actual report, I would highly recommend it.  It is fairly lengthy, but my initial impression is that the research is well done and thorough and has great repercussions on the text complexity discussions that have been and will continue to take place.

 

The Facts (as determined or sited by the above-mentioned study):

• Scores for the verbal section of the SAT have been on the decline since the 1960s.  From 1963 to 1980, they fell 54 points or approximately half of a standard deviation.  Meanwhile text complexity of the exam was found to have declined slightly over the study period.  Shifts in the demographics of the average student taking the test can account for some of the discrepancy, but the study found that it is unlikely to account for more than about 30% of the change.
• In the early 1990s the SAT decided to re-center its average score to 500 points.  They had to add 80 points to the score in order to do so.
• International studies ranked US 4th graders' reading and literacy development as 9th out of the 35 countries participating.  High school students meanwhile ranked 17th out of 30 and they significantly outperformed only 5 of the other countries in the study.
• Adult literacy in the US ranked 12th of 20 countries in a 2002 study despite ranking first in the number of years of schooling and academic degree completion.
• Literacy levels of adults in the US over the age of 35 ranked 5th of 20 countries, while "adults younger than 35 ranked in the bottom half of the distribution by every measure."
• Over 40% of US adults are "unable to comprehend texts of moderate everyday difficulty."
• While 4th and 8th grade students have improved on tests such as NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress), it has simultaneously fallen for 12th graders.
• The following quote I have decided to include verbatim:

"The College Board's 1977 panel examined a number of factors that might have contributed to the SAT score decline. One of these, proposed by Jeanne Chall, was that the reading selections on the tests had somehow become too hard for the students. To test this hypothesis, Chall and her colleagues (1977) sampled passages from SAT tests administered between 1947 and 1975, using readability analyses to compare their difficulty. Yet, the data indicated that the SAT passages had become easier, not harder. Between 1963 and 1975, during the years of the score decline, the average difficulty of the test passages lay at the 11th-grade level, which should have been solidly in range for 12th-grade college-bound students. However, Chall et al. also evaluated popular 11th-grade textbooks in history, literature, grammar, and composition. The average difficulty of the textbooks lay between the ninth- and tenth-grade levels. Could the SAT score decline have been due to this difference in the relative difficulty of the test and the school books? If students had neither practiced nor been instructed with reading materials as hard as the SAT passages, then one could hardly expect them to read the latter with competence and confidence.

Following on Chall et al.'s (1977) hypothesis, Hayes, Wolfer, and Wolfe (1996) undertook a complementary study in which they analyzed the difficulty of popular reading textbook series over time. Their results indicated that the difficulty of the text in these books, especially in grades 4 and up, had been reduced and, further, that this reduction was temporally aligned with the SAT score decline."

 

My Opinion:

          I find the above study fascinating for several reasons.   But again, I would urge readers who are interested to take the time to read the study itself.  The points I have touched on are only a small part of the study.  This study goes on to look at how people acquire vocabulary and subject-matter knowledge, what inspires individuals to read and attain new vocabulary, and what steps might be taken to rectify the current situation.  It also includes a fascinating study on teaching computers vocabulary through reading articles and the conclusion that when a computer reads articles it learns not only about things present in the article itself, but also about other related words and subjects not explicitly stated in the article.  This part of the paper starts on page 20 if you are interested.

          But the part of the article I find most relevant to the current discussion of text complexity is the stated discrepancies between the decreasing text complexity found in K-12 schools and the stable or increasing text complexity found outside of K-12 education.  It seems very clear that in order to improve the reading ability of our students we must increase the text complexity levels and expectations within our schools.  If we are to do this, it makes sense to use a somewhat top-down approach, meaning, that we should start by looking at the literacy abilities that are expected of a recent high school graduate when a) entering college, b) starting an entry-level career (that requires only a high school diploma), and c) participating as a United States citizen.  Once we determine the level of reading comprehension required to be successful in each of these three scenarios, we should set that level as the expectation for a 12th grader and then work backwards from there, determining what level of literacy must be attained each year in order to reach the new literacy goal.

          Next comes the most important piece of the puzzle.  We must make sure our texts for each grade match the level of text complexity required in order to attain the desired level of literacy.  Without this piece, desired improvements are not likely to occur. 

          With all of this background information in place, the design of the Common Core's text complexity bands make a whole lot of sense.  While some of the exemplary texts are unarguably boring and strange selections for students of any age (think Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environment, Energy, and Transportation Management or Recommended Levels of Insulation), the point is not to use those exact texts, but to use texts that match the designated level of text complexity.  If a district or school or teacher is to appropriately implement the reading standards, they should look at each of their science, math, history, and every other text that has or is to be used by a specific grade level.  They should then, along with checking to ensure texts contain the appropriate content, are unbiased, and are age-level appropriate, should check the text complexity to ensure it meets a minimum level of complexity.  And this should be true not just of text books, but primary documents studied at each grade, fictional literature, directions on assignments, and, ideally, every form of the written word used in our classrooms.

          One of my greatest concerns with the exemplary texts is that teachers will go through the list and use those exact texts instead of going through the effort to find texts of similar text complexity that better fit their own interests and the interests of their students.  I would hate for a science teacher to feel he/she had to read Recommended Levels of Insulation with students rather than another, much more interesting and engaging text with greater scientific significance.  However, I am not sure how the Common Core could ensure that teachers and curriculum developers across the states understood the appropriate levels of text complexity without giving explicit examples of the types of readings expected.  I believe it is incumbent upon each state and, more importantly, each district, to edit the list of exemplary texts to remove some of the more absurd titles and include a greater range of exemplars from which teachers can select with little research and comparison of text complexity on their part.  After doing my research today, it is something about which I plan to speak with our curriculum department; and I would encourage others, especially fellow school board members or those who are involved with their state's Department of Education to do the same.

          If we can increase the literacy level of our high school students, I believe there will be associated gains in every subject.  So much has been said about the decline of other subjects(humanities in particular) because of the emphasis on reading and math.  But improving reading skills opens the door for students to learn subject matter in all fields.  And while students are working on improving reading skills, there is no reason they cannot simultaneously be learning about other subjects through their reading.  Through improving the complexity of our texts in an intentional, step-by-step method, we can better prepare our students, not only to go to college or begin a career, but to be knowledgeable citizens capable of understanding ballot proposition, current events, and our nation's history, as well as enjoying great literature of the past and present.