Common Core Part 4

Old Versus New - Reading Fluency

          This section will focus on comparisons and contrasts between the old Arizona standards for Reading Fluency and the requirements in the new Common Core standards.  In the previous post, I analyzed the similarities and differences only for the 11th and 12th grade.  I plan to continue in that vein in future posts.  However, reading fluency is sufficiently narrow that it lends itself well to considering all grades at once.  As always, I encourage readers to follow the above links to the actual standards and, if you live outside of Arizona, feel free to compare my comments to your own state's standards (old and new).

The Facts:

• The old standards have no fluency standard for kindergarten.  The Common Core requires kindergartners to "read emergent texts with purpose and understanding."
• The old standards required 1st through 3rd graders to "consistently read grade-level text with at least 90 percent accuracy."  The new standard requires 1st through 3rd graders to read with "sufficient accuracy to support comprehension."
• In the old standards, 1st grade students should "read aloud with fluency in a manner that sounds like natural speech."  In 2nd grade, the same standard includes "demonstrating automaticity."  The correlating new standards for both 1st and 2nd grades are that students "read on-level texts orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings."
• The old standards add that 2nd graders should use punctuation to guide fluency.  This is not explicitly stated in the new standard.
• The new standards add that 1st through 5th graders read on-level texts with "purpose and understanding."
• In 1st through 3rd grade, students are expected under the new standard to "use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding..."
• The old standards required 3rd through 5th grade students to read "familiar" prose and poetry fluently while the new standard substitutes "on-level" prose and poetry.
• The old standards required 6th through 12th graders to "read from a variety of genres with accuracy, automaticity (immediate recognition), and prosody (expression)."  The new standards have no correlating standard in grades 6 through 12.  This is covered in earlier grades only.
• Neither set of standards include a required or even a recommended reading list.
• The new standards include a list of reading materials to help curriculum providers and selectors determine what texts are "on-level" for each grade.

My Opinion:

          There are quite a few similarities in the expectations stated in both sets of standards.  Not being a specialist on early reading, I cannot definitively state which option is better, but I will share my thoughts anyway.  On face value, the requirement that kindergartners be able to read emergent text seems like a step up.  We will require children to read earlier and this should present a domino effect of higher reading levels at higher grades.  However, I am not certain the expected outcome will occur.  I know there are some countries (Norway for example) that begin teaching reading much later (at about the age of 7 or 8) and have very high literacy rates.  Granted, Norway's education system is very different from our own; but the point is that reading earlier may not be any guarantee of reading better in subsequent grades. 
          Another example that comes to mind is music.  There are some children who are savants at the piano or other instruments.  Mozart was composing by the time he was 4.  But most music teachers still recommend waiting until a child is 7 or 8 to begin lessons.  And, in general, those who start much younger (and are not savants) gain little, if any, ground over their counterparts who start later.  Furthermore, the extra years of lessons and practice with little progress due to immaturity or lack of readiness, often mean that the child has lost the excitement and interest in playing the instrument by the time they are 7 or 8.  Whether this is true of early reading or not, I do not know.  Certainly, a child who is ready to read by the age of 4 or 5 and wants to should be taught.  I am just not certain it is in the best interest of every child to insist they read by the end of kindergarten.
          The next difference is the change from reading with ninety percent accuracy to reading with sufficient accuracy to aid comprehension.  Again, I am not sure which is preferable.  The first sentence in this paragraph has 20 words.  If a reader understood all but two of them, that would be 90 percent.  Perhaps that would be sufficient to understand the sentence.  Surely, if they misread two small words like is, the, or with, they would understand the meaning.  But the simple words are the least likely to be misunderstood.  Try reading the first sentence without two of the more complex words.  Does it still make sense?  Probably not without the word "comprehension" or "accuracy."  Having looked at this ad hoc example, I lean tentatively toward the new standard on this aspect.
          The new requirement that students use context to confirm or self-correct when reading aloud seems like a beneficial improvement.  Likewise, the change from reading "familiar" prose and poetry to "on-level" prose and poetry seems like a small step up.  Explicitly stating that punctuation should guide fluency seems like an unnecessary addition.  If a student reads fluently, accurately, with expression, and at an appropriate pace as stated in the new standards, proper use of punctuation is implied.  A student who ignored periods or commas, for example, would not be reading accurately or at an appropriate pace.
          I find it interesting that the new standards cease to address reading fluency beyond 5th grade.  They address many other aspects of reading and especially reading comprehension as will be covered in subsequent posts, but, as far as I could tell, reading aloud is no longer emphasized in grades 6 through 12.  However, the old fluency standard is incredibly unspecific.  It says that students should read increasingly difficult texts fluently, but it never states that this reading should be at grade level or any other such requirement.  As such, it is a fairly meaningless repetition of a standard that is to be mastered by the 6th grade and then just repeated with "increasingly complex" text.  Standards as unspecific as these are what allows the watering down of reading requirements.  It makes it impossible to judge whether or not the requirement has been met when there is no reading complexity guide by which to judge reading selections.  In the new standards, students must master reading aloud with fluency by the end of the 5th grade and then reading complexity is increased in subsequent years according to a reading complexity rubric (which will be further discussed in a later post).
          In light of all the above considerations, I find that the standards for reading fluency are very comparable.  While there are minute differences, there does not seem to be a major shift aside from requiring students to read emergent texts earlier and I am entirely ambivalent on this alteration.  I find that the new standard is slightly more specific because of the expectation that students read at a certain well-defined level.  As with the previous sub-topic (vocabulary), I find no indication of political bias or hidden agenda.  I think that the new Common Core standards for reading fluency are very slightly better than the previous Arizona standards.