The Stupidocracy Is Here Now!

[Star Man]

American High School Students Are Reading Books At 5th-Grade-Appropriate Levels: Report

Posted: 03/23/2012 3:25 pm Updated: 03/23/2012 3:35 pm Downloaded March 24, 2012 from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/22/top-reading_n_1373680.html
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Previous articles summarizing empirical psychological research posted here have concluded that ignorant people are not able to recognize that they are ignorant and further that they cannot accurately assess the reasonableness of comments made by others. This article from HuffPo reports research showing how ignorance is spreading through the society.

Star Man
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High school students today are reading books intended for children with reading levels far below those appropriate for teens, according to a recent report.


A compilation of the top 40 books teens in grades 9-12 are reading in school shows that the average reading level of that list is 5.3 -- barely above the fifth grade.


"A fifth-grade reading level is obviously not high enough for college-level reading. Nor is it high enough for high school-level reading, either, or for informed citizenship," writes Sandra Stotsky, professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas.


The results come from "What Kids Are Reading: The Book-Reading Habits of Students in American Schools (https://doc.renlearn.com/KMNet/R004101202GH426A.pdf)," a report by Renaissance Learning, Inc. The data covers book-reading records for the 2010-2011 academic year among 2.6 million students in grades 1-12 from 24,465 schools in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
At the top of the list for high schoolers: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, followed by John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. See the slideshow below (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/22/top-reading_n_1373680.html#slide) for the top 20 books among high schoolers.


To determine a book's level of complexity, Renaissance uses an ATOS readability formula that takes into account several predictors: average sentence length, average word length, word difficulty level and total number of words in a book or passage. While readability formulas can't say much for the depth of literary aspects within a text, they offer objective measures of vocabulary and sentence complexity.


Author Dan Gutman writes in the report's foreword that kids should be reading "whatever they want (https://doc.renlearn.com/KMNet/R004101202GH426A.pdf)," but Stotsky says high school students should be reading "books above a sixth-grade reading level, for sure."


This report reflects trends in national reading scores, which remain low. On the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, an exam administered every two years, average scores for fourth and eight grade reading remained stagnant or barely improved (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/01/national-math-reading-test-scores-2011_n_1068474.html). Only 34 percent of students were rated reading "proficient." National 12th-grade reading scores were lower in 2009 than they were in 1992 (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/18/12th-grade-reading-scores_n_785442.html?1332530428).


To add to that, scores on the SAT critical reading portion to a record low last year -- its three-point drop among test-takers marks just the second time in the last 20 years (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/14/sat-reading-scores-fall-t_0_n_962138.html?ir=Education) that reading scores have fallen by that much over a single year.


According to the "What Kids Are Reading" report's "Top 25 Librarians’ Picks by Interest Level," selected from a list of 800 titles, recommended books are also at fourth- to fifth-grade reading levels for high school students.
David Coleman, contributing author of the Common Core State Standards, notes that not only must students read more high quality informational text, they must also read books of increasing complexity as they get older.
"The single most important predictor of student success in college is their ability to read a range of complex text with understanding," Coleman writes. "If you examine the top 40 lists of what students are reading today in 6th–12th grade, you will find much of it is not complex enough to prepare them for the rigors of college and career. Teachers, parents, and students need to work together to ensure that students are reading far more challenging books and practicing every year reading more demanding text. Students will not likely choose sufficiently challenging text on their own; they need to be challenged and supported to build their strength as readers by stretching to the next level."


Coleman adds that it matters not only what students read but how they read, suggesting that students read texts critically and analytically "like a detective" and write comprehensively "like an investigative reporter."

[Beverly Riverwood]

Star Man,
Thanks for posting this. I have been a teacher all my life and currently tutor students of all ages as a reading specialist. I also work for the Institute of Reading Development, a national reading business.
What this article says is not only true, but just the tip of the iceberg. Once students fall even a few months behind, they begin to hate reading and therefore do not choose to read. It doesn't work to require 20 minutes of reading each night because they choose really easy books and are not challenged. No one gets this. Parents are shocked when they find their child has missed the boat.
Now once a child stops reading books at (usually fifth) grade level, they are essentially lost because reading is practice. Fifth grade is the time that students are no longer helped with learning to read, but instead must start reading to learn. Fifth grade is the tipping point, if you will. If the child is not reading, it's really almost impossible to reach back four years later (when they hit the wall in 9th grade) and bring them up to level. Not only can they not handle the sentence structure, but I've found it's really the vocabulary loss that cripples them. A student above 5th grade should be adding around 500 words a year gleaned from his or her reading. No reading, no words, no thinking. I've had this vocabulary problem demonstrated to me in spades while trying to figure out arcane bluetooth device directions. No matter how many times I read them, I could not understand as half the words were meaningless to me, so I do have empathy for my students.
I would have to say that most of the students in high school today do not understand what they are reading. Not only are they not taught logic, but they are unable to tell if they are analyzing when they write. They are not aware of having ideas. They think of writing as an exercise directed to the audience of their teacher. Their writing must consist of five paragraphs of certain lengths headed up by mysterious things called thesis sentences. They have no idea that this involves thinking. They do not expect to learn anything from their own research or writing process. I suspect that the popularity of crime solving and forensic medicine TV shows has grown because at least the watchers have the experience of seeing someone else solve problems. There, students are being exposed to problem solving in a way that is not presented in schools.

It's not a pretty picture and very discouraging for us on the front lines. The damage is done at the change-over point in the fifth grade. If one's child is not in love with reading at that point, it's a HUGE emergency and must be dealt with at that time. Parents will initially say they don't know when their child's problems started, but then generally they will, when pushed, say their child stopped reading around fifth grade.

No one wants to live in the kind of incredibly ignorant society that is coming. The current Republican political antics may indicate that society is already here. And I worry that we will have high tech people at the pinnacle and the rest of society will be just crowds of easily led non-thinkers. Informed voting is not possible with a fifth grade reading level. Neither is any understanding of history possible. I have sat with students reading about the atrocities of war, and they are unmoved because they have no idea of the meaning of their reading. History in the high school is a few dates and names. It's not about ideas. Pretty scary all in all.
Thanks again for your posting.

Bev Riverwood