Stephanie’s Wicked Awesome Words

A recent study done shows that high school students today are enrolling in harder classes and are earning better grades, but surprisingly enough are achieving poorer skills in reading. Performed by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the survey looked at transcripts from 26,000 high school students across the country. The article attributes this phenomenon of higher grades and lower reading skills to grade inflation, different grading standards, and improved student performance. Students in 2005 were shown to have reading skills considerably worse from those of students tested in 1992.

The share of students lacking even basic high school reading skills – meaning they could not, for example, extract data about train fares at different times of day from a brochure – rose to 27 percent from 20 percent in 1992.

Ironically, students today have been taking more hours of instruction and have been studying more than students in 1990 had. In addition, grade point averages have raised a third of a letter grade higher.

The Bush administration, in an effort to support the renewal of No Child Left Behind legislation, is using this data as proof that more testing needs to be done in the classroom. Students are not performing at the levels that they should be, and the government believes that testing them more is the solution to this problem.

I wonder if perhaps it is this increase in standardized testing that has led to the decline in students’ reading skills. So many classrooms today teach to the test instead of teaching students how they need to be taught. Students are forced to read as a sort of fact-finding mission, for that is what these tests will require them to do. Perhaps if testing was halted in the English classroom, reading skills amongst high schoolers would increase.

I think that this issue is one that could be addressed with material from Wilhelm’s You Gotta BE the Book. Wilhelm works directly with students who have difficulties reading and helps them to overcome those boundaries.  He takes creative approaches to teaching literature to students, such as incorporating drama and art.  He does not teach to the test, but rather offers students a rich learning experience, believing that they will then be able to tackle a standardized test better.

In a statement concerning the report, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said,

“Students must be challenged to succeed, and schools must prepare them with the tools necessary to thrive in college and a competitive 21st century workforce.”

Yet constantly testing students does not equal constantly challenging them. If schools hope to succeed at the task of truly teaching their students, then they need to get back to the basics. To improve reading skills, schools need to teach great literature and in turn instill a love of literature in their students. Students should be encouraged to dive into a piece of literature and to salvage meaning from it, rather than to read a text simply to answer the recall questions at the end. If this is done, then perhaps reading skills will improve. If students are taught to enjoy reading, then perhaps they will want to improve their skills at it.

This issue of reading skills dropping addresses young adult and classic literature nicely. For those students who are having more difficulty reading, perhaps they can take an English class that teaches mainly young adult literature. As a result, they will be able to enhance their skills with texts that are more accessible. For those students who prove their ability to read well, they can take an English class that tackles the harder, classic literature.

“Grades Rise as Reading Skills Drop in H.S. Study”

Diana Jean Schemo: 22 February 2007

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