Why American Students Haven't Gotten Better at Reading in 20 Years
Schools usually focus on teaching comprehension skills instead of
general knowledge—even though education researchers know better.
The
Atlantic: 4.13.2018 by Natalie Wexler
Every
two years, education-policy wonks gear up for what has become a time-honored
ritual: the release of the *Nation’s Report Card. Officially known as the
National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, the data reflect the
results of reading and math tests administered to a sample of students across
the country. Experts generally consider the tests rigorous and highly
reliable—and the scores basically stagnant.
Math
scores have been flat since 2009 and reading scores since 1998, with just a
third or so of students performing at a level the NAEP defines as “proficient.”
Performance gaps between lower-income students and their more affluent peers,
among other demographic discrepancies, have remained stubbornly wide.
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On
Tuesday, a panel of experts in Washington, D.C., convened by the federally
appointed officials who oversee the NAEP concluded that the root of the problem
is the way schools teach reading. The current instructional approach,
they agreed, is based on assumptions about how children learn that have been
disproven by research over the last several decades—research that the education
world has largely failed to heed.
The
long-standing view has
been that the first several years of elementary school should
be devoted to basic reading skills. History, science, and the arts can wait.
After all, the argument goes, if kids haven’t learned to read—a task that
is theoretically
accomplished by third grade—how will they be able to gain knowledge
about those subjects through their own reading?
The
federal No Child Left Behind legislation, enacted in 2001, only intensified the
focus on reading.
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One
of those cognitive scientists spoke on the Tuesday panel: Daniel Willingham, a
psychology professor at the University of Virginia who writes about
the science behind reading comprehension. Willingham explained that whether or
not readers understand a text depends far more on how much background
knowledge and vocabulary they have relating to the topic than
on how much they’ve practiced comprehension skills.
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Another
panelist—Timothy Shanahan, an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois
and the author or editor of over 200 publications on literacy—went on to
debunk a popular
approach that goes hand in hand with teaching comprehension
skills: To help students practice their “skills,” teachers give them texts at
their supposed individual reading levels rather than the level of the grade
they’re in.
According
to Shanahan, no
evidence backs up that practice. In fact, Shanahan said, recent
research indicates that
students actually learn more from reading texts that
are considered too difficult for them—in other words, those with
more than a handful of words and concepts a student doesn't understand. READ
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Condition of Education, NCES
Digest of Education Statistics, American education: pre k-graduate school, NCES
Diplomas Count, Education Week
Dropout and Completion Rates in the United States, USDE, IES, NCES
Education Fast Facts, NCES
Homeschooling in the United States, USDE, IES, NCES
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for International Student Assessment PISA
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