The detrimental effects of this focus on overskillification, unfortunately, have been wide reaching. In the following sections, we’ll discuss how overskillification has caused literacy development to flatline and how research evidence has revealed a startling solution. People in schools, not just in ivory towers, are beginning to reassess and reframe how they will approach reading in the future.
A Flatlining Pattern
So, what do data say is the worst effect of existing unproductive literacy practices? Succinctly stated, it’s stunted reading growth after the late elementary years. One of the most commonly used measures of text complexity, used to evaluate both the difficulty of books and the reading abilities of students on the same scale, is the Lexile Framework created by MetaMetrics. Figure I.1 depicts typical midyear Lexile measures across grades 2–12 for U.S. students ranging in performance from the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile (MetaMetrics, n.d.). In other words, this figure illustrates how a vast number of our students grow in terms of literacy.
Source: MetaMetrics, n.d.
Figure I.1: Typical midyear Lexile reader measures.
What we see is consistent growth in the early grades that levels off quite substantially in the later grades. To some degree, this is a normal pattern for cognitive development and not necessarily a cause for immediate concern. Students often see very large reading gains in the early years; the difference between a student’s reading skills in first grade and his or her reading skills in second grade will always be greater than the difference in the student’s reading skills between tenth and eleventh grades. That said, it is a sad state of affairs when the difference in ability between seventh grade and twelfth grade is negligible. These five additional years of schooling typically do not increase most students’ abilities to engage with more difficult texts.
Other data sets reflect this flatlining pattern. For example, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) stores the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) online where anyone can search (www.nationsreportcard.gov). Figure I.2 (page 4) uses a selection of these data to show stagnant reading proficiency rates across decades according to the years the test was administered (NCES, n.d.a, n.d.b, n.d.c).
Source: NCES, n.d.a, n.d.b, n.d.c.
Figure I.2: National Assessment of Educational Progress reading score chart.
In our years of observing these data, we have seen that in most states, the highest rates of proficiency occur on third-grade reading tests, and then fewer students are proficient by the end of fifth grade, and still fewer in eighth grade and tenth grade. Over the years of school, proficiency rates drop considerably, and the gap between the highest- and lowest-performing readers gets wider. On some level, many educators have recognized this pattern, and sadly—whether consciously or unconsciously—they have, in essence, accepted it.
Understanding the predictive implications of whether a student can read on grade level by the end of third grade, more than thirty-five states have enacted programs designed to ensure just that—third-grade students read on grade level before the school year ends, according to Renaissance Learning (n.d.). Some of these programs include significant accountability measures such as retention. For example, Florida is one state that follows this protocol and in fact, does retain third graders who do not meet the ELA standards by the end of the year. If students achieve proficiency in reading in third grade, that’s wonderful. But if they then fall behind by fifth, eighth, or tenth grade, the race is clearly not won—that is, they leave our schools noticeably unprepared and lacking the essential literacy skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening. As Hirsch (2006) notes:
It’s in later grades, 6–12, that the reading scores really count because, after all, gains in the early grades are not very useful if, subsequently, those same students, when they get to middle school and then high school, and are about to become workers and citizens, are not able to read and learn proficiently.
We need to frankly discuss the fact that we cannot determine college and career readiness solely with third-grade scores. The illiteracy problem is endemic and demands our undivided attention.
There is another piece of this flatlining story that we must acknowledge. When NCLB was enacted in 2001, many schools reacted by cutting time devoted to science and social studies to increase time for the assessed areas of ELA and mathematics. Researcher Jennifer McMurrer (2007) notes there was a “47 percent reduction in class time devoted to subjects beyond math and reading” (as cited in Hirsch, 2018, p. 61). By increasing our efforts in the name of literacy, did we see any substantive changes in proficiency? No. And this reality should cause us to re-examine everything.
Continually stagnant rates of proficiency when many schools substantially increased time devoted to ELA clearly tell us that the way we are currently addressing literacy simply is not paying adequate dividends. Hirsch (2018) suggests that our current approach must be a “misconceived scheme,” as “the ‘accountability’ principles based on [it] have not induced real progress in higher-level reading competence” (p. 28).
This brings to mind the familiar definition of insanity often attributed to Albert Einstein but actually written by novelist Rita Mae Brown (1983)—doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Since the 1960s, education communities have been acting insanely. The “reading wars” debate about the best way to teach reading (whole language versus phonics) did not help, nor did the billions of dollars in spending authorized through NCLB’s literacy program Reading First, nor did the major reallocation of our most precious resource, time. We desperately need some new insights and actions around literacy. As professor of education David Steiner (2017) asserts:
Stagnant student performance that leaves some 60 percent of high-school graduates unprepared for postsecondary training or schooling, the persistence of racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps, and the seeming futility of reform efforts all suggest that American public education is badly in need of a new path forward. (p. 11)
Stagnant rates of literacy stifle schools’ ability to meet their modern mission. As assessment expert Rick Stiggins (2017) notes, schools could historically function as a mechanism for “sorting students into the various levels of our social and economic system” (p. 19). But that was the old mission. Today, schools are charged with “mak[ing] sure ‘every student succeeds’ at mastering fundamental reading, writing, mathematics, problem solving, and other proficiencies that they will need in this increasingly complex and fast-changing world” (Stiggins, 2017, p. 21). Schools cannot fulfill this mission with current approaches.
In a nutshell, the time has come for us to forthrightly address the prevailing literacy failure rate in our schools. Many school practitioners involved with aspects of reading and literacy across their curriculum probably know in their hearts that we have been nursing a failing mission. Administrators, principals, teachers, parents, and certainly the students themselves are aware of the predicament students are in when they can’t, don’t, or won’t read. Too many of our students find themselves in this situation.