High School Reading Not Challenging Enough

Richard L. Ferguson, ACT‘s chief executive officer, announced that a new report (March, 2006) by ACT calls for major changes in high school reading standards and instruction. The title of the report is Reading Between the Lines: What ACT Reveals about College Reading Readiness.

Only about half (51%) of the nearly 1.2 million 2005 high school graduates who took the ACT college admission and placement exam met the College Readiness Benchmark for reading on the exam, the lowest level in more than a decade (bold added).

In short, the report argues that educators should strengthen high school assessments, so that they align with improved state standards and high school instruction across the curriculum. Low teacher expectations can hamper students’ ability to master complex reading skills.

This report describes an ongoing situation that has affected the quality of educatation preparation programs for decades.

I wonder if anyone outside of Tier 1 university faculties have heard this logic, based on observations.

Good people enter professional education programs without sufficient reading skill and background to know that they cannot understand nuances of relevant scientific and professional literature. Admissions committees fail to advise new students of their deficits. Many of these students have become, by default, teacher preparation faculty members who emphasize “practicalities” in place of requiring extensive reading of research studies in their specialty by their want-to-be teachers.

The question that follows is, if teachers don’t read scientific and complicated professional literature related to their duties, how can anyone expect their students to do so?

In real life, all is not so glum. University faculty and corporations consult with educators in school districts to assist in adjusting practices, policies, and reports to account for these deficits. They reasonably follow the maxim “It’s what you do with what you got that matters, not what you don’t have.” And consultants know to acknowledge that teachers have their hands full.

I remember the noted late educational psychologist T. Earnest Newland lament decades ago the dumbing down of educators. At the end of his course on tests and measurements, he admonished class alumni in writing, “Do not test children. You aren’t qualified.” Some heeded his advice. Several taught tests and measurement classes, wrote textbooks about assessment and developed formal, standardized assessments, one of which remains active in the assessment market.

At least Newland continued the lament by Socrates that the younger generation was going to the dogs! I hope Ferguson’s ACT study is not just more of the same laments.