1/ Haha, no

First, I encourage you to read his blog post. It’s short. You can do it.

Now, since you’re super busy and don’t have time (I’m not saying you’re lazy but come on, it was really short), here are the key points in bullets:

• It's impractical to measure performance on individual reading standards reliably or meaningfully.

• He advises against teachers attempting to grade based on individual standards, noting that even state reading tests and major testing organizations do not provide scores for individual comprehension skills or standards.

• Research shows standardized reading tests measure a single factor (text difficulty), not a list of skills.

• Instead, the focus should be on assessing students' ability to comprehend texts of varying readability levels, without scoring based on specific question types or standards.

• Shanahan criticizes the administrative push for standards-based grading in reading as misguided and ineffective for improving reading achievement.

2/ The (drum roll) Implications

We happen to agree with Professor Shanahan. The reason why he/we agree is that learning to read is not about learning discreet reading comprehension strategies. Reading comprehension strategies are largely what the standards consist of. Solid research from the 80s and 90s shows that teaching students comprehension strategies has a benefit and this research occurred right as the standards movement gained steam. Thus, it made perfect sense to well-meaning policymakers and standards writers that comprehension standards should form the backbone of the standards. Well, they shouldn’t. They also shouldn’t form the spine of curriculum guides. We’ve been guilty of this in the past. We were wrong then.

So, how do you build reading skills? (Phonological awareness + decoding + sight recognition) —> fluent word reading) + (background knowledge + language structure knowledge + verbal reasoning + literacy knowledge.

Dr. Scarborough made a handy visual.

A few things school leaders should start/stop:

• Stop organizing curriculum maps and common assessments around individual comprehension standards.

• Emphasize daily fluency practice in grades 2-4 in tier one instruction and grades 5+ in tier two instruction.

• Ensure primary literacy instruction is aligned with the Science of Reading (more on this in a future issue).

• Emphasize knowledge building and access to on-grade-level texts during daily reading instruction.

  • Scaffold all learners up to challenging texts rather than differentiate down “to their reading level.”

Keep reading

• Should We Grade Students on the Individual Reading Standards?

• Scarborough’s Reading Rope

• Building Background Knowledge by Neuman, Kaefer and Pinkham

• Leading with Focus by Mike Schmoker

• Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement by Marzano

Work with thriveEd

We have openings for maybe two more clients before our schedule is full for the rest of the year. If you or your district/network would like support in the following areas, email [email protected] to schedule an initial call.

• Leadership Coaching (Superintendent/ C&I Dept/ School Leadership)

• Strategic Planning

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• Curriculum Adoption

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