Literacy from Birth to Adulthood: Assessing, Tracking, and Encouraging

Because of this, I sometimes take my ability to read and comprehend for granted.  I use my literacy skills every day — to navigate the world around me, to continue my education in both traditional and non traditional ways, and to build a school in which I inspire a similar passion for reading in my students — in which I hope that no child ever considers the “level” of a book, but rather considers the potential enjoyment that (s)he may get out of the book.  

As adults, we know that there was once a time at which we could not read for none of us were born with the ability to read.  We know that we cannot simply hand a newborn baby a book and expect that child either read or comprehend the material at hand.  In fact, at these early stages, we cannot even expect that child to comprehend any and all texts which are read aloud. Over time, however, our children develop a larger receptive vocabulary (listening vocabulary) and, ultimately, literacy skills — the ability to comprehend written work.  The rate at which a child develops comprehension skills varies from one child to another and is dependent upon a number of factors including one’s innate ability, the frequency at which a child is read to, the frequency at which a child reads independently or with someone, the quality of the texts provided and, of course, the complexity of the texts provided.  No doubt, a child who is only ever exposed to picture books will feign to develop comprehension skills beyond the difficulty of the text which they were provided.

We must gently direct our children towards books that they may both enjoy and comprehend. Gradually increase the complexity of the texts that you provide, but do not limit the books that your child chooses independently.  We may direct our children towards an appropriate area of the book store or library, but we must never tell a child “no, you cannot read that.”  If the book contains truly inappropriate content, redirecting the child with statements such as, “I don’t think you’re going to like that book, but I think you’ll love this (provide an alternative) instead!”  If the book appears far too challenging, you might suggest reading the book together.  Resources such as Lexile.com, AR Book Finder, Scholastic Guided Reading, Amazon, and various publishers provide reading levels that can help guide reading selections, but we should not use them to limit the books available to our children.  

It can be difficult, however, to navigate the seemingly nonsensical leveled reading systems that schools use today.  Random letters and numbers are assigned to books and your child, but little direction is provided to parents regarding what to do with this information or why.  These numbers and letters are part of leveled reading systems such as Lexile, DRA, Accelerated Reader(AR), Fountas and Pinnell, A to Z, mClass, etc. These systems do not necessarily correlate to one another as nicely as one might think or hope.  I did, however, create a chart that correlates all of these systems based on the 50th percentile expectations for fall, winter, and spring of each grade level for each metric. Many of these systems drop off by middle school, but some, such as Lexile, AR, and MAP, attempt to quantify comprehension skills up until college despite an obvious “flat line” in growth throughout the high school years.  

Unfortunately, many of our nation’s adults never reach the limits of any of these metrics with only 12% of US adults scoring at the highest levels (4 or 5) on the Adult Literacy Scale.  The five levels of literacy as defined by The International Adult Literacy Survey are:  

• Level 1 indicates persons with very poor skills, where the individual may, for example, be unable to determine the correct amount of medicine to give a child from information printed on the package.
• Level 2 respondents can deal only with material that is simple, clearly laid out, and in which the tasks involved are not too complex. It denotes a weak level of skills, but more hidden than Level 1. It identifies people who can read, but test poorly. They may have developed coping skills to manage everyday literacy demands, but their low level of proficiency makes it difficult for them to face novel demands, such as learning new job skills.
• Level 3 is considered a suitable minimum for coping with the demands of everyday life and work in a complex, advanced society. It denotes roughly the skill level required for successful secondary school completion and college entry. Like higher levels, it requires the ability to integrate several sources of information and solve more complex problems.
• Level 4 and level 5 describe respondents who demonstrate command of higher-order information processing skills.

(OECD/Statistics Canada, 2000:12).

About ⅓ of the adult population in the US scores at a level 3 in literacy while another ⅓ falls at a level 2 literacy with adults averaging at about a 7th or 8th grade reading level (850L to 943L).  

It is vital that we provide our children with the proper resources and nurturing to ensure that they do not become part of the ⅓ of the population that are hardly employable.  To do this, we must encourage active reading both in and out of the classroom.  We must provide our children with the resources and opportunities to stretch their literacy skills by providing books to our children that they will both enjoy for its content and for its readability.

Many educators advocate for “just right” books — or reading books at, or slightly above, one’s tested reading ability. I too once advocated for this — I still do, but I found the finite levels of many reading level systems to be far too limiting.   The number of books that “fit” within a given level was limited, and at the rate that my avid readers gained comprehension skills, I would need to re-assess their reading ability at least once a month.  I found that students that were simply avid readers gained comprehension skills just as fast as those who focused on how difficult or complex a text was.  As such, I’ve devised a different system — one that “levels” books by approximately two to three grade levels at a time but also focuses on encouraging students to focus on whether or not they’ll enjoy a book rather than whether or not the text may be “too hard” or “too easy” or “just right.”  

Reading, like life, requires balance. Restrictive reading programs — that is those which do not permit students to read books outside of their assigned reading level only hinder students — preventing them from stretching their minds when they see fit or relaxing with a favorite past-time. A truly voracious reader may take it upon oneself to look up new words an re-read passages time and time again to decipher the deeper meaning. For the advanced reader, these systems can be more distressing than challenging as many leveled systems do not leave room for students to demonstrate above grade level reading skills and may make students feel limited to books they deem boring.  On the other hand, students who demonstrate reading skills far above grade level may be equally as frustrated when they cannot read a book that an educator labels “too easy” — for every child, no matter how advanced, should have the opportunity to enjoy classics such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Narnia, or A Wrinkle in Time. Every child should have the opportunity — should feel free — to relax with a picture book for their own enjoyment. Moreover, no student should feel pressured to read texts that may conquer topics and content intended for an older audience that may be inappropriate or simply inaccessible to such a young mind who has yet to experience relationships, tragedy, or questions of morality.  

The algorithms used to assign reading levels to texts and to students do not take these subjective measures into account — they cannot, for a computer simply collects and analyzes data — purely objective.  Lexile measures, for example, analyze semantic difficulty (word frequency or repetition) and syntactic complexity whereas Accelerated Reader assesses books based on page count, number of syllables per word, and average words per sentence.  Guided Reading Levels analyzes word count, semantic difficulty, sentence length, and sentence complexity. While these systems may seem somewhat similar, the weight each places on different data points varies and, as such, books are ‘leveled’ quite differently.  One might assume that book might at least appear in the same order from one metric to another, but this is not the case. Out of the six books displayed in the table below, no two systems stack up exactly the same.