A Common Core Concern: The Complexity of Text Complexity

The December 2014 issue of the Elementary School Journal contains an article that addresses a serious concern with Standard 10 of the Common Core State Standards in ELA. That is the standard dealing with text complexity. The article, “Putting Text Complexity in Context: Refocusing on Comprehension of Complex Text” is by three highly respected literacy researchers, Sheila Valencia, Karen Wixson, and David Pearson. They believe that the text complexity issue is receiving too much attention and that the attention is not well informed.

Valencia, Wixson and Pearson believe that the focus of reading instruction should not be on a rudimentary understanding of the complexity of text as determined by a Lexile level, but rather on all the dimensions of reading comprehension. Those dimensions, taken from the Rand Study of 2002, include not only the text, but the reader (what skills and prior knowledge does the reader bring to the text), the task (what is the reader expected to do with the text) and the sociocultural context (what are the social and cultural understandings at work in the classroom).

These literacy experts fear that the Common Core emphasis on text complexity will cause teachers to interpret the Common Core as requiring students to wrestle with more complex texts and that teachers will, therefore, present challenging texts to students while exhorting them to try harder and read more closely without considering the full dimensions of reading comprehension. I expressed a similar concern in this post two years ago.

Valencia, Wixson and Pearson put it this way: “If all this attention to text complexity is to have the desired effect on students’ comprehension and knowledge building from complex text, then task and reader factors need to play a more prominent role in considerations of text complexity than is currently the case… Texts must be accompanied by appropriate tasks and instructional strategies to support specific reading purposes and readers who vary widely in the skills, backgrounds, and dispositions they bring to the classroom.”

In other words, teachers must carefully choose texts and tasks with their own unique knowledge of the students in mind. First, the texts may be “complex” in the sense that they are challenging to this group of students, not because they meet some Lexile reading level criteria. Secondly, the tasks must be “do-able” for the students. That is, the teacher must use knowledge of the students and knowledge of the challenges presented by the text to design instructional activities that provide opportunities for student success. Next, the teacher must provide appropriate scaffolding including activating and building appropriate background knowledge and pre-teaching vocabulary to ensure the students have a successful encounter with the text.

The limitations of a Lexile driven concept of text complexity are readily apparent. The authors provide the example of John Steinbeck’s novella, Of Mice and Men. The book has a Lexile level that would place it in the second- to third-grade readability level, but the themes of male friendship, the unrealistic quest for the American Dream, and the predatory nature of human existence make the book a complex read for middle school or high school.

The task, too, can turn a fairly easy read into a complex encounter with text. As the authors show, we might expect a second grader to read and retell the story of Cinderella, we might expect upper elementary students to compare different cultural perspectives of the Cinderella story in books like Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters and Yeh-Shen, while we might expect high school students to examine the gender ideologies evident in the Cinderella text.

The authors conclude by saying, “The point here is that simply knowing the measured complexity of the text is insufficient to locate the text in the appropriate grade-band level without the simultaneous consideration of text-task factors in the context of specific reading purposes.”

Amen. But the authors fail to address how we got here. They say they are surprised “at how difficult it is for many prospective and practicing teachers to fully grasp the importance of taking time, before initiating instruction, to examine the text they are asking students to read and consider the most appropriate instructional goals for a particular text or set of texts and the best means of accomplishing those goals. This is more important now than ever as Lexiles and other quantitative measures of text complexity are influencing curriculum materials and the selection of texts for instruction.”

Their surprise indicates a lack of understanding of how policy changes often work in schools.

I believe the misunderstanding and misapplication of the Common Core Standard 10 lay directly at the feet of the “chief architects” of the Common Core, that small group of (mostly) test designers and consultants that wrote the document. These folks should have known, or at least could have known, how this text complexity standard would have been interpreted by the consumers, especially school administrators with limited expertise in literacy. Two years ago I worried that administrators and teachers would think that the Common Core was calling for kids to read “harder books harder.”

The Common Core architects further clouded the message with a series of pronouncements and model lessons that urged teachers to focus “on the four corners of the text” and to eschew the very kind of scaffolding that can help students read complex text: the building and activation of background knowledge. I addressed that error in this blog post. While the Common Core architects have backed away from some of the egregiously ill-informed recommendations on activating background knowledge, the sample lessons that they have provided through the website achievethecore.org continue to recommend that teachers “avoid giving any background context or instructional guidance at the outset of the lesson.”

If those Common Core architects had had real practicing teachers and administrators on their committee, they would have been aware of some of the pitfalls they have fallen into. If the roll-out of the Common Core had been done as a pilot study, these issues would have been readily apparent and might have been corrected. Indeed, if the Common Core implementation process had any way to be amended, revised and corrected, controversy and bad educational practice might have been avoided. But the Common Core proponents arrogantly forced the standards on already over-burdened and under-resourced teachers and administrators and so we have the resultant educational malpractice that Valencia, Wixson and Pearson are worried about.

Pearson was one literacy expert who signed off on the Common Core five years ago. He has been pedaling back from his support since, mostly because of his concerns with implementation.

While the battle over the Core rages on, thoughtful teachers are urged to choose texts carefully and with full consideration of the abilities of the students in the classroom. To consider the text in the light of the task expected of the students and to provide the scaffolding students need to enjoy a successful encounter with the text.

A Compilation of Common Core Concerns

The Common Core State Standards in English/Language Arts has come under increasing scrutiny. Here is a collection of my posts from the past year on the Common Core and some of the concerns I have about the new standards and literacy instruction.

The CCCS: Knowledge is Power

The Common Core in English/Language Arts: A Critically Literate Reading

Could the Common Core Widen the Achievement Gap in Reading/Language Arts?

Stories Matter: Where Does Story Fit in the Common Core?

Text Complexity and the Common Core: A Close Reading, Part 1

Text Complexity and the Common Core: A Close Reading, Part 2

What Constitutes Rigorous Reading?

The Blue Guitar: Towards a Reader Response Approach to Close Reading

Does Background Knowledge Matter to Reading Comprehension?

Defending Reader Response from the Common Core

Could the Common Core Widen the Achievement Gap in Reading?

By ignoring the research on early childhood literacy, the designers of the CCSS for ELA may be putting at-risk children at even greater risk.

I just received a new book in the mail this week. I am still reading it, but I want to recommend it now to all who are interested in the issue of literacy instruction and the impact of recent government policies on teaching and learning. The book is Whose Knowledge Counts in Government Literacy Policies? Why Expertise Matters, edited by Kenneth Goodman, Robert Calfee and Yetta Goodman, published by Routledge. The book is a collection of essays by members of The Reading Hall of Fame, some of the top researchers in the literacy field.

The first essay I turned to was by Elfrieda Hiebert and Katie Van Sluys on the issue of text complexity. Text complexity is Standard 10 of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in ELA. I have addressed the issues related to text complexity in two previous posts here and here. I revisit the topic now due to an increased sense of urgency based on my reading of the Hiebert and Van Sluys article. Here is the bottom line: two key assertions in the CCSS explication of text complexity (CCSS, Appendix A) are not only false, but could cause irreparable harm to developing readers, especially those who are at-risk as they enter school.

Assertion 1:   K–12 reading texts have actually trended downward in difficulty in the last half century (CCSS, Appendix A, pg 2).

Assertion 2:   Readability standards must be realigned to achieve the goal of college and career readiness by raising the text levels in all grades beginning is second grade. This is the so called “stair step” model of realignment (CCSS, Appendix A, pg 8).

Assertion 1 is easily refuted by the evidence. Hiebert and Van Sluys say that “several [research studies] refute the idea that primary grade texts have been simplified” (page 147). Indeed there is evidence that readability in these primary grades has actually increased as literacy expectations have been pushed down into kindergarten over the last two decades. There is a text-complexity gap in middle and high school, but there are no studies that indicate boosting the text complexity of materials for second and third graders will improve their ability to read more complex text later. Perhaps failing to have one early childhood educator involved in the design of the CCSS led to this piece of misinformation.

Assertion 2 represents a failure to conceive of an alternate design to increasing readability standards. The authors of the CCSS reasoned (I must assume) that if we want kids reading more complex text by high school graduation, then we must have them reading more complex text at all grade levels beginning in second grade. Students are expected to march through higher and higher levels of text in a stair-step fashion. As Hiebert and Van Sluys point out, there is another way to think about this. Rather than a “stair-step” approach to increased readability levels, they recommend an "up-swinging curve" model. Students in the primary grades would work to achieve proficiency at the long established research supported pre-CCSS levels and after gaining this solid foundation in literacy, be prepared to work with more complex texts in middle and high school. Research has shown that students who reach pre-CCSS levels of literacy by the end of third grade are less likely to drop out of school. Aiming at a lower level than the CCSS is recommending will actually better prepare children for more challenging reading later on.

Who are the likely losers if the CCSS pushes teachers into driving higher readability level texts into the primary grades? You guessed it: at-risk children. Hiebert and Van Sluys say that these new standards will likely “neither help, nor hurt, those who come to school ready to read”, but they could make literacy achievement a “greater challenge for the very students who most depend on America’s public schools for their literacy instruction (pg 148).”

So, there we have it. Too slavish an adherence to the CCSS guidance on text complexity may actually widen the achievement gap. The first four years of school are critical to the development of eager, fluent and skillful readers. By ignoring the research on early childhood literacy, the designers of the CCSS for ELA may be putting at-risk children at even greater risk.

Text Complexity and the Common Core: A Close Reading, Part 2

Last week in my post, The Common Core and Text Complexity: A Close Reading, Part 1, I discussed the problematic aspects of the adjustment of the Lexile scores that was perpetrated to match the Core Content State Standards (CCSS) concept of college and career readiness. Today, I would like to look closely at how the CCSS define text complexity and how this could be empowering to teachers, if teachers take advantage of what the document is saying and seize the initiative.

Appendix A of the CCSS defines text complexity. It is very important that all teachers understand this definition because it is useful and empowering. Text Complexity is made up of three dimensions: quantitative, qualitative, and reader and task. Quantitative measures include the useful, but limited “reading level” measures like the Fry Readability Graph and Lexile scores. The CCSS has focused on Lexile scores and has recalculated them to reflect the push for greater complexity. Qualitative measures include such issues as considerateness of text (clear structure, coherence, audience appropriateness), knowledge demands, use of figurative language, vocabulary, etc. Reader and task measures concern themselves with the cognitive abilities, motivation and experience of students. For a clear and complete explanation of these three elements of text complexity see Fisher, Fry and Lapp (2012) Text Complexity: Raising Rigor in Reading, Newark, DE: IRA.

As you can see, the teacher plays a central role in the selection of the text to be used in instruction. The teacher balances the qualitative demands of the text with the characteristics of the students as readers and the reading task at hand to determine text complexity and appropriateness. It is a heady responsibility and also very good news. The CCSS are asking the teacher, the person best in the position to know, to determine what texts to use based not only on a simple calculation of level, but also based on what the teacher knows about the challenges embedded in the text and the special characteristics of the individual reader.

And yet I worry. I worry that simplistic readings of this call for greater text complexity will lead to disempowerment of teachers and inappropriate reading assignments for students. Will administrators, curriculum writers and text book publishers ignore the role of the teacher in choosing texts and ratchet up text complexity for all students no matter their abilities and needs? And what about the tests? Will the tests show the same degree of considerateness to readers as the CCSS seem to provide in Appendix A?

This why it is critical that those on the front lines, the teachers, are armed with the information below, which is directly stated in Appendix A. When you are pushed on text complexity, push back with this:

          1)  Students need opportunities to stretch their reading abilities but also to experience the satisfaction and pleasure of easy, fluent reading within them, both of which the Standards allow for. (CCSS Appendix A, page 9) (Apparently the standards also allow for prepositions at the end of a sentence!)

           2) Students’ ability to read complex text does not always develop in a linear fashion.(CCSS Appendix A, page 9)

          3)  Teachers who have had success using particular texts that are easier than those required for a given grade band should feel free to continue to use them so long     as the general movement during a given school year is toward texts of higher levels of complexity. Students reading well above and well below grade-band level need additional support. (CCSS Appendix A, page 9)

As I read these statements, I see a clear call for teacher judgment in selecting texts for students. I also see a clear recognition that harder texts are not meant to be a steady diet for the reader. I suspect that many of the creators of the CCSS read many things that are well below their reading level. Children should have the same right.

Why is this important? For one reason, I believe that many educational leaders will hear the call for more complex texts and will try to force teachers to use texts that are simply harder. Remember “rigor” is not in the difficulty of the text, but in the vigor of the instruction. Texts that are too difficult for a particular reader are not rigorous; they are just hard (See my post on rigor here). I also believe that publishing companies, under the guise of the publishers guidelines provided them by the authors of the CCSS for ELA, will soon be on the market with anthologies purported to “meet the standards” that will not meet the needs of many students.

It is the classroom teacher who will be the last line of defense for the students and for appropriate reading instruction. Go into battle with a copy of CCSS Appendix A, with the parts discussed above highlighted, so that you can inform the uninformed.

Text Complexity and the Common Core: A Close Reading, Part 1

Appendix A of the CCSS is intended to explain the concept of text complexity. Here is the first sentence.

            One of the key requirements of the Common Core State Standards
             for Reading is that all students must be able to comprehend texts
            of steadily increasing complexity as they progress through school.

Now doesn't that statement just make you want to say, “Duh!” When has that not been a goal for all students? I personally have never heard a fifth grade teacher say, “I want my kids to be able to read like third graders by the end of the year.” We all want our students to be able to read increasingly complex text.

Appendix A goes on to argue for stepping up the complexity of texts that students are reading because current high school graduates are not college and career ready to read texts that they are required to read in college or the workplace. The problem the authors sight is that “K–12 reading texts have actually trended downward in difficulty in the last half century (CCSS, Appendix A, pg 2).” At the same time text complexity has remained level or increased on the college and workplace level.

In order to address this issue, the authors of the CCSS in ELA (Coleman and Pimentel) have, in conjunction with the company that introduced the Lexile measurement, MetaMetrics, realigned the Lexile scale stair step fashion in increments moving down from what they have determined is the entry Lexile level for college freshmen (Lexile 1335).

A further problem, according to the authors, is that students are provided  “considerable scaffolding—assistance from teachers, class discussions, and the texts themselves (in such forms as summaries, glossaries, and other text features)—with reading (CCSS, Appendix A, pg 3).” In college classrooms, they assert,  much more independence is required in more complex texts.

Let’s take a closer look at these assertions. When it comes to the difficulty of texts being dumbed downward, while true for high school text books, it is simply not true for K-3 reading materials, which have tended to get harder as greater expectations have been placed on early literacy (Hiebert, 2012). There is plenty of evidence to suggest that exiting third grade students reading at a Lexile level of 540L to 580L are successful in future grades. There is no evidence that the new level posited by the standards, 790L by the end of third grade, will lead to college and career success (Hiebert, 2012). This is an arbitrary number not supported by the research.

Hiebert’s analysis of the CCSS recommended Lexile levels in primary reading calls into question the entire scheme to up the Lexile levels across the board. If the 790L is unsupported and inadvisable as a benchmark for third grade, why should we believe that 980L is appropriate for 5^th grade or 1155 for eighth grade? Where is the research supporting these designations? If these designations are used to design tests, how valid will the findings be?

The authors of the CCSS are also concerned with the considerable scaffolding students are provided with K-12, because this kind of scaffolding is not available on the college level. It is true, of course, that we want our students to become more and more independent in reading as they move through school. It is also true that as students are asked to read more and more challenging text, they need and deserve the scaffolding that skilled teachers provide. I wonder why the authors did not ask college professors why they do not provide appropriate scaffolding for their students when they give them difficult readings? Is the job of the K-12 teacher to compensate for the lack of appropriate instruction on the college level?

Based on this analysis, I have the following recommendations to make in the face of the CCSS on text complexity.

            1. Ask the authors of the CCSS to provide research that supports the changed Lexile scores at each level. The research must demonstrate that these are indeed the appropriate levels for students to achieve college and career readiness down the road. Until that research is provided, make no decisions             based on tests designed with these new standards as the model.

            2. For K-3 teachers and administrators, continue the focus on developing fluent, comprehending readers in the 540L-580L Lexile range by the end of grade 3. This range is supported by research as appropriate for future reading success.

            3. Continue to provide appropriate scaffolding for students as they read challenging text and continue to provide easier texts where students can be successful independently.

Despite the views expressed here, the news is not all bleak from Appendix A of the CCSS. In Part 2 of this post, coming soon, I will look at how text complexity is defined and how this definition should empower teachers, if only teachers are allowed to use their knowledge of pedagogy, texts and children to apply what is recommended.