Scholarship Policy Initiatives: The Case of the Common Core State Standards

Elfrieda H. Hiebert TextProject & University of California, Santa Cruz Acknowledgments:

¡ Hiebert, E.H., & Van Sluys, K. (in press). Standard 10 of the Common Core State Standards: Examining three assumptions about text complexity. In K. Goodman, R.C. Calfee, & Y. Goodman (Eds.), Whose Knowledge Counts in Government Policies? New York, NY: Routledge.

2 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org Fundamental Premises

¡ An emphasis on increasing students’ capacity with increasingly more complex text across their school careers is one of the goals of instruction. Attention to this goal is long overdue. The students who most depend on schools for academic can and should be reading much more complex texts. ¡ AND….Whenever a new set of mandates is enacted quickly, especially when the scholarship for an area is scant (and the developers of the mandates do not have grounding in the existing scholarship), potential for misinterpretation can be great.

3 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org Three Assumptions on Text Complexity

1. formulas provide sufficiently valid information to guide selections for instruction and assessment. 2. Text levels need to be accelerated at all levels to ensure college/career readiness. 3. Students at all levels can be rapidly stretched to read harder texts.

4 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org Assumption 1: Readability formulas provide sufficiently valid assessments of text complexity that they can be used as a guide for selections in instruction and assessment.

¡ “quantitative measures should identify the college- and career-ready reading level as one endpoint of the scale. MetaMetrics, for example, has realigned its ranges to match the Standards’ text complexity grade bands and has adjusted upward its trajectory of development through the grades to indicate that all students should be reading at the college and career readiness level by no later than the end of high school” (CCSS, Appendix A, page 8)

5 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org 2nd Grade 4th Grade 6th Grade 540L—640L 880L—900L 1050L +

Kitten’s First K to 1 The Gift of the 9 to 10 The Bluest Eye 11 to Full Moon Magi CCCR The People 6 to 8 The Cask of 11 to To Kill a 9 to 10 Could Fly Amontillado CCCR Mockingbird The Joy Luck 9 to 10 M.C. Higgins, 4 to 5 Black Ships Before 6 to 8 Club the Great Troy: The Story of the Iliad. The Raft 2 to 3 The Killer 9 to 10 I Know Why the 9 to 10 Angels Caged Bird Sings Their Eyes Were 11 to My Father’s 2 to 3 Jane Eyre 11 to Watching God CCCR Dragon CCCR

6 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org 1st Supplement to the ELA Standards:

7 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org From Supplement: Correlation (Pearson’s r) of Text Assignment of Readability Systems and Grade Bands (2-3 grade level span)

(from Nelson, Perfetti, Liben, & Liben (2012) 8 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org Existing Research (June 1, 2009—June 1, 2010)

¡ “In summary, readability formulas are useful as a first check on the difficulty and appropriateness of books. However, no formula gauges the clarity, coherence, or subject matter adequacy of books. Inevitably, overreliance on readability formulas by the schools and their misuse by the publishing industry has contributed to bad in schoolbooks.” (Becoming a Nation of Readers, Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, 1985, p. 65)

9 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org Chall et al.’s Qualitative Analysis of Text Difficulty: Narrative & Informational

1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 1 2 3 4 5 to 6 7 to 8 9 to 10 11 to 12 13-15 16+ Narrative Informational

10 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org Recent Research

Database consisted of 1,518 texts. § Texts were distributed across 4 Lexile groups, with genre (Narrative & Expository) distributed evenly § Texts were distributed across 4 lengths (50-200, 201-500, 500-1,000, 1001-2000) § Texts were obtained from 7 sources: assessment, beginning reading programs, core content, core reading, CCSS exemplars, literature, magazines § Syntax: .939 § (Mean Log Frequency): -.529 Hiebert, E.H. (November 28, 2012). Readability formulas and text complexity. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Literacy Research Association, San Diego, CA.

11 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org Assumption 2: Text Levels need to be accelerated at every level of students’ school careers, including the primary grades

¡ K-12 reading texts have actually trended downward in difficulty in the last half century….quantitative measures should identify the college- and career-ready reading level as one endpoint of the scale. (CCSS, p. 8).

12 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org The CCSS Staircase of Text Complexity

Hiebert, E.H. (October, 2010). Anchoring Text Difficulty for the 21st Century: A Comparison of the Exemplars from the National Assessment of Educational Assessment and the Common Core State 13 Elfrieda H. Hiebert Standards (Reading Research Report 10.02). Santa Cruz, CA: TextProject, Inc. www.textproject.org Existing Research (Hayes, Wolfer, & Wolfe, 1996)

70

60

50

40 G1 G2-3 30 G4-5 G6-8 20

10

0 1919-1945 1946-1962 1963-1991 14 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org Existing Research: Pushing down

¡ Over 6 years, Suggate, Schaughency and Reese (2008) assessed students who varied in school entry age (5 or 7 years). By ages 10 to 11, an initial advantage in reading skills associated with earlier SEA was no longer apparent. ¡ Suggate (2009) reanalyzed data from the reading portion of the 2006 Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) study. Across 55 countries, controlling for social and economic differences, students’ SEA was not a significant predictor of countries’ mean reading achievement, but students in countries with an earlier SEA tended to have larger variance in reading achievement at age 15. 15 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org Recent research Spichtig, Hiebert, Pearson, & Radach, 2013

Mean comprehension-based silent reading rates: 2011 & 1965

2011 Mean 1960 Mean 300

250 Subvocalization Threshold

200

150 Range Speaking Improvement Per Minute Per Minute Words

100

50 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Grade

16 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org Assumption 3: Students at all levels can be rapidly stretched to read substantially harder texts.

“Students in the first year(s) of a given band are expected by the end of the year to read and comprehend proficiently within the band, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range. Students in the last year of a band are expected by the end of the year to read and comprehend independently and proficiently within the band” (CCSS, p. 10)

17 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org Existing Research

Research on discrepancy in students’ reading proficiencies and text levels is complex and has not been reviewed thoroughly but here are some research findings: ¡ Students who texts with 95%+ accuracy spent 42% of their time reading, while students who read with less than 95% accuracy read 22% of the time (Gambrell, Wilson, & Gantt, 1981) ¡ Students benefited as much from practicing with instructional-level text (accuracy 90%–95%) as with independent-reading level text (accuracy around 98%) (Mathes & Fuchs, 1993) ¡ Students made strong rate gains in practice materials that they read with 90% accuracy (Shany & Biemiller, 1995) ¡ Students made strong rate gains in practice materials that they read with 90% accuracy but made smaller rate gains when reading texts with 75% accuracy (O’Connor, Bell, Harty, Larkin, Sackor, & Zigmond, 2002). ¡ Students reading texts at a difficulty level of 90%+ or 80-90% improved rate, , and comprehension (but not decoding or vocabulary) from students in untreated control. 18 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org Recent Research

ALL At/Above Below

400L 76% 83% 67% 600L 61% 69% 51% 800L 55% 62% 46%

At/above proficient students attained criterion levels through 600L level (mid-range of grade 2-3 band). Below- proficient students were within range on first-grade benchmark level but not on mid and end of second-third grade texts.

(Mesmer & Hiebert, 2011a, 2011b) 19 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org Toward a Framework of Text Complexity (extending the conversation begun by Mesmer, Cunningham, and Hiebert (RRQ, 2012)

¡ Research similar to that done by Lesgold et al. and MacKinnon (1959): What is it that proficient second-grade readers know? Third grade readers? Fourth-grade readers? ¡ How much “grist” do students need to attain particular levels of reading proficiency? How much are students reading in classroom settings? ¡ The differences in the vocabulary of texts are fairly slight How do small differences in vocabulary (i.e., 1-3% differences in rare/hard vocabulary) make in students’ comprehension?

20 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org Recordings of past webinars are available at TextProject’s YouTube channel.

21 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org www.textproject.org

22 Elfrieda H. Hiebert www.textproject.org Questions & Queries: [email protected]