Reading Comprehension Technology

       I found an article in the Washington Post about a relatively new program called “Accelerated Reader.”  This program, active in over 60,000 schools, quizzes students on over 100,000 books that the students can pick themselves.  AR attempts to test reading comprehension and “assigns a readability formula that determines grade level and difficulty.”  Longer works score higher points, intrinsically encouraging students to read longer works.  It has also created a new categorization of reading levels because many of the ones on the back of books vary by publisher and often do not take in to account difficulty of text or content, only the difficulty of the words.

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address would be rated “exactly equal” on readability formulas if the exact same text were read backward, according to the report.  

      “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” would be equivalent to: “Equal created are men all that proposition the to dedicated and liberty in conceived, nation new a continent this upon forth brought fathers our ago years seven and score four.”

       However there are some problems with this new scoring method.  Most titles such as Nancy Drew mysteries and books by Louis Sachar score higher Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”.  Stated as a tenth-grade reading level, “Macbeth” is given 4 points; Toni Morrison’s Beloved is given 15 points, but is rated at sixth grade. Louis Sachar’s “Small Steps” for third-graders earns readers 7 points although the author intended it for fourth through eighth grade. When hearing this, the author remarked:

“They have a strange formula. Obviously it takes a lot more work to read Shakespeare than it takes to read my books.”

       Parents have realized this inconsistency as well and some are worried that the Accelerated Reading program will phase out classic texts in place of more pop, contemporary ones. Executive Orders by Tom Clancy rates at 78 points, a novel in which most of the federal government is dead and leaders from other countries are trying to come in and take over the United States. The only themes that seem to be present in this novel are harsh and inaccurate stereotypes of other cultures. This would not be beneficial in trying to create an open-minded classroom.  In schools where this program is present, the teachers use it as an incentive for pizza parties or other prizes hoping to motivate students. This could be seen as further perpetuating the “high stakes” testing students already face.

      But another problem could be what kind of questions are asked.  They are probably multiple choice ones asking text-specific questions such as, “Which character went to the store in chapter 5?” The mark of a truly great program will be when it can ask authentic or open-ended questions and the students could type out a response.  Maybe the answers could be sent to the teacher to be read and scored as “credit” or “no credit.”

       I think the idea of this reading program is really good, but obviously there are some scoring problems.  It is a good idea to allow students to choose their reading material and not to discourage reading a text that would not typically be read in a classroom and then answer questions.   

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