No decline in reading
Sent to the Cincinnati Enquirer
The first line of “Common Core a ‘monumental shift’”(April 16, 2013) is not supported by any real data. There is no evidence that “reading has been declining in the nation’s schools for more than two decades.” Students are reading as much as ever. According to my analysis, teenagers today are reading as much as teenagers did in 1999 and in 1946. In addition, reading scores on our national test, the NAEP, have been increasing modestly since 1992.
The Common Core appears to be an attempt to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
Stephen Krashen
Source: Krashen, S. 2011. Why We Should Stop Scolding Teenagers and Their Schools: Frequency of Leisure Reading Language Magazine 11 (4): 18-21.
Original article: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20130416/NEWS0102/304160017?nclick_check=1
I thought the Common Core was designed to fix graduates' deficiency at interpreting "informational texts"?
ReplyDeleteIn my judgment (which I admit is anecdotally-based), this deficiency is real and disconcerting.
No evidence that the deficiency exists, that there is any decline. Scores on standardized reading tests, tests that include informational tests, are increasing slightly, and when you control for poverty, American students score near the top of the world.
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