Posted on 01/08/2015 7:56:31 AM PST by grundle
Renaissance Learning found that the average book assigned for summer reading at college has a seventh-grade reading level.
Most college textbooks and reading material written before 1970 require mature reading skills according to Arkansas Prof. Emerita Sandra Stotsky.
The average U.S. college freshman reads at a seventh grade level, according to an educational assessment report.
“We are spending billions of dollars trying to send students to college and maintain them there when, on average, they read at about the grade 6 or 7 level, according to Renaissance Learning’s latest report on what American students in grades 9-12 read, whether assigned or chosen,” said education expert Dr. Sandra Stotsky.
Stotsky, a Professor Emerita at the University of Arkansas, served on the Common Core Validation Committee in 2009-10, during which she called the standards “inferior.” She claimed the Common Core left out the very standards needed to prepare students for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers.
“The average reading level for five of the top seven books assigned as summer reading by 341 colleges using Renaissance Learning’s readability formula was rated 7.56 [meaning halfway through seventh grade],” Stotsky told Breitbart Texas.
The study also found that most high school graduates don’t do much with mathematics past eighth-grade compared to students in other high-achieving countries.
In addition, the lack of “difficulty and complexity” found in high school reading material is indicative of what colleges can assign to students once they enter higher education and professors aren’t requiring incoming students read at a college level.
“Nor are [colleges] sending a signal to the nation’s high schools that high school level reading is needed for college readiness,” said Stotsky. “Indeed, they seem to be suggesting that a middle school level of reading is satisfactory, even though most college textbooks and adult literary works written before 1970 require mature reading skills.”
Stotsky claims that reading development starts in elementary school and acknowledges the importance of a student’s willingness to practice reading outside the classroom.
She adds that despite societal changes over the past 100 years, both male and female students have continued to read the same type of material as past generations. Girls tend to gravitate towards books about relationships and animals, while boys enjoy adventure stories, military exploits, superheroes, and historical nonfiction.
“For almost 100 years, there have been many surveys in this country of what children prefer to read. Despite changes in immigration patterns, family literacy, and cultural influences, what boys and girls like to read has been relatively stable,” said Stotsky.
According to Breitbart Texas, Stotsky is credited with creating the strongest set of k-12 academic standards in the country while working for the Massachusetts Department of Education, and is responsible for developing licensure tests for prospective teachers.
And when they graduate college, they’ll read at the third grade level.................
It’s alright, a lot of the text books they are required to read uses 7th grade level reasoning.
That’s what Obama wants. He don’t want them to be thinkin’
You have to be a certain tint, though.
Stupid people are a result of easy tests.
Well like DUH kids don’t go to school today to learn to read. They go to school to become proper Marxists, everybody knows THAT *sheesh*.
Have you ever seen a real silent film from the 1900s through 1930s?
The reference are EXTREMELY erudite. They take it for granted the audience knows Shakespeare, Chaucer, Greek tragedies, geography, advanced math, and so much more. The casual references in the very few cards (they expected the audience to follow the action through the actions and expressions of the actors, not the dialogue) were astounding in their breadth.
And vice-versa.
It's all about protecting the little darlings self esteem.
You can teach the Constitution at some law schools with a 7th grade literacy level.
Who cares if they can read, all that really matters is if they can properly use a condom.
I do take exception to the title of the article. It should say that the average college freshman English class requires students to read books written at a 7th grade level.
Of course, if they did that it wouldn't be such great click bait.
The government schools are terrible.
Everything the government does is terrible.
Amazing that many people trust government to fix everything like education, healthccare , the Internet etc. They haven’t been able to fix eduction in the 150 years they’ve had to do it. Compare that to capitalism as in the electronics industry where technology is advancing ever day at an exponential rate and new products being created every day. Government should be minimized as it is a cancer that actually as in the case of the government schools distracts from an individual form real education.
When I was in 11th grade, I went on a Nabokov kick and read Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada, and Pnin. I don’t think this could happen today.
No, I didn’t understand all the Baudelaire and Chateaubriand allusions....
Common Core’s goals are to first create the apparatus of commonality and the lowest common denominator. To create a Federal Education bureaucracy. First establish control, then whatever is needed can follow.
Once that is done, any sort of nonsense or propaganda can be put through it, top down.
omg rly? ne id why tht is? k thx bye
When I was hiring engineering graduates, they had absurdly high self esteem and a ridiculous view of their worth. I finally determined that they’d been given self esteem training, probably since first grade. One guy said he wanted $50,000 starting pay, this was when an A student started at $36,000. He had a C average and couldn’t explain how a car alternator worked. I asked why he thought he could command such a figure. He knew a Chemical Engineer who had started at that. I said you’re comparing two different and unrelated things. He said that didn’t matter because he was as good (a person, I gathered) as anybody else. (It took a moment for me to realize my mouth was open and to close it.)
Text books I’ve seen are scary. LOTS of pictures and illustration on EVERY page.
I still remember being in the third grade and I was sick of all the ‘kids’ books at the library.
I asked the librarian ‘Where are the books without pictures’, because in my little kid’s brain ... I was bored with kids’ books and I knew I was beyond the story book stage.
The librarian called my house and told mom ‘Your daughter wants to check out books from the adult section’.
Mom said ‘You give her any book she wants’. I read ‘War and Peace’ at age 12.
“Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.” G. M. Trevelyan
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