Improving Reading Comprehension of Middle and High School Students by Kristi L. Santi & Deborah K. Reed

Author:Kristi L. Santi & Deborah K. Reed
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

3 The Continuing Challenge

Overall, the findings reported in the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) relative to reading outcomes for fourth and eighth grade students are modestly encouraging. For example, scores for eighth grade readers improved slightly. That is, scores increased from 265 points in 2011 to 268 points in 2013, a statistically significant difference. Fourth grade reading scores were relatively stable with a slight but not statistically significant change (National Center for Educational Statistics [NCES], 2013). In stark contrast, however, some subgroups of learners showed little or no improvement. The data for eighth grade students with disabilities show that these students continue to do poorly. Fully 63 % of students with disabilities read below the Basic Level on the NAEP reading assessment compared to 22 % of their peers without disabilities (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2012). Additionally, both African American and Latino 17-year-olds score 26 points below White students the same age (NCES, 2013). In a very real sense, students reading at the Basic or Below Basic Levels are currently unable to comprehend much of the written material they encounter in language arts classes.

The challenge is not solely related to subgroups of students within the U.S.. On an international measure of math, science, and reading literacy, U.S. students continue to be “average” when compared to 65 international education systems. Specifically, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA; Buckley, 2013) shows no measurable change in scores for U.S. 15-year-olds in reading literacy. And only 8 % of 15-year-olds in the U.S. scored at the higher reading levels of the PISA (Buckley, 2013). The higher levels of reading comprehension are somewhat aligned to new measures of reading comprehension and standards found in the CCSS. Thus, English language arts teachers will, in all likelihood, encounter wide academic diversity in their classes and students with poor basic reading skills.

Although data on the reading performance of adolescent readers is helpful in general, it does not describe the nature of the specific reading challenges many students face in terms of reading comprehension and the skills that support comprehension. To add clarity to the reading skill profile of adolescent readers and thus better inform teachers about the instructional needs of adolescent readers, Hock et al. (2009) conducted a descriptive study of adolescent readers in which multiple reading measures were administered to a stratified sample of exemplary, above average, average, below average, and unsatisfactory adolescent readers. Students were placed in the appropriate category based on their reading scores on the Kansas Reading Assessment (Kansas State Department of Education, 2005). Students were then administered 11 standardized reading tests across five reading domains: alphabetics, word level reading, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension (Hock et al., 2009).

The study described differences across reading domains between proficient and adolescent struggling readers (ASRs). In all five reading domains, struggling readers were found to score statistically lower than their proficient reader counterparts. By and large, the struggling readers scored approximately one standard deviation below the mean in each reading domain and 20 or more standard score points lower than the proficient reader group.

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