Picture a 3rd grade classroom. A teacher and a child sit side by side, open booklets before them both. The teacher starts a timer. The girl begins to read: 鈥淕oldfish make good pets. They are easy to take care of and do not cost much to feed. Goldfish are fun to watch while they are swimming.鈥�
鈥淣ow tell me as much as you can about the story you just read. Ready, begin,鈥� the teacher says, starting the timer again.
The girl quickly scans the passage. 鈥淯m, he has a pet goldfish. It鈥檚 easy to take care of. He likes to watch it swim. It鈥檚 a good pet.鈥�
The teacher tallies each word the child says related to the passage, determines that she has provided three meaningfully sequenced details that capture a main idea, and circles a score, the highest one there is: 4.
The teacher restarts the timer and repeats the process with two more passages.
The teacher in this scene is testing the child鈥檚 reading using Acadience, one of several literacy screeners the New York City Department of Education has mandated elementary schools administer three times a year. And the child, according to the manual in the teacher鈥檚 lap, has just demonstrated excellent reading comprehension.
The department鈥檚 mandate was no doubt influenced by the ascendant 鈥渟cience of reading鈥� movement. Its proponents advocate for greater focus on phonics instruction鈥攕tructured lessons that teach the connections between letters and sounds鈥攊n kindergarten through 2nd grade. They recommend screeners like Acadience because they generate useful data on children鈥檚 phonics knowledge in these early grades. However, in New York, these screeners are also being used in upper elementary grades, where they offer teachers very little of what they actually need: a nuanced and accurate picture of students鈥� comprehension abilities.
While 鈥渟cience of reading鈥� proponents see comprehension as the ultimate goal of reading, they don鈥檛 prioritize it as a goal or focus of reading instruction. They argue that, as long as readers come to texts with strong decoding skills and a broad knowledge base, comprehension is all but assured. Therefore, the thinking goes, instruction should focus on developing students鈥� phonics knowledge (which is the foundation of decoding) as well as broad topical knowledge.
A reading assessment can鈥檛 be valid if the kind of reading it requires doesn鈥檛 match the kind of reading we need to do in real life.
The two of us鈥攁 teacher-educator specializing in literacy and a veteran elementary school teacher鈥攁rgue instead that teachers must actively support students鈥� comprehension. This means two things. First, we must teach comprehension as a multidimensional experience. We want children to comprehend what鈥檚 happening literally in the text (who did what when), but we also want them to be able to analyze how parts of the text (literary devices, figurative language, structural choices) work together to develop ideas. And we want them to interpret the purpose and significance of the text in relation to their lives and to society.
Second, supporting students鈥� comprehension means nurturing what鈥檚 called active self-regulation鈥攖he ability to monitor our understanding and adjust our reading when something doesn鈥檛 make sense. Readers can do this by simply rereading, by strategically focusing their attention, or by intentionally searching for information to fill in gaps in understanding.
Any tool we use to assess reading must generate information about these two aspects of reading comprehension. In Jessica鈥檚 3rd grade classroom, the Acadience screener did not. Jessica didn鈥檛 get a sense of students鈥� understanding of how characters change, what an author is teaching us, or how details support main ideas, nor did she ascertain students鈥� ability to evaluate an author鈥檚 perspective or analyze how literary devices add meaning to the text. In other words, the assessment didn鈥檛 show her whether or not children were engaged in the kind of thinking that enables deep comprehension in realistic reading situations.
This screener took over two weeks to administer. Multiplied by three administrations a year, that鈥檚 six weeks鈥� worth of lost reading instruction. All she had to show for this investment of time was simple numerical scores based on the words children said in their retell.
The idea of a simple score鈥攖he idea that we can quantify reading ability at all鈥攎ight feel reassuring to educators yearning to tie their teaching to something solid. But screeners like Acadience offer only an illusion of scientific objectivity. After all, a reading assessment can鈥檛 be valid if the kind of reading it requires doesn鈥檛 match the kind of reading we need to do in real life.
More importantly, how we assess reading shapes how we teach reading. If assessment tools require children to say a certain number of words about a disconnected set of trivial passages, then teachers will be inclined to emphasize recall and disinclined to support children in selecting complex, relevant texts to read.
Our approach to reading instruction is embedded in a broad set of instructional values鈥攙alues ostensibly shared by New York City鈥檚 education department and many other districts across the country. In the summer of 2021, as the department mandated the literacy screener, it also released a 鈥渧ison statement鈥� for teaching reading that calls for an emphasis on 鈥渃ritical literacy鈥濃�攊nstruction meant to 鈥渃hallenge students to be critical thinkers鈥� and 鈥渇oster critical consciousness.鈥� The statement sees literacy applied to 鈥渃ulturally relevant curriculum.鈥�
We believe, however, that the screener mandate and the vision statement are in conflict. The mandate undermines the indisputably worthy goals of the vision statement by giving short shrift to the support that students need in constructing meaning from diverse texts and then applying that learning to other pursuits.
What鈥檚 happening in New York City reflects a broader trend wherein teachers are expected to negotiate the contradictory pressures to teach reading in a culturally relevant way but assess reading in a way that strips it of all relevance.
What might a relevant assessment look like?
Picture a 3rd grade classroom. A teacher and a child sit side by side, open booklets before them both.
A teacher starts a stopwatch, not a timer. A girl reads a short text about sharks, while the teacher notes her decoding errors and tracks her fluency.
鈥淲hat is the author鈥檚 view of sharks?鈥� the teacher asks.
The child replies, 鈥淲ell, the author wants us to think that sharks are dangerous. Look at this heading 鈥榊ou can run, but you can鈥檛 hide.鈥� That makes a scary feeling. But I disagree! People are probably more dangerous to sharks than sharks are to people. Sharks should be more scared of us.鈥�
There is no numerical score, but the teacher notes that the child knows what鈥檚 happening literally in the text and is analyzing and evaluating it.
The child in this scene is reading the way we read in real life. We want our children to read with a critical lens, to not take the author鈥檚 opinions at face value. We want our children to empathize. And that kind of reading requires instruction and therefore assessments that are rich, meaning-based, and authentic.
