History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Are 21st century 5-year-olds cognitively ready to read?
- 08-12-2011
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Guest blog by Elfrieda H. Hiebert/Washington Post
“K–12 reading texts have actually trended downward in difficulty in the last half century” (Common Core State Standards, Appendix, A, page 2). In the case of kindergarten texts, this statement is blatantly false. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Kindergarten texts were added to core reading programs as a result of Reading First mandates in the first decade of the 21st century. How the writers of the Common Core State Standards came to the conclusion that kindergarten texts — which had been nonexistent until a decade ago — had decreased in difficulty over a 50-year period is perplexing. The explicit assumption that kindergarten texts have been dumbed down over the past 50 years and that their difficulty levels need to be accelerated has consequences for how young children begin their formal reading experiences, especially the children who depend on schools to become literate. The inclusion of kindergarten in this blanket statement about text difficulty represents an implicit assumption about beginning reading that also requires consideration — that earlier is better. (more...)
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