When Determining Students’ Reading Levels, Proceed With Caution

From the Marshall Memo #454

Most educators are conversant with independent, instructional, and frustration reading levels, says Juliet Halladay (University of Vermont/Burlington) in this article in The Reading Teacher. And indeed, there is substantial research to support some aspects of the reading level framework first developed by Emmett Betts in 1946. But there is also reason for caution. Halladay questions four underlying assumptions about reading levels and suggests implications for classroom practice.

• Assumption #1: Decoding accuracy and reading comprehension go hand in hand. In fact, says Halladay, some students decode accurately and have poor comprehension, while others make numerous decoding errors and have good comprehension. The link between decoding and comprehension varies with age (it’s stronger with younger than with older readers) and skill (it’s stronger with unskilled than with skilled readers). With older and more skilled readers, comprehension is more often linked to vocabulary and prior knowledge than decoding. The implication: teachers should be on the lookout for students with disparate decoding and comprehension skills and dig a little deeper before deciding on their reading levels. 

• Assumption #2: Independent reading requires near-perfect decoding accuracy. The threshold for independent reading is usually 98 or 99 percent, counting every miscue as an error. Halladay raises two questions: How reasonable is it to expect students to read aloud with near-perfect accuracy? and How important is this when selecting books for independent reading? On the first question, she agrees with Fountas and Pinnell that a more forgiving criterion (say 95 percent) makes sense. On the second, she says teachers should take into account whether errors change the meaning of the text as well as students’ prior knowledge and level of interest in what they are reading. Building fluency is one reason for independent reading, but so is developing a love of reading, building vocabulary, and developing content knowledge. For the latter three purposes, error-free reading is not essential.

• Assumption #3: Oral reading skill is a reasonable proxy for silent reading skill. Not necessarily, says Halladay. The research on this link is decidedly mixed: for some students, oral reading underestimates their silent reading comprehension (especially if there is time pressure – a teacher sitting there with a stopwatch). For other students, oral reading overestimates silent comprehension (especially for younger readers). Interestingly, having an audience can make a difference: one study found that students had better comprehension with oral and silent reading when no one was with them. The bottom line: teachers should assess both silent and oral reading before deciding on a student’s reading level.

• Assumption #4: Decoding and comprehension difficulty cause frustration. It’s commonly believed that too-difficult texts will be emotionally stressful for students, reinforce bad reading habits, and waste valuable time. “Surprisingly,” says Halladay, “there is actually very little research evidence to support the connection between frustration level and actual emotional frustration.” One study found that students became frustrated only when they reached 41.5% comprehension and 90% accuracy. Another study found that frustration depended on personality characteristics, not gender, age, or intellectual ability. Many students enjoyed reading texts that were challenging to read. One explanation for this seeming anomaly is that students chose their independent-reading books; another is that they might be learning something from the graphics or inventing stories about the illustrations; another is that social factors are involved – e.g., friends are reading Harry Potter. Halladay’s conclusion: “Teachers should be careful not to assume that a challenging text will be emotionally frustrating for a student.”

“Revising Key Assumptions of the Reading Level Framework” by Juliet Halladay in The Reading Teacher, September 2012 (Vol. 66, #1, p. 53-62), no e-link available; the author can be reached at jhallada@uvm.edu.