Reading lessons focus on 'tasks' -- not understanding

When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon and called it "a giant leap for mankind," what did he mean?

In a reading lesson observed by SRI researchers, the third-grade teacher made sure students knew the difference between literal and nonliteral language, a state literacy standard, but stopped there. Students never talked about humans landing on the moon.

Most reading lessons don't aim for "robust" understanding of the text, concludes a new SRI study, Beyond the Surface. Two-thirds of lessons were geared to "completing tasks," often linked to state standards. Only a quarter focused on understanding the meaning of the text.

The study analyzed four large districts that had adopted high-quality, knowledge-rich curricula. But, in most schools, it didn't seem to help very much.

It appears that many teachers are modifying content-rich curricula to focus on skills-based standards, writes Natalie Wexler, a tireless advocate of the importance of teaching knowledge. Many teachers called the texts "too dense" and complex for their students, according to a companion report from SRI.

In professional development sessions, teachers may be told to put standards first, she writes. The researchers observed a training session in which teachers took a Core Knowledge lesson about "art patronage by merchants and clergy during the Renaissance and turned it into one focused primarily on the task of creating a Venn diagram."

Standardized reading tests use passages about topics students haven't studied, Wexler adds. The results "might tell teachers that students are weak in a skill like identifying the main idea of a text, when in fact the student might not have understood the text because of a lack of relevant background knowledge."

Tests that come with knowledge-rich curriculum "measure whether students have retained information from the curriculum and  how well they can reason about or analyze it," she writes. In districts that tell teachers to pay attention to those assessments, reading instruction is more likely to focus on understanding the reading.

The SRI report suggests "deepening teachers’ content knowledge by having them dig into the texts their students will be reading," she writes. It "also recommends having teachers observe model lessons, perhaps through videos," and improving instructional coaching.

Talking about meaning can be "magic," says Sara Rutherford-Quach, one of the co-authors of the report. Students are "way more engaged," she told The 74's Jessica Harkay. They enjoy it.

They don't get the same feeling about skills such as identifying the main character, says co-author Dan Reynolds. "Are we teaching our K-4 kids that reading is just tasks? Are we teaching them that they just need to label stuff and fill out graphic organizers?”

Teaching isolated skills and treating "knowledge as trivia" has left college students unable to synthesize ideas or frame a coherent argument, argue C. Bradley Miller and Matthew Levey on the Knowledge Matters blog. In elementary, middle and high school, "they practiced “reading skills” without learning the content that makes comprehension possible." Now they struggle in freshman seminars. "They are expected to analyze what they have never systematically been taught to know."