What Students Are Reading Now

Renaissance Learning recently released the results of their fifth annual survey/study of "What Kids Are Reading," which is summarized in this graphic. As I have been reading a great deal about the new CCSS and the focus of Standard 10 on text complexity, I was curious to see, in particular, the  differences in what was required reading just over a century ago and how the top 3 has changed over the years. Of the Top 3 in 1907, all are still represented in modern required reading lists, but have fallen in popularity. Even the top 3 from last year have fallen from favor a little, with one dropping to a current ranking of 16th. And, according to their report, the complexity of the required high school reading has dropped since 1907, a finding that has been echoed in much of the research that I have read recently.

Renaissance Learning also notes that some texts that have been used as exemplars within the CCSS in English/Language Arts & Literacy have seen an increase in readership, opening up the possibility that the standards are already beginning to have an effect on curriculum decisions. This would make sense to me, as the exemplars, instead of serving as a starting place for guidance in choosing texts, may serve as a dictate for teachers who are either told by "higher authorities" they must use these texts or who are simply not trained to take the examples from these exemplars and apply them to analysis of other texts that could be more appropriate for their students.

On the CCSS web site, there are a host of resources for helping teachers gauge the complexity of any given text, whether informational or literary.  But without awareness of these tools, training on how to use them, and time to collaborate in implementing these tools, the exemplar texts may become a national reading list for students in the U.S.