To begin to answer this question we need to understand why text complexity has become an issue.  In 2007 U.S. governors and education chiefs concluded high school graduates did not have the literacy or math skills needed for college or workplace success¹. This lack of proficiency meant many students had to take as much as a year’s worth of remedial work before they could start a genuine college curriculum or assume their rightful place in the workplace.

The inability to read post-secondary materials often occurs because college texts and workplace materials contain specialized vocabulary, academic language, and text structures unique to each discipline or job. Even students with surface knowledge of a topic are unable to deeply comprehend the depth in complex college texts.

The discrepancy between what students could and should be able to do sounded the alarm that we must collectively and individually focus our attention on literacy learning in U.S. schools². What resulted was agreement that the skills needed for high school graduates to succeed regardless of their next career steps must be identified. They were and we now have the Common Core State ELA and Literacy (as well as Math) Standards (2010 ), two sets of K-12 expectations of what skills are needed for career and college success³.

Of the various standards within the CCSS framework, two have received the lion’s share of attention among teachers and administrators:  Reading Standards 1 and 10.  When combined, these offer the expectation that students need to learn how to closely read increasingly complex texts across the school year and across grades. Like all of the Standards, the authors do not identify what information should be taught, how the information should be taught, or what materials should be used. These decisions are left to the discretion of educators.  But close, careful reading of increasingly complex test is the common thread⁴.

What Matters to Teachers?

As I work with teachers across the country, they often ask me what to do after they have selected a text within their grade-level complexity band, followed all of the suggestions for sharing a close read , and realized at the end of the lesson there are still many students who are not able to comprehend. Teachers don’t want to leave these students behind and they don’t want to continually frustrate them with texts that are too difficult⁵.         

When I ask my teacher colleagues why their students aren’t comprehending, they often offer alternative explanations: (a) the students didn’t have enough basic background knowledge about the topic, (b) they didn’t understand the language or the structure of the text, or (c) they didn’t have the skills needed to even decode the written text into speech.

Teachers are saying there is a difference between a complex text and a complex text that is too difficult for their students. I’ve concluded from these insightful teachers that a difficult text is a complex text that can’t be readily comprehended by readers because they don’t have the knowledge, language, or skills needed to interrogate it through multiple reads.

In part two of this post, I’ll offer some possibilities to help unravel what a teacher might do when this situation occurs during a close reading.

Diane Lapp, EdD, Distinguished Professor of Education at San Diego State University (SDSU), is currently an English/literacy teacher and instructional coach at Health Sciences High and Middle School in San Diego, CA.  Also a member of both the California and the International Reading Halls of Fame, Diane can be reached at lapp@mail.sdsu.edu.

The ILA Literacy Research Panel uses this blog to connect ILA members around the world with research relevant to policy and practice. Reader response is welcomed via e-mail.