Norris School District

ACT Reports: Half of high school graduates not ready for college entry-level reading!

Critical Reading Skills:

            Norris’ ACT scores are outstanding – our averages are among the very highest in the state, and Nebraska’s state averages are considerably above the national norms.  However, there is always room for improvement, and one area we must continue to grow in is reading comprehension.  We currently have several sections of high school reading classes.  These students need rapid remediation or they are unlikely to develop reading skills that are consistent with college readiness.  In addition to these students struggling to master essential reading skills, all of our students, including those in our most challenging courses, must continue to develop critical reading skills.  A new report from ACT finds that almost half of high school graduates are not ready for the rigors of college-level reading.  The knowledge and skills needed for workplace success beyond high school correlate fairly well with the reading challenges of a first-year college student and beyond.  The reading skills needed in today’s world are far greater than those required by the typical daily newspaper!  It is vital that our students enhance their skills in reading texts that challenge them to become literate at the highest levels.  They should be skilled at understanding texts that include:

            Relationships: interacting, multiple ideas in a text.

            Richness: highly sophisticated information conveyed through data.

            Style: intricate tone and style used by the author.

            Vocabulary: demanding and context-dependent word choice.

            Purpose: the meanings of the text are sometimes ambiguous and implicit.

In other words – here’s the tough love we’ve got to show as teachers and parents: Your child needs to read plays by Shakespeare more than she needs to read the latest issue of Seventeen.  Your child needs to read novels by Toni Morrison and other Nobel laureates more than he needs to read stories by R.L. Stine.  And your child needs to read newspaper editorials by authors like Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and not merely the latest column from Steve Sipple of the Journal Star.  Reading is great.  Not all reading is equally great.  Let’s keep pushing our kids!