Leveled Reading: The Making of a Literacy Myth

New York public school principal Carol Burris, an outspoken standards critic, and defender of leveled reading, recently published an anti-Common Core missive on the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet blog that was fairly typical of the form. Where, she wondered, is the research to support: close reading, increased Lexile levels, the use of informational texts, and other questionable practices in the primary grades?

The blog post, which has already been intelligently critiqued by Ann Whalen at Education Post, expanded on remarks delivered by Burris earlier this month at an Open to Debate formerly known as Intelligence Squared U.S. debate with Fordham president Michael Petrilli and former assistant secretary of education Carmel Martin. There, too, she demanded evidence of literacy improvements arising from the use of complex texts.