Some folks get it
Sometimes my spirits lift when I see headlines like this: Federal Bureaucrats Declare 'Hunger Games' More Complex Than 'The Grapes of Wrath': The Common Core's absurd new reading guidelines. Here is a link to the full article complete with a jaw-dropping chart comparing lexiles of books that is worth a guffaw or two: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115393/common-core-standards-make-mockery-novels-complexity
Many of us have been blogging these atrocities committed in the name of levels and lexiles for some time. So this is NOT news. Just this morning, I was blogging about a wonderful GN entitled GENIUS which has a THIRD grade reading level (and it is worth a point on AR) that centers on a middle aged physicist and his confidence crisis. Now I already know that leveling and lexiling (is that even a verb) graphic novels is pointless. Ditto poetry and drama. They do not hold up well to those very scientific formulae. But here it is all set out in this article. Here is the analogy I love from this article: "Lexile scoring is the intellectual equivalent of a thermometer: perfect for cooking turkeys, but not for encouraging moral growth." Nice nutshell. It is what is NOT captured (nor will it ever be able to be captured IMHO) that counts when it comes to complexity. Morals, themes, values, growth, mood, tone: these are not measurable by metrical standards. Again I flash back to John Keating in DEAD POETS' SOCIETY when he mocks the rating scale for a poem. It fits here, too, How can we plot things out along axes when it comes to language.
Recently, Colbert hosted Billy Collins on his show. The two read a poem from Collins' new collection. My BH remarked when the reading was done that he planned to check out Collins' book; he was pleasantly surprised that he DID enjoy poetry after all these years. We never know what book, poem, line, image, phrase, etc. will forge that new connection to a work. We need to share a wide variety of books and materials, then, to make sure all kids reach that stage of aesthetic experience with text where they can marvel at the sheer beauty of the language and build out the shelves for the books that will impact them now and down the road.
Many of us have been blogging these atrocities committed in the name of levels and lexiles for some time. So this is NOT news. Just this morning, I was blogging about a wonderful GN entitled GENIUS which has a THIRD grade reading level (and it is worth a point on AR) that centers on a middle aged physicist and his confidence crisis. Now I already know that leveling and lexiling (is that even a verb) graphic novels is pointless. Ditto poetry and drama. They do not hold up well to those very scientific formulae. But here it is all set out in this article. Here is the analogy I love from this article: "Lexile scoring is the intellectual equivalent of a thermometer: perfect for cooking turkeys, but not for encouraging moral growth." Nice nutshell. It is what is NOT captured (nor will it ever be able to be captured IMHO) that counts when it comes to complexity. Morals, themes, values, growth, mood, tone: these are not measurable by metrical standards. Again I flash back to John Keating in DEAD POETS' SOCIETY when he mocks the rating scale for a poem. It fits here, too, How can we plot things out along axes when it comes to language.
Recently, Colbert hosted Billy Collins on his show. The two read a poem from Collins' new collection. My BH remarked when the reading was done that he planned to check out Collins' book; he was pleasantly surprised that he DID enjoy poetry after all these years. We never know what book, poem, line, image, phrase, etc. will forge that new connection to a work. We need to share a wide variety of books and materials, then, to make sure all kids reach that stage of aesthetic experience with text where they can marvel at the sheer beauty of the language and build out the shelves for the books that will impact them now and down the road.