Assessment of Reading

Standardized Testing or Laughter Exhaled?

"This I believe: If young people develop a love of reading, they will have better lives.  That objective is not listed in our state curriculum standards.  Our assessment of reading may being with standardized test scores, but in the end we must measure a child's reading ability by the amount of laughter exhaled and tears shed as written word is devoured."

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This quote by Rafe Esquith is one of my favorite. This is truly how I see my role as a reading teacher. Yes, I must teach the fundamentals of reading and writing.  I must teach word patterns, latin roots and how to use comprehension strategies. But more than anything, I must teach students that literature is a means of entertainment, of peering deep into the soul of another. Literature has the power to make you feel deep joy, sadness, compassion, love... its powers are limitless.

As our state standardized tests are coming up, I have been having an internal crisis as to what to teach. Do I continue to teach my students the strategies to be a great reader? Or do I change my instruction to help them find the correct answers on the standardized test? I want to believe that I could continue teaching the great reading strategies and that would ensure that they would rock their standardized test, but alas, I do not find that to be true...