Suggestions and Cautions for Addressing Text Complexity

The majority of states have adopted the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/ Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects (CCSSELA), and assessments aligned with the Standards are scheduled to come online in 2014– 2015. As we indicated in a previous column for The Reading Teacher (Valencia & Wixson, 2013), it ’ s no surprise then that classroom teachers and school district personnel are focusing enormous attention on understanding the standards and learning how to implement them. The emphasis in this column is on issues related to text complexity. The CCSSELA highlights the complexity of the texts students experience in K–12 instruction as one of the key features of the Reading Standards. Specifically, it states, “The Reading standards place equal emphasis on the sophistication of what students read and the skill with which they read” (p. 8). In addition, Standard 10 in the Reading strand is titled “Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity” and specifies that students should “Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently” (p. 10). Moreover, it is important to note that both of the preceding CCSSELA statements also attend to how well students are reading and comprehending these complex texts. One way to remind ourselves and others of this dual focus is to adopt the phrase “comprehension of complex texts” (Valencia, Wixson, & Pearson, in press) as we engage in discussions about text complexity. This column addresses our concern that the focus on text complexity is being narrowly interpreted to mean one or more of the following: (a) complexity should be determined primarily by a quantitative measure, (b) all students should read only texts in the standardsbased, gradelevel Lexile band provided in the CCSSELA documents, (c) the goals of the Standards can be attained by simply including more complex texts in the curriculum. Our purpose here is to help teachers avoid such misconceptions by offering some suggestions and cautions we believe will support effective implementation of the CCSSELA with regard to text complexity.