Do Successful Readers and Struggling Readers  
Really Read at a Particular “Grade-Level?”   

      Educators almost always refer to students, when speaking of reading, in terms of the grade-level at which they read.  But is this really an accurate (or even productive) way to think of reading skills?  I’m going to define a successful reader as someone who can comfortably read and understand anything (as long as they have enough prior knowledge to understand it). 

      Given the above definition, doesn’t it follow that someone who is a successful reader can read materials even when they are written at adult levels, as long as the reader has the appropriate prior knowledge to make sense of it?  Wouldn’t it be better to simply say that someone is a successful reader or not? 

      If you ask me to read a book at the 8th grade-level on nuclear physics, I’m going to need help.  Not because I struggle with the reading process, but because I don’t have enough prior knowledge.  If you ask a nine year old (who is a successful reader), to read an adventure story that is written at the 5th grade-level, he might be able to easily do it.  But that same nine year old might struggle with a 5th grade-level science text because he doesn’t have prior knowledge around concepts, or vocabulary choice, or possibly even the complexity of the syntax.  He doesn’t read at a grade-level.  His neural pathway for reading is complete and correct, and as he grows and learns, he will have the prior knowledge he needs to handle more complex text precisely because he is already a successful reader.

      Now if we determine that someone doesn’t read well (can not be classified as a successful reader), we can speak to grade-leveled materials that might be manageable and therefore helpful to use as an intervention for a particular struggling reader.  However, this still does not mean that this reader reads at the 3rd, 5th, or 7th, grade-level.  The truth is that our reader is going to struggle whenever he or she reads anything.  If we make the materials simplistic enough, coping strategies could kick in and he or she might sound pretty good and even understand the text.  But this does not mean that our reader should be classified as successful with 4th grade material and unsuccessful with 5th grade material.  Nor does it mean that we should tell the parents of our reader that their child is reading one or two grade levels below where he or she should be.  I think we need a paradigm shift.

      Once we have assessed that our reader is a struggling reader, we need to have some criteria for choosing materials that will allow us to successfully intervene and help the reader make the neural pathway changes necessary to take him or her off the “struggling reader continuum.” 

      At least this is food for thought.  What are the ramifications of changing how we help readers and parents understand the problem, if we change the way we speak of this issue?  What about how it might affect self-esteem if we spoke of moving on a continuum rather than reading 2 and 3 grades below grade-level?  What would it mean to educators to think of this issue in new terms?  These are the questions one ponders in the world of reading!