Can a student in school become a proficient reader without being a mindful and critical reader? Can a mindful reader lack proficient reading skills? Testable skills? Applicable skills? I thought I knew, but foolish me.

For decades I have fretted reading scores. I pore over our school’s annual results on the statewide academic assessments looking at individual scores, disaggregated groups of scores, and multi-year trends in score patterns. When scores inch up a decimal, I smile. When scores dip a similar decimal, I frown. At the end of poring, everything boils down to cause effect analysis. How is our instructional program in reading affecting student proficiency in reading test score? And, how can improvements in teaching cause children to be better readers? Better readers!

As I sat in a local coffee shop, I eavesdropped on people at the next table sipping, munching and talking. They talked about local issues. Weather, road conditions, the ups and downs of local business, and local gossip. Talk, talk, talk. When the conversation turned to politics and taxes, I leaned a bit closer. Perhaps they would talk about something of substance. I waited and waited until I heard one person say, “I read …”. I was intrigued to hear how this person reported out what she had read. I heard her say “…the article said…”, “… the reports say …”, and “… according to this, the data says …”. Okay. She read for content comprehension. Then, I heard another voice say, “I read a different story that told me …”. Smile. Now, there was a little analysis of what had been read. They were comparing and contrasting what each person understood from their reading. Sip, sip and munch, munch. The first voice said, “…I don’t think I agree with what I read. I think …, because…” and I smiled more broadly. Yes, I heard some evaluation of what she read. She read, understood, considered, analyzed, and evaluated what she read against her own understanding and experience. She gave an alternative interpretation and explained why she favored this alternative. I had listened to a conversation based upon critical and mindful reading. Many smiles. But, were they proficient readers? How had these folks gone about their reading? Did they apply the reading skills taught in school? I did not care. I glanced at them as I left my table. They probably were young adults in their late 20s, no longer in school anywhere, getting together for a morning ritual before moving on to their day. They represented the outcomes of a school education.

At a developmental level, we must pay attention to the assessments of reading proficiencies that populate K-6 schooling. The science of reading tells us that, although we can teach all children to read, reading is not a natural human activity.  It takes time for children to learn to read. And, it takes time for children to advance their reading skills toward being mindful and critical readers. When we combine the science of reading with each student’s proclivities for learning, home and environmental support, and instructional effectiveness, assessments give us guidance as to the what kind, when and to what extent we need to apply teaching and learning exercises. The assessments are checkpoints in a pathway to more important outcomes.  Don’t fret the small stuff, I am learning.

My reconsidered attention now is drawn to the effectiveness of early reading programs in 4K through third grade and how individual children develop decoding and encoding of letters and sounds. I am concerned with their orthographic ability to assemble and spell words and to build those words into vocabulary. I am concerned with reading fluency and a child’s ability to read, understand, make self-corrections in their reading.  I look at their ability to develop rich background knowledge through reading. The snapshot assessments of these explicit skill sets make sense to assure each of the pieces of reading is being taught and learned properly so that children are prepared to be mindful and critical readers later in their schooling and adult lives. Analyzing reading proficiency in the primary grades is how we pay attention to smaller details. They are important signposts of learning but annual, small skill assessments are not the “big duh” outcomes of reading.

As I adjust my fretting, I am liking the bigger question of “What can children understand and learn from what they read?”. This is a completely different educational outcome and its assessments, due to their subjectivity, should not lead to fretting. Upper elementary, middle school and high school education provide rich instruction and application of advanced reading skills throughout curricular content areas. At this point, we shift from sub-test analysis to the larger interest of what older children are able to “do” with their reading abilities.  We focus on how they process information, create and test generalization from facts and supporting detail.  We look for critical questioning of sources when they inspect for bias and when they compare and contrast differing material.  We watch carefully when they are confounded by what they read and attempt resolve conflicting points of view or presentation of facts. Schools will continue to take scheduled snapshots of how well children read in these grade levels as part of mandated assessments. And, they also need to look carefully at how children learn from what they read.

Getting one’s pants in a bunch when the data produced by a periodic assessment snapshot does not jive with desired numbers and conclusions may not be as productive as we think it is.  I shall treat those results for what they are. Some assessments look backward at how well children learned and other assessments look forward toward how well children are growing into mindful and critically thinking young adults.

Taken against the big picture of developing mindful and critical readers, I am liking and finding more value in secondary school evaluative assessments of how we want school graduates to be critical and mindful readers. It is like cooking soup. At the early stages of chopping ingredients, we know the nutritional values of what is going into the soup. But, any premature tasting is not of soup; it is checking the process of making soup. Soup is soup when the prep and cooking are completed. The soup of reading should be evaluated when it is served – when graduates leave school for futures in college or career. Make instructional adjustments earlier in the process, but don’t make exclamations about reading achievement until reading is soup to be served. Wait to fret, if fret you must.