Reading Instruction and Assessment

Excerpted from "Reading Test Dummies" by E.D. Hirsch
New York Times, March 22, 2009

"Our current reading tests are especially unfair to disadvantaged students. The test passages may be random, but they aren’t knowledge-neutral. A child who knows about hiking in the Appalachians will have a better chance of getting the passage right; a child who doesn’t, won’t. Yet where outside of school is a disadvantaged student to pick up the implicit knowledge that is being probed on the reading tests?

To base tests on what is actually taught in school would not only be fairer to disadvantaged students than the current Kafkaesque system of testing, it would enable such students to gradually narrow the gap in their general knowledge and vocabulary. Eventually, we’d see improvement in the reading levels of all students.

This reform would have another excellent consequence: Teachers and students might begin to demand content standards that are more specific than, say, this third grade standard from Ohio: “Compare the cultural practices and products of the local community with those of other communities in Ohio, the United States and countries of the world.” It would be far more useful to set out what exactly children should learn about the 13 colonies or Paul Revere’s ride."