Controversy Surrounds Increased Informational Text Focus

NPR All Things Considered (1/19, Sadowski) ran an article on its website about the controversy surrounding the Common Core Standards' increased emphasis on informational texts, presenting the shift as a response to "dramatically" reduced reading scores for US students. The piece quotes the College Board's David Coleman saying, "So many kids, often as many as 50 percent, graduate high school ... demonstrably not ready for the demands of a first-year college course or job-training program," and describes him as "the lead architect of the Common Core Standards Initiative, a sweeping curricula change that integrates nonfiction text into the English program." The article explores what this will mean for literary classics, noting that "that question is one stirring debate over how to integrate nonfiction works into English programs to improve reading scores, while not abandoning the novels that have become the gold standard of high school reading lists." Audio of this segment can be heard here.