Progress Report on America's ELA Teaching These Past Five Years

Today's release of Reading and Writing Instruction in America's Schools (here) by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute is the subject of these online postings:

• "Implementing Higher Literacy Standards or Putting on a Show?" (here) from Timothy Shanahan's blog Shanahan on Literacy
• "New Study of Common Core Reading Standards Finds Teachers Aren't Giving Students Appropriately Challenging Texts" (here) by Carolyn Phenicie from The 74

The report itself offers four overall conclusions: that ELA teachers

1. need help with assigning texts to students based on their grade levels (their targets for reading) instead of on their reading levels ("where they're at" currently);
2. ought to ensure that they're not eliminating "classic works of literature" in their efforts to assign more informational texts;
3. must instruct students on evidence-based writing, which appears to be taking a back seat to creative writing; and
4. should organize their teaching around sets of texts that together provide content knowledge while students are learning English language arts skills.

Ms. Phenicie provides excerpts from the Fordham report in her report on those four overall conclusions.

Dr. Shanahan addresses those four conclusions by noting that it wasn't enough for states to develop and adopt higher standards for ELA. They should have also provided the training and resources needed for teachers to implement those standards. In his blog post, he mentions some of the things necessary to raise literacy levels.

What do you think of the Fordham report's findings? Or of Dr. Shanahan's recommendations?