A simple, powerful message about reading instruction.

Tim Shanahan’s new book, Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives, may be the reading book of the year. In fact, it may be the education book of the year.

The book makes a simple point: leveled reading instruction is a bad idea. It’s not that children can’t learn anything with such instruction. The problem is that it’s inefficient, and is suppressing potential reading achievement. The children who learn the least are the ones who most need instruction and support.

That sounds, indeed, like a simple point, one that might be covered in a blog. But those familiar with Shanahan’s blog posts know that he is never satisfied with a cursory review of evidence. There are very few researchers as steeped in the literature as he, and he puts his scholarship to work in this book.

Shanahan makes a persuasive case that leveled reading has been dominant in US classrooms for decades, and shows the mistaken theories of child development and of reading that gave rise to the practice. It also has its roots in, as he puts it, “well-meaning efforts to make education attractive by making it easy, and to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of all students.”

He also reviews the (sparser than you’d expect) research literature on leveled reading, and shows that the promised advantage of matching children to their instructional level does not materialize.

I had always thought that the notion of “levels” was incoherent, as it assumes that content is irrelevant. A child at level X is presumably a level-X reader for all texts, whereas in fact the match between the subject of the text and the reader’s background knowledge is a strong contributor to comprehension. Shanahan marshals several other reasons that levelled reading does not square with theories of reading, but the most telling for me is the most painfully obvious.

Well, obvious to me only after Shanahan pointed it out. We learn when we’re challenged. If you encourage children to read texts that they can read comfortably, you limit their exposure to complex language, new vocabulary, and rich content. Yes, these books are harder to read, but you address that problem via instruction and support, not by making the task easy enough to manage without being taught anything.

Chapters 6 through 9 of the book describe Shanahan’s evidence-based views on the best way to teach challenging texts, from prereading through decoding, fluency, and comprehension. There’s also a chapter on motivation—Shanahan recognizes that it’s harder to motivate children if you are asking them to read more challenging texts—as well as a useful section that answers common practical questions.

My hope is that every elementary teacher, every reading specialist, every SPED teacher, and every administrator will read this slim little volume. Scholarly though it is, Shanahan walks the reader through the argument with concise, accessible prose. And it’s simple, powerful message should be a central theme in US reading instruction.