The average college freshman reads at 7th grade level
Maggie LitReporter@MaggieLitCROon Jan 06, 2015 at 10:47 AM EDT
Renaissance Learning found that the average book assigned for summer reading at college has a seventh-grade reading level.
Most college textbooks and reading material written before 1970 require mature reading skills according to Arkansas Prof. Emerita Sandra Stotsky.
The average U.S. college freshman reads at a seventh grade level, according to an educational assessment report.
“We are spending billions of dollars trying to send students to college and maintain them there when, on average, they read at about the grade 6 or 7 level, according toRenaissance Learning’s latest report on what American students in grades 9-12 read, whether assigned or chosen,” said education expert Dr. Sandra Stotsky.
Stotsky, a Professor Emerita at the University of Arkansas, served on the Common Core Validation Committee in 2009-10, during which she called the standards “inferior.” She claimed the Common Core left out the very standards needed to prepare students for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers.
“The average reading level for five of the top seven books assigned as summer reading by 341 colleges using Renaissance Learning’s readability formula was rated 7.56 [meaning halfway through seventh grade],” Stotsky told Breitbart Texas.
The study also found that most high school graduates don’t do much with mathematics past eighth-grade compared to students in other high-achieving countries.
In addition, the lack of “difficulty and complexity” found in high school reading material is indicative of what colleges can assign to students once they enter higher education and professors aren’t requiring incoming students read at a college level.
OMG they sure know how to us abbreviated texts. LOL
To increase their reading skills perhaps all school books should be in abbreviations related to Texting: