American Reading Company Among First to Bring Assessment Tool Built Around Common Core Standards to Education Market
King of Prussia, Pa.—American Reading Company is making it easy for school districts across the nation to meet Common Core Standards (CCS) reading and language arts requirements by being among the first to provide a fully integrated, standards-based formative assessment that can be used to determine whether or not students are acquiring reading skills at the appropriate grade level and can also track rate of reading growth.
A majority of states have already adopted the CCS – a set of established national guidelines that are meant to ensure all students are learning the same skills and acquiring the same knowledge regardless of where they live – meaning that school districts within those states must make align their curricula. American Reading Company’s reading tools and solutions take the guess-work out of that process, since the centerpiece of each is the Independent Reading Learning Assessment (IRLA), a framework for teaching and learning that has been built on the architecture of the CCS and indicates what students should be learning and when they should be learning it.
The IRLA helps teachers establish a baseline proficiency level for students, develop action plans to ensure reading proficiency, and monitor student progress. Objectives are spelled out clearly for students at each level. For example, a fifth-grade level reader must be able to read in new genres, such as fantasy, autobiography, biography or historical fiction, before he or she moves up to the next reading level. Similarly, the CCS requires students at this level to be able to compare and contrast stories in the same genre on their approaches to similar themes and topics.
“With the IRLA, administrators and teachers can start the new school year with the CCS at the center of their teaching, learning and accountability systems,” said CEO and Founder Jane Hileman. “We expect this to transform teaching and learning in our schools.”
Ms. Hileman has made standards-based formative assessments her life’s work. Through her innovative work creating the 100 Book Challenge reading program and the original IRLA, Ms. Hileman was invited in 2003 to serve on the steering committee for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), an organization that was at the forefront of the CCS movement. Recognizing that schools would need to eventually adopt these standards, Ms. Hileman decided to redesign her company’s IRLA so that it would give schools a head start on the process of matching their curricula to the CCS.
“Our rewrite of the IRLA will dramatically help schools close the CCS implementation gap even more rapidly,” said Ms. Hileman.
About American Reading Company
American Reading Company transforms school cultures to create sustainable academic achievement through training, management, and monitoring. The company was founded in 1998 and is based in King of Prussia, PA. Today, more than a million students in 2,100 schools across 420 districts in 41 states participate in the company’s programs, which include ACTION 100, 100 BOOK CHALLENGE and RESEARCH LABS.