Complexity is not clear cut

What we are most eager to know is how to determine the complexity of any given text. To do so, we must consider the following three factors: quantitative measures, qualitative measures, and reader and task. Where each is concerned, we will need to proceed with full awareness of the fact that the complexity of a text is not static at all. Foremost, we will have to resist any impulse we may have to be reductive about text complexity. As much as we would like to be able to confidently establish specific levels of complexity for each text we work with, we may never be able to do so to our ultimate satisfaction. Why? Nothing about this is clear cut.

First, quantitative measures of text complexity (such as Lexile levels and other readability formulas), while profoundly comforting and easiest to determine, can be largely misleading—if only because our over-dependence on them blinds us to the more subtle qualitative measures. Quantitative measures encourage us to slap a number, letter, or grade level on a text and be done with it. Librarians and classroom teachers know intuitively that these labels do not work—hence our sensible resistance to “leveling” our libraries. Quantitative measures provide a starting place, but are hardly where we will end our work of determining the complexity of a text.

Then, qualitative measures of text complexity ask us to carefully consider levels of meaning, the structure of a text, language conventionality and clarity, and the knowledge needed for comprehension. Of course, determining complexity based on a number of qualitative text features is daunting—plagued by subjectivity and a nagging lack of clarity. The tools/rubrics designed for this task turn out to be most useful for providing a common language to discuss features of the text with colleagues and collaborating teachers. Traditionally, we have just “known” when a text was not appropriate for a particular instructional task or for certain students. When pressed as to why, we might say: “The writing is just too hard…” or “It has too many pictures…” These tools give us a common vocabulary to discuss the basis for determining how appropriate a text is for a specific audience.

The role of the “task”

Lastly, and most importantly, reader and task is where the slope is most slippery. Depending on the abilities of our students and what we ask them to do with a text, its complexity can vacillate wildly. For example, a text with a low Lexile level can easily become more complex if a student’s prior knowledge of the topic is limited. That very same material becomes even more complex the more critically we ask a student to think about it. It is one thing to ask a child to read an article written at a Lexile level of 1000 just to comprehend it. It is rather a different task to expect that same student to read the article to draw a conclusion from it and support that conclusion with evidence from the reading. The task, in this case, has just made the text more complex.

Where does this leave us? Where most of the Common Core leaves us: seeking clarity. Our golden opportunity as school librarians lies in tapping our deep content knowledge to create understanding both for ourselves and our colleagues. The reward will be well worth our efforts—especially if our collective work reinforces our critical place in the implementation of the Common Core Learning Standards.

To submit an On Common Core opinion piece, please contact Rebecca T. Miller at rmiller@mediasourceinc.com.

The seamless alignment of the Common Core with inquiry standards, skills, and indicators allows us to make the case at the center of our work as librarians. Namely: true learning is about internalizing a process for learning that transfers across all content areas, and inquiry is the process at the center of all true and meaningful learning.

Translation required

The only trick is that the language of the Common Core is still largely foreign and threatens to remain so. Comprehension of a foreign language is never improved by hearing it spoken more loudly, nor is it increased by others’ facility with it. When content area teachers bring their language to the table as well, the scene is ripe for the exchange of loud babble.

Our opportunity lies in figuring out how to translate both languages simultaneously for the various constituents we serve. To do this, we must become masters of the language of the Common Core. If we stop at accepting the crosswalks (connections between past and new standards) and then claim we are doing the Common Core, we will miss out on the opportunity to incorporate our understanding of inquiry for others. The commonality that will help us begin the task of translation lies in a deep understanding of the inquiry process, its overlap with Common Core, and how they both apply across a variety of content.

Building a cabinet requires one to learn the process for doing so—namely, the steps and discrete skills involved. Without wood, nails, glue, and stain, however, the cabinet cannot be built. Think of the actual building of the cabinet as the process and the materials used to build it as the content. One needs both the process and the materials. Librarians know this about learning. This is why we balk at assignments that require students to gather material without requiring them to do anything significant with it. “Copy and paste” assignments ask students to simply move the content from one place (in a resource) to another (a “report”). This does not a cabinet make.

On the other hand, when we are afforded the luxury to do so, librarians teach the transferable process of inquiry using whatever content/materials our colleagues ask us to use. It is only in this meaningful wedding of content and process that our students internalize the transferability of learning as a process. That is to say, if we teach the process for building a cabinet with oak, our students can transfer that process to building cabinets with any number of materials.

At the center of learning

To date, the only Common Core Standards that have been released are reading and writing standards steeped in process, and we are all about process. Content, we are being told, will come in time. In the interim, this can serve us well, but only up to a point. It is one thing for us to see our work all over the Common Core, but it is another to get others to see it, and yet another to position ourselves as instructional leaders in the implementation of the standards.

It will not be sufficient for us to guide colleagues in seeing the connections between inquiry and the Common Core. We will have to provide concrete ways to teach the skills embedded in the inquiry process, because at the end of the day, the conversation will have to revolve around how actual lessons will be taught.

With this change will come a wonderful reshaping of our work. If inquiry is everywhere in learning, then our work is everywhere and the work we do is no longer considered the indefinitely postponable “library skills curriculum.”

Nonetheless, it looks like this “opportunity” is all about colossal amounts of work. Joy will come with deeper understanding, greater fluency with the Common Core language, and in knowing that our work is perceived as urgent and critical, and that school libraries and librarians are indispensable.

Also see: Rebecca T. Miller’s Editorial, “‘I Can Help You With That’: Providing solutions puts librarians at the center of Common Core”