National Survey of Teachers Finds Literature Curriculum Lacking

A national survey of high school literature teachers, sponsored by the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers, found there is no longer a traditional or uniform reading curriculum and teachers do not regularly engage students in close, analytical reading of assigned works.

Sandra Stotsky, holder of the Twenty-First Century Chair in Teacher Quality in the department of education reform at the University of Arkansas, surveyed more than 400 English teachers in grades 9, 10 and 11 in public schools across the country to find out what literary works they assign and how they approach literary study. She undertook the research project in response to a question posed at a meeting of the national association: "What are high school students being asked to read today?" The association issued the report as part of its series of publications on literary study and public policy.

Based on the study’s main findings, Stotsky offered six recommendations in three areas:

• A challenging English language arts curriculum needs to be developed for students in the middle third of academic performance in grades 7-12. While praising the effort to make more Advanced Placement English courses available in high schools and to encourage enrollment in them, the study’s findings suggest that the needs of students who are not in the top or bottom third of their grade-level peers are not being met.
• States need to develop literature and reading standards at the high school level that shape a progressively more challenging curriculum and include historically and culturally significant texts, movements, and periods for English-speaking people.
• English departments at public colleges and universities need to include the analytical study of literature as a strong component of their curriculum, especially for students planning to become secondary English teachers.
• Boards of elementary, secondary, and higher education should require programs that prepare English and reading teachers to emphasize how to do and teach analytical reading of assigned texts.
• The U.S. Department of Education and the states need to give priority to the funding of professional development programs that emphasize the teaching of analytical reading using historically and culturally significant texts.
• The U.S. Department of Education should require common assessments in the English language arts that use reading passages, writing prompts, and types of questions similar to those in such exemplary models as British Columbia’s high school literature exit test and the Massachusetts grade 10 tests.

Stotsky received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation to help pay for the project, which was done with the assistance of the University of Arkansas Survey Research Center, her research assistant Joan Traffas and graduate student James Woodworth.

The report can be read in its entirety online.

Earlier this year, Stotsky and two colleagues at the University of Arkansas – Chris Goering, assistant professor of secondary English/literacy education, and David Jolliffe, holder of the Brown Chair in English Literacy – used a similar questionnaire to survey more than 400 high school English teachers in Arkansas, followed up by eight focus groups in the state’s four congressional districts. They found exactly the same trends in Arkansas’ high school English classes and made similar recommendations for the state.

The Arkansas report can be read in its entirety by downloading a PDF of the report.

Stotsky was an appointed member of Validation Committee of Common Core, an initiative of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to propose adoption of national standards. She was one of five members of this committee who voted against the final version of Common Core's standards, stating that she did not think the English language arts standards were consistently interpretable and teachable.