V05-26

Question

In recent years, directors of remedial reading programs have struggled to find a way to provide their students with sustained independent reading practice with texts that challenge students to apply their word-decoding and phonics skills without overwhelming them. In response to this quandary, Roger Wade, the director of a private corporation known as the Reading Readiness Institute, piloted a system of in-class assessment that would, ideally, have allowed teachers to make individual recommendations for the difficulty level of book each student could read independently with the most success. The six Institute teachers testing the program were required to build two 10-15 assessment periods into each class session, during which they would use company-issued Reading Rating Sheets to evaluate each student’s performance on a specific section of text, which came from a book of pre-determined difficulty. Teachers would then assign students one of three rankings – A, B, or C – based on their comfort with the text on the Rating Sheets. Parents were also required to complete short Homework Surveys, which provided teachers with additional, but similarly-focused, information about student reading at home.

The program was temporarily discontinued after only 6 weeks, however, when all six teachers protested that the addition of assessment periods had forced them to drop other activities that they considered vital from their curricula. Teachers also complained that time spent assessing individual students took attention from general classroom management. The Reading Readiness Institute has taken teacher complaints into account and is currently adjusting its individual assessment program.

Which of the following titles best summarizes the contents of the passage?

A.  Remedial Reading Programs: A New Focus on Phonics and Word-Decoding Helps Students
 B.  Parents and Teachers Together: A New Perspective on Homework Feedback
 C.  Rejected Outright: Reading Readiness Institute Abandons Individual Assessment
 D.  Reading Readiness Institute: Corporate Demands Create Trouble for Teachers
 E.  Individual Assessment: A Good Idea Encounters its First Obstacles

Tetianaa · Answer

Explanation

To answer this question about possible titles, the intention of the entire passage must be taken into account. The first couple of sentences introduce a problem faced by remedial reading programs, and the following sentences in the paragraph describe the ways the Reading Readiness Institute’s assessment program is designed to solve this problem. The second paragraph discusses problems in the program’s implementation and states that it is being revised. The title of the passage must take all of this information into account.

A. The passage focuses only on the Reading Readiness Institute’s program.
B. Homework Feedback is mentioned in the second paragraph, but it is not the subject of the entire passage.
C. The words rejected outright and abandons are too strong for the sense of the passage. The last sentence states that the program is being revised.
D. Corporate demands are not mentioned explicitly in the passage.
 E. Correct.  This title correctly identifies the fact that the focus of the passage is on individual assessment as an approach to helping students. The second part of the title acknowledges the fact that the author seems optimistic about assessment, even while admitting to the problems relayed by teachers.

The correct answer is E

V05-26

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