V05-27

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.

The passage suggests that which of the following is a problem faced by current remedial reading programs?
 
 A.  Teachers are too slow to evaluate the needs of individual students.
 B.  In-class time is poorly managed.
 C.  Parent involvement is not well coordinated.
 D.  Practice texts are often overwhelming to students.
 E.  Potentially useful programs are too short-lived to be effective.

Tetianaa · Answer

Explanation

This question requires an inference drawn from information stated explicitly in the passage. The problem faced by remedial reading programs is discussed in the first sentence, where it is stated that program directors have struggled...to provide their students with independent reading practice without overwhelming them. It is reasonable to conclude, then, that practice texts in remedial reading programs are often overwhelming to students.

A.  This conclusion is not supported by the passage.
 B.  On the contrary, the passage seems to imply that class time is managed well, and that the assessment program has disrupted that.
 C.  There is no basis for reaching this conclusion from information in the passage.
 D. Correct.  This option correctly identifies the problem stated in the first sentence of the passage.
 E.  Though the individual assessment program may be classified as short-lived, this is not the problem discussed by the passage.

The correct answer is D

V05-27

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