Why Leveled Reading Won
One of the book’s most useful contributions is historical. Shanahan traces the history of leveled literacy to early America—opening his timeline with the Pilgrims, then carefully tracking the evolution of the approach through the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. He leaves the reader with a clear understanding of how a combination of pragmatism, education theory, and the rise of data-informed practice helped codify leveled literacy into dogma.
by Timothy Shanahan
Harvard Education Press, 2025, $28.00; 232 pages
On the pragmatic side, the idea that reading should be taught as a progression—introducing students first to easier texts and gradually increasing the level of difficulty—is logical and core to any reading program no matter its approach. “[S]ince Aristotle, it had been recognized that texts varied in comprehensibility,” Shanahan notes. Educators began early to find ways to sort books by readability and help students advance toward more challenging texts. Shanahan walks through the process by which this logical practice slowly and systematically led to the institutionalization of leveled literacy in classrooms across the country.
Specifically, beginning in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the rise of educational psychology, coupled with the development of readability formulas, helped systematize an already commonly held (and seductive idea): that student “readiness” for rigorous texts could be measured, and that teaching should proceed only when a learner demonstrates it.
It is easy to see the appeal. If you combine the belief that students cannot learn what they are “not yet ready to learn” with tools that purport to measure readiness and with formulas that promise to quantify text difficulty—suddenly matching each child to an “instructional level” looks scientific, precise, and humane.
For all practical purposes, however, none of these is possible. As Shanahan explains, instruments to level texts disagree; “levels” drift by topic and task; and a host of studies does not vindicate the proposition that students make the greatest gains when confined to material they can already read with high accuracy.
Yet, too many educators and leaders remain committed to the theory and practice of leveled literacy for a host of reasons, including its perceived benefit to classroom management. “A survey showed that teachers preferred within-class homogeneous grouping because of its effectiveness, motivational value, and positive impact on discipline—cherished beliefs not necessarily supported by evidence,” Shanahan writes.
He acknowledges the temptation to feel resigned that we can’t get everyone up to grade level. But his response to that is, as it should be, unsparing: “That may or may not be true. Nevertheless, it is repugnant to endorse a pedagogy that not only accepts this lag but enforces it.” Instructional-level placement, Shanahan argues, “imposes upper-bound limits on how much progress students will be permitted.” While that ensures “most kids learn something,” it forecloses “greater progress” that would be possible with more challenging texts.
The theory, he continues, “minimizes teaching”—banking on glacial improvement through self-directed reading at comfortable levels while ignoring how much more progress could be made with teacher-directed support. The result is “ghost retention,” in which students are not officially held back but are effectively blocked from grade-level curriculum, year after year. Fourth graders “incarcerated in second-grade reading books” are placed on a “separate but unequal” track; later, we demand they compete on equal terms with peers who spent 4th grade steeped in 4th-grade language and content.
