Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives: How Students’ Reading Achievement Has Been Held Back and What We Can Do About It

by Timothy Shanahan

Genres: Nonfiction

232 pages, Paperback

Published September 9, 2025

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I completed this as a professional book study. From it, I learned that most levels are made up without any real formula. There might be patterns as we go up the levels. In actuality, there is no real difference for one level to the next. I remember when a colleague literally yelled at me because I let the child take home the classic “Where the Wild Things Are.” It was two levels above his instruction level. You would have thought I had been giving him poison. Truth be told, it was a book he chose because he had heard it read aloud and he wanted to try to read it. Book choice is a powerful influence on motivation. That doesn’t mean I have a kindergartener read Harry Potter. It just means that sometimes restrictions lock students into lower levels of reading. Those children seldom get opportunities to get into grade level reading. The “Matthew Effect” from the Biblical book of Matthew has been cited where the rich get richer (in reading) and the poor get poorer (in reading). There is no magic wand to pull up low levels of reading readers but keeping them stuck in low level texts, below their grade level, will not help them achieve either.