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Teachers Tackle Text Complexity

History teacher Elise DeBoard works with 11th and 12th graders last week at International Community High School in the Bronx on exercises to make their upcoming reading assignments more understandable. Education assistant Shohel Rahman leans over to help out.

—Emile Wamsteker for Education Week

Pilot N.Y.C. program in line with elements of standards

By Catherine Gewertz

New York

On a freezing morning in February, teachers from a Bronx high school pore over excerpts and guidelines, trying to figure out whether they should teach The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or leave it to college professors.

A team of teachers from International Community High School joined colleagues from 17 other schools here to wrestle with the American classic in a basement meeting room as part of their city’s attempt to beef up secondary literacy instruction.

In the first year of a pilot program , the 18 schools are digging into new ways to accomplish two objectives emphasized in the common-core standards : engage students in increasingly complex texts as they move through school and help them conquer literacy skills specific to disciplines such as history and science. Spearheaded by the nation’s governors and schools chiefs, the standards have been adopted in most...