FREE ESSAY ON EDITORIAL ON A.R. READING

EDITORIAL ON A.R. READING

Editorial on A.R. Reading.
By Brodie Howe
A.R. reading is the new choice of torture among teachers across the Issaquah School
District (411). A.R. stands for Accelerated Reading. 
This is the process in which a student will take a vocabulary test at the beginning of
the school year which will be graded. On this grading scale, students receive a reading
range in which they are aloud to read books according to their difficulty level. 
As well as having to read according to what your reading level is, you have to also gain
points by taking a test on the book you previously read. 
The number of points a book is worth has to do with its difficulty. For example; a book
with a reading level of 10.5 with 390 pages and a character sizing of 10 point, might be
worth 45 points. But a book with a reading level of 2.0 with 15 pages and a character
size of 35, might be worth 1 point. 
In Ms. Hardy's 4th period class, all students had to earn 60 points, 30 A.R., and 30 not
A.R. this counts as 20 percent of your grade. 
When asked, What is the point of A.R.? Mr. Brown, a 7th and 8th grade woodshop and
cooking teacher answered, We love to see you suffer! 
Honestly, A.R. really is pointless. Instead of forcing reading onto kids, teachers should
make it fun. And teachers might even make it so it doesn't make or break your grade.
If you take the time to think about it, the average reading level is about 8.5. The
average point level for a book is about the same, 8.5. The average person reads about two
pages per minute, and the average number of pages for an 8 point book is about 300 to
350. 
Therefor, the average person would have to read about an hour a day, on top of the
average amount of homework for each class which is about a half hour per class per day,
so this adds up to about 3 to 4 hours of homework a day, not counting projects and
studying for tests. This leaves about a half an hour each weekday to have a life.
Another subject that goes along with this is teachers giving class time for homework. If
the teachers would just teach the whole period, the school year would not only be more
productive but we would be done with the school year would only need to be about half as
long.
The only reason teachers do this is so they can grade kids papers during class. Wait a
minute, how long does the average person stay at work until, 6 or 7 o'clock at night, and
teachers get off work at 2:30. That leaves about 4 hours until the average person gets
off work. 
This means that the teachers should be able to correct all of the assignments when they
are not in class so they can teach the whole period.