#ar tests

If you don't know what Accelerated Reader (or AR) is then count yourself lucky. Back in grade school (or, well, 3rd to 9th grade) we'd take a test at the beginning of every school year to place our reading level and then get a number of points that we had to earn by taking quizzes on books we've read. It was a large chunk of our grade AND if we completed our goal we got to go to a pizza party. It seemed pretty cool on the surface but it wasn't.

For one thing, it made kids hate reading. Most people I talk about it proudly proclaim "I haven't read a book since AR ended!" and most every kid complained about being forced to read or just wouldn't attempt to make their points at all. Some people even say they would've liked reading if AR hadn't forced them to do it.

Second, not every book had an AR test. I would often pick up books only to find out I'd spent a good week or two reading something that I couldn't even get points for. Or, worse yet, to be told by my teachers that I couldn't read them because they didn't have a test. 

Most teachers told me what I could and could not read actually. I had a high school senior reading level in fifth grade but my teachers wouldn't let me actually read at that. I would get books from the school library only to be told by the librarian that I couldn't check them out because I "couldn't" read them. i wasn't allowed to check out more than one book either because apparently I "wouldn't" read them all. 

You weren't allowed to read over your reading level. I'll never forget in fifth grade I lent a girl a Cheetah Girls book and she asked our teacher -you had to have the teacher approve what you were reading before you could actually read it- and the teacher flipped through it and told her she wasn't allowed to read it/couldn't read it because it was above her reading level. It made me so mad. I pulled the girl aside and told her to take the book anyway- it had a glossary in the back of it for goodness sake  and the teacher yelled at me for "going behind her back".

I hate hearing teachers telling people what they can and cannot read. I wasn't allowed to check books out from the teen section. I wasn't allowed to read manga. I wasn't allowed to read anything I picked up on my own. And all because of AR, something that was supposed to encourage reading and make it easier. 

I began reading a whole lot over the summers and then taking tests and getting all my points within the first week so I could just read what I wanted to. My teachers hated me. 

But, no, I think Accelerated Reader is a horrible program. From what I've seen it makes kids hate reading and limits them to only a small window of choices. Like I said, the majority of people i know haven't even picked up a book since AR stopped. It isn't necessarily the program itself so much as the way it is handled. I've heard it argued that "there are kids who would've never picked up a book at all if it wasn't for AR". And while, yes, that's true- there are also kids who will never pick up a book again because of AR.