There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. I think this report is incredibly misleading. It may be a fact that the avg. reading level of the top 40 high scho

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. I think this report is incredibly misleading. It may be a fact that the avg. reading level of the top 40 high school books is 5.3, but that doesn't really mean much. The most important sentence in the article is glazed over: "While readability formulas can't say much for the depth of literary aspects within a text, they offer objective measures of vocabulary and sentence complexity." So, in other words, the less "readable" a book is, the higher the competency of the person reading it. Doesn't make much sense. As a big reader myself, I think it's this kind of cargo-cult thinking (higher readability level > better readers) that leads people, and teenagers in particular, to dislike reading. I know that was the case with me when I went to school. Now I read all the time, but hate books with complicated writing (aka high readibility scores).