When I was a Reading Recovery teacher, knowing the level that a child could read was essential. Marie Clay wanted for the children to be able to have the just right amount of problem solving to do while reading, so that they could be taught and then prompted for reading behaviors for problem solving. If the children have too many errors, they will lose the meaning of the text. If they have too few errors, when they are learning to problem solve, they will not become independent and/or fluent problem solvers because they will not have enough practice to develop automaticity. The levels were quite specific to the immediate instructional needs of the child.
I think that sometimes in education, we take a good thing and then we try to make it work across the board, even when it really doesn't. When I was trained to be a Literacy Coordinator at The Ohio State University, I learned that children don't always fit into one level. They can read one level without error, but not read with fluency and phrasing and perhaps not understand the text. Well, meaning is the WHOLE point to reading, so that becomes the emergency. But then you have the dilemma of whether the child has enough problem solving opportunities at the same level they are reading for comprehension instruction.
The real issue, I believe, is that we have once again bastardized the good work of some very smart people. We want to put kids into nice neat groups with nice, neat goals and that can't always work. We need to remember that the level is just some of the information. We also have to think about print and layout. We need to consider background knowledge and interest. There is so much more to teaching reading than the level.
I think that communicating a level to parents can be good and bad. It can be good in that the parents should know how their child is progressing compared to the expectations. I don't think teachers should hide anything from the parents. I do, however, think educators need to be cautious. Parents are not trained as we are in the gradient of the levels of texts. They mean no harm when they tell their children what level they are reading either to praise or inspire hard work. Children can't understand though that a level means so much more than that letter or number. They don't know that they are doing GREAT two levels below where we would like them to be. They only know that they are two levels below where we want them to be.
We don't need children feeling like they have a deficit. We also don't want children telling the other children that they are the smartest kid in the class. It's such a fragile thing to have a great community of learners who support one another and encourage growth, no matter where they are at a given point in time. So I say keep the levels to yourself. Be open and honest about what you notice about a child as a reader. Focus on the reading behaviors. Jump back and forth between the levels with your instruction dependent upon your purpose. The books are your tools.
