The Roots of Reading Comprehension Instruction

We would do well to remind ourselves that it has not been easy to secure a foothold for reading comprehension in these conversations about reading, especially around the question of early reading pedagogy. As we will document in this chapter, it was not until the 1980s that it really started to take hold, especially as a fact of everyday classroom instruction informed by theory and research. And then suddenly, after 15 years of prominence in conversations of theory, research, and practice—and for a host of reasons, many having to do with curricular politics—reading comprehension was placed on a back burner from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. And then, in what seemed like a sudden reversal, reading comprehension made a comeback along with the curricular and assessment reforms ushered in by the Common Core State Standards and all of the variations of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) spawned by states that wanted to exploit the benefits of high and rigorous standards without aligning themselves with the movement itself.