A commonly held belief among educators, researchers, and students is that high-quality texts are easier to read than low-quality texts, as they contain more engaging narrative and story-like elements. Interestingly, these assumptions have typically failed to be supported by the literature on writing. Previous research suggests that higher quality…

The reading achievement test scores of 239 low-income, southern, urban black students in grades three through eight were compared with their ability to comprehend the social studies books used in their classrooms. Achievement scores were obtained from the reading subtests of the Stanford Achievement Tests. A cloze passage was developed based on…