In 2024–25, two-thirds of English language arts (ELA) teachers at the secondary level (67 percent) intended to have students read between one to four full fiction or nonfiction books, according to the RAND Corporation’s May report Reading Full Books in Secondary English Language Arts Classrooms: Findings from the Spring 2025 American Instructional Resources Survey.
The nationally representative survey of 8,601 K-12 public school educators provides insights on whether secondary ELA teachers (1,596 of the survey participants) are assigning full books, how many and how assignments vary by curriculum and context. It comes at a time of growing concern over the seemingly reduced role full books play in academic settings and amid less-than-ideal literacy outcomes.
Nine percent of respondents didn’t plan on assigning any full books and 24 percent anticipated assigning five or more.
“Altogether, these results suggest that nearly all secondary ELA teachers — about 90 percent — assign full books to students, although a sizable proportion of teachers assign a small number of books,” the report states.
Among other key findings were:
- Teachers serving student populations that were more historically disadvantaged assigned fewer full books
- The majority of teachers assigned more books than are included in their curricula, and on average, they assigned four full books with two coming from their required or recommended curriculum materials
- Those teachers who primarily utilized publisher-developed curriculum assigned fewer books than their peers who didn’t
- Teachers who assigned more full books were more likely to report their students spent most of their time in class engaging with grade-level texts
Recommendations detailed in the report include:
- Curriculum developers at the secondary level could include more full books for ELA
- Organizations supporting curriculum selection may opt to provide more information about which full books and how many are included in curricula
- Literacy researchers need to continue weighing how reading full books can enhance both literacy instruction and student achievement
Elementary level findings
The report also has a brief section on book assignments in elementary school (1,967 ELA teachers at this level participated in the survey).
Overall, 17 percent of these teachers planned to assign no full books in 2024–25. Nineteen percent anticipated assigning one to four full books and 63 percent wanted to assign five or more. “Elementary teachers were more likely than secondary teachers to not assign any full books at all and assign a large volume of full books,” according to the report. “Lower elementary (i.e., kindergarten to grade 2) teachers were especially likely to assign a large number of books (i.e., 20 or more).”
This difference may be influenced by multiple factors including the emphasis on foundational literacy development in the early grades and elementary-level books being far shorter than those secondary students would be assigned.
Many similarities between the responses of elementary and secondary ELA teachers were observed, including beliefs that assigning students full books provides them more opportunities to engage with grade-level content.
Additionally, “elementary teachers serving a majority of students of color or a majority of students with disabilities were more likely than their counterparts to report not assigning any books,” the report states. “Meanwhile, elementary teachers in low-poverty schools and majority-white schools and those who taught fewer students with disabilities and fewer multilingual learners were more likely than their counterparts to report assigning 20 or more books. These differences suggest that the inequities that we observe in full-book assignment among secondary teachers begin much earlier.”
