I'm so cynical about this kind of stuff. I just...believe that you can't approach something like comprehension of complex texts as a skill to be boxed up, opened, and mastered by reading a short passage and answering a bunch of questions (apparently 3rd and 4th graders read one-page texts).
There's so much more to reading than can come from going through a short passage. Short stories, novels for children, and philosophical works are so much meatier than
"content rich nonfiction". Reading longer works requires so much more effort, and gives so much more in return as a reward. Honest discussions about literature --- where the kids are encouraged to think for themselves about what they've read --- can yield so much more than answering a list of canned worksheet questions.
When my two youngest were in fourth grade, they went to a school that had them reading works like
The Arabian Nights and
Robinson Crusoe. They read aloud in class and then talked about the story. They had to answer questions along the lines of "What did you think about...?" That kind of thing. I'm sorry to say that that school changed ownership and is now more focused on passages and multiple choice questions.
But we found a new school, and last week, everyone had to pick a book about the Holocaust and read it. DS finished his in two days. DD is on her second book --- a week later. We talk about the books and the subject in general. They talk about them in school. No one hands out multiple choice worksheets asking why Anne Frank chose one particular word over another one, and no one is a "word detective." TBH, I think that sort of thing trivializes a subject.
