Issue:
What is ATOS?
Resolution:
ATOS
(Advantage -TASA Open Standard) Readability Formula for Books is the new
readability formula developed by Renaissance Learning, Inc. Designed by a team
of leading readability experts, ATOS eliminates many of the problems educators
have always had with existing readability formulas. ATOS is the first formula
to include statistics from actual student book-reading (over 30,000 students,
reading almost 1,000,000 books); not just data based on short text passages.
ATOS improves
readability scoring of several types of books where previous formulas have been
less accurate and less helpful to teachers. Because ATOS provides higher
readability scores for longer books, it intrinsically encourages students to
choose longer books because the Accelerated Reader point values are now higher,
reflecting the fact that their length makes them more difficult to read. ATOS
also takes into account the differences between fiction and non-fiction. It
more accurately levels low-level books, whether they are aimed at high-low or
emergent readers. The result of all these improvements is less guesswork from
both teacher and student. Better matching of books to students with ATOS will
help teachers keep students in their appropriate reading range (zone of
proximal development), and thereby accelerate growth in student reading ability
and learning.
