Making the Change from Accelerated Reader to Reading Counts

This year Brookhaven Elementary joined the rest of Monongalia County Schools in using Scholastic Reading Counts as its reading incentive program.  For the past 17 years Brookhaven pioneered the use of this type of program using Accelerated Reader.  Although Mon County adopted Reading Counts as a countywide reading incentive program around 2007, Brookhaven was not required to change until this year, when curriculum changes dictated that all schools use the assessment software that included Reading Counts.


I think our transition to Reading Counts has been well-received by the teachers and the students.  Clearly, Reading Counts has some advantages over Accelerated Reader;

• the teacher and student interfaces are easy to use;
• the program is integrated with other assessment programs, which allows students to only use one user name and password to access all products;
• the students receive visually attractive reinforcements when the pass their tests.

I see some disadvantaged to Reading Counts as well.

Call me a librarian, but the indexing inconsistencies in Reading Counts are driving me nuts.  There does not appear to be a common set of rules for user to apply when searching for books by title.  Here's an example of what I mean:

Johnny wants to take a test on Henry and Mudge and the Happy Cat.  He types the title into the search bar exactly as it appears on the title page.  He can't find the title, so he does an author search for Rylant, scrolls through a list of her books and finds the title.  He notices that the title is written as Henry & Mudge & the Happy Cat, using ampersands in place of the work 'and.'  Johnny is a clever kid, so the next time he is looking for a Henry and Mudge book, he automatically uses the ampersand, looking for Henry & Mudge & the Starry Night.  Good plan, Johnny, except this time the title is recorded  as Henry & Mudge & Starry Night.  When Johnny types the word 'the' in the title, he cannot find the test.

Other indexing anomalies exist with author searches.  Sometimes the author who is credited for a book may be someone who is the orginator of a series but not necessarily the author of the book.  An example might be the Curious George books.  Reading Counts list H.A. and Margret Rey as the authors of all these books, even though the title pages list different authors.