AR Restrictions

By: Jaselyn Garcia and Zoey Carter 4/9/25

Accelerated Reader, or more fondly known as AR, is a big part of a student's ELA grade all throughout middle school. It is a very useful tool to inspire kids to read more and reach a certain goal. Kids can win prizes and show off their amazing reading skills. AR tests can be great until they become too restrictive.

An example of AR having inappropriate books

One of the obvious restrictions is that AR does not have quizzes for all the books available for us to read. Clearly, adult books shouldn’t be on AR but to not have books that are grade level makes it challenging to reach AR goals that students find interesting and should be included. The renaissance app is a tool for people to see what they took from a book and the grade level is all the way from K-12. So why are there some adult books and not some YA books? For the intermediate and high school, AR isn’t for a grade. Middle schoolers are the only ones that really use it and books for their grade-level aren’t even on there. For example they don’t have Someone is Always Watching but they have A Court of Thorns and Roses. Someone Is Always Watching’s age range is 12 and up and A Court of Thorns and Roses is for 17 and up. If a book is not on the resource, some teachers offer alternative tests for points.

These alternative tests are great to get credit for something you did but they can also be a lot more difficult. Alternative tests are the teachers' choice, meaning a teacher can give you a 3 paragraph assignment and some will give you a 3 page one. That's basically blaming the kid for reading a book that was not available. Why not make them open-ended vague questions? Teachers may worry that you’d be able to look up the answers but you literally have to take a quiz right in front of them. So why are they more concerned about cheating, than good alternatives? They could also look up multi-choice questions about the book on google with a few clicks. They say it would be hard to find 10 different multi-choice questions, but Bookrags.com and Quizmaker.com are easily available. These clearly show it’s not that difficult to do. We brought up many solutions but the main concern with all of them is cheating. That is an excuse because you could easily cheat on AR tests too so why be so concerned now, when you have better solutions, because our solutions are easier. The big assignments give the teachers just as much work to grade if not more. These alternative assignments shouldn’t be more complicated than AR tests. If you did the same amount of reading as someone else but was given a harder test, that is clearly unfair. There are easy ways to fix it but teachers will only give students more work. We need to make better solutions to this problem then assigning them a whole new assignment.

AR not having every Shatter Me book.

There are some great series out there that are very enjoyable. The Shatter me series is a great example of how AR can ruin great series. The Shatter Me book series has a total of 9 whole books, that includes novellas. If you looked for all the books you would see some of them but AR has yet to add all of the novellas from the series and it also hasn’t added the novellas of the “The Naturals” series, The “Cruel Prince” series, the “Keeper of the Lost Cities” series, and many more. Even if you enjoy parts of a series, you can’t get the whole experience while also getting all of your AR points from them. Some restrictions aren’t all AR’s fault though

AR can be very restrictive but our school issues many different rules that can also make it even harder to take a test and get all of your AR points. No movie books is a rule, in some grades, for AR. For someone who reads a book the summer before school starts and that book happens to be a movie, you are unable to take a test all because of a rule you weren’t warned for. Trying to find a book that is not currently a movie can be challenging and reading a book series that could potentially become a movie while you are reading it can become a problem. A popular feature that can really help AR goals is a section of small articles that are available to read for a vary of small amounts of points. It is very helpful for people who are close to the end of the nine weeks and need just a few more points. The articles have been limited in some grades and completely banned in others. This can make it difficult for some to reach a goal because it would cause them to need to read an entire other book in a short amount of time. Teachers could offer only a certain amount of articles you can do. Also another restriction only some ELA teachers have is having to have the book with you. This isn’t as big a problem during the nine weeks but after breaks it could be. This could prove a problem because over breaks kids may have read a bunch of books and then have to bring all those books to school to take a test over. It can also prove to be a problem if you get books from a library. If you already have turned the book in and someone else already has the book you have to wait for that person to finish just so you can take a test on it.

Overall, we need a better system for these types of circumstances. Not all YA books are available for tests so that leads teachers to give alternative tests. Alternative tests given by teachers now are very tedious and long and unworth the points. Also, all the AR rules make it restricted when you can take a test so you get less opportunities. So, while AR is what the school has found to be the most effective tool for tracking independent reading, it still has it's limitations and negative aspects.