English lit as a discipline has pretty strongly repudiated the discipline of "close reading" (and the "New Criticism" that buttressed it; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Criticism) in favor of whatever else it is that English professors now do in classes, so it's not surprising that...

> The competent readers in our study... constituted 38 percent (or 32 of the 85) of our subjects

Seems like there's a strong case for moving English 101 type classes, which are required and very heavily subsidize the existence of English departments, into Communications or elsewhere.

It was the worst of studies, it was the best of studies ... (everything else stands).

I would reject publication until serious issues are addressed in experimental design and analysis.

The take away, that high school students don't read critically enough and give up easily is supported by higher quality research.

Actually, I am not even sure it supports that. The study shows that there is variance in the understanding of the passage, that is about it.