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You don't take a secondary school literature class just to read, you learn about the different styles of writing, when they were most prominent, what the culture was like at that moment, and how it's supposed to be interpreted.
In high school they just call it English Literature I think? (It's been awhile!) In college, they specify.
Both To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men are pretty straightforward (I read them both in middle school even). After all, they are written by authors who are from the same time period that most of us are from (well, Harper Lee is still with us anyway), and use the English that we're all familiar with minus things here and there.
And both have story lines that could easily be something that could be happening here and now.
And what I'm getting from the article is that what they have found is that these books don't have a way of telling whether a student actually understands what they're reading, besides just knowing it word by word. Whether you're smart or not, you can clearly get what's going on, and it's very easy to understand the discrimination/racism in both.
There's also the problem that there's lots and lots of material you can read instead of touching these books. You can read a quick SparkNotes guide and know everything and get an idea of what will most likely be asked in these exams.
Shakespeare and Dickens aren't impossible. They're just challenging. And if you aren't being challenged by your coursework, then it's not doing you any good.
Exams need to be true to what is expected of students at that grade level, and the students who are behind NEED to get help to get at that level. Because when they get into the real world, it's going to get even harder for them.
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