Many of Jamie Ramsay's science students at Northwest Middle School in Salt Lake City next year will learn from a thick, traditional textbook, but others will receive a simpler version of the text.

He is trying to teach students what they need to know while remaining conscious that not everyone can read at grade level.

"If you don't adjust the level of material you're giving them, then you're just going to blow them out of the water and they're not going to get it," Ramsay said.

Other Northwest teachers also have ordered books to match their students' varying abilities.

The practice doesn't set students up to fail, the teachers say.

It's just the opposite.

It's pointless giving students materials they can't understand, so they're trying books that may have larger pictures and vocabulary that isn't as frightening.

The facts are the same, though the books can be several grades below what other students are reading. At least this way, those students have a chance to learn the material, teachers say.

Textbook publishers see a growing market for graduated textbooks as federal No Child Left Behind reforms push schools to improve the performance of all groups of students.

Companies have become more attentive to the needs of students for whom English is a second language, according to Debbie Secrist, national sales manager for Great Source Education Group, a division of Houghton Mifflin publishing company.

"We can't just do what we [have been] doing because it won't work for these kids," Secrist said. "We have to adjust the instruction to make sure we're accounting for their needs."

Next school year, Northwest Middle School science teacher Niki Hack will distribute a range of books on cells based on her students' varying reading levels. She estimates her students this year spanned from a first-grade to a 12-grade reading level in her seventh-grade class.

Abandoning the textbook entirely isn't a good idea, she said, because students will suffer when they get to high school and don't know how to use chapters or an index.

"We want to equip them with all these skills and strategies now [so] that they can handle high school," Hack said. "So they don't get lost."

Educators acknowledge there's a potential risk to oversimplifying texts.

Nuances and subtle ideas can be lost, and the vocabulary a student might need on a state test could be "simplified away," Ramsay said.

The student could know the subject matter and get stymied by the academic jargon on the test.

But teachers defend their decision to use materials and textbooks at different reading levels.

"We don't dumb things down for the kids," said Lois Harris, a Utah studies teacher at Northwest Middle. "We make things accessible."

Depending on her group of students and how the text is written, she uses a fourth-grade- or a seventh-grade-level book in her class.

Though she doesn't advocate holding kids back a grade, Northwest Principal Cherrie Brinlee believes schools have spent years pushing academically unprepared students forward.

Having textbooks or other class materials at different reading levels begins to address the problem.

"We've spent way too many years socially promoting kids whether they have the skills or not," she said.

jlyon@sltrib.com