The Text Compactor is a free online tool to condense a piece of text.
The tool examines the most commonly used words in the text to decide what is likely to be most important, and then keeps those "important" parts of the text.
You can adjust the percentage of the text that you would like to keep with a slider. Teachers should choose the percentage they keep carefully, to make sure that the main ideas of the original text are preserved (the automatic way it picks out "important" parts of the piece aren't foolproof, so always double-check!)
It is recommended that the Text Compactor be used with non-fiction text. It will not work as well with fictional stories.