Dive Brief:
- States need to revise academic standards so they include advanced foundational literacy skills specifically for grades 3–8, according to a new report from the Advanced Education Research & Development Fund.
- The study was designed to identify where older readers struggled and how to support them, and also said that school districts should look to incorporate technology that would allow educators to scale advanced literacy instruction and deliver individualized instruction on advanced foundational skills.
- The report suggested that until longer-term policy and technology changes are implemented, teachers could use existing school modules that cover advanced foundational literacy skills to help bridge the gap.
Dive insight:
Developed by Reading Reimagined, a program within AERDF, the study was the result of five years and $40 million of work aimed at accelerating and sustaining reading success for K-8 students.
Conclusions from the research offer insights into the challenges older readers face and provide evidence-based practices to help them. The report also offers recommendations for policymakers, district leaders and educators to improve older readers’ literacy rates.
“The thing that’s most likely to surprise people working throughout the education field — from researchers and policy makers, to district leaders and classroom teachers — is the converging evidence that the widely held belief that ‘kids learn to read in K-3 and after that they read to learn’ is just not true,” Rebecca Kockler, executive director of AERDF's Reading Reimagined program, said in an email.
Kockler said that assessment data — as well as results from interventions with explicit instruction on advanced decoding skills such as multisyllabic word recognition and morphology knowledge — showed that “many older readers continue to need explicit instruction in advanced decoding skills, because learning to read doesn’t end in 3rd grade.”
The report cited 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress data showing that only 30% of 8th graders in the U.S. can read proficiently. While existing research reveals what students need to learn for proficiency, the report said, it has stopped short of showing exactly which skills older students are missing and how to support them.
“Upper elementary and middle school teachers should view explicit reading instruction as their purview,” Kockler said. “Helping students to break long words into decodable syllables, helping them understand how morphemes work, allowing them to hear fluent reading of text that they’re asked to read independently, and supporting their acquisition of academic vocabulary words are a few things that any teacher can do.”
Kockler added that teachers can also use “a developmentally appropriate foundational skills assessment” to screen older students’ literacy skills at the beginning of every school year, similar to what’s already done for younger readers. She said that doing this can help teachers identify which students need explicit instruction in different areas.
The Reading Reimagined program worked with 13 research partners, including universities and assessment providers, and surveyed 1,500 teachers in grades 3-8. In addition, it analyzed 85,000 student reading assessments, partnered with 85 school districts and engaged 30,000 students in pilot interventions.
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