Struggling readers in upper elementary grades and beyond can benefit from decoding instruction to help boost their reading proficiency, including comprehension skills, according to a study released Wednesday by two education research organizations.

Without foundational word recognition skills, it can be difficult for struggling older readers to improve their comprehension of grade-level texts, the study by the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund and the Educational Testing Service found.

While basic phonics lessons are crucial in early elementary grades, older students may need continued support with decoding skills as texts get more technical, abstract and complex, said Rebecca Sutherland, co-author of the study and an associate director of research for AERDF's Reading Reimagined program. AERDF is a nonprofit research and development organization focused on pre-K–12 education. 

Early and targeted interventions are critical for helping upper elementary and middle school students understand texts that have increasingly complicated sentences and multisyllabic words, said Sutherland.

A Rand Corp. report published in April found that while 92% of K-1 English teachers said they had included phonics instruction at least three times in their last five lessons, only 61% of grade 2-5 teachers and 25% of grade 6-8 teachers reported the same.

Another study conducted by Rand and AERDF, released in August, found that 40% of grade 3-8 teachers have misconceptions about how students develop word-reading skills. One of those misconceptions is that when students have the proper books and time to engage in the text, students will learn to read on their own.

There's an assumption that once younger students get explicit basic phonics instruction, they'll be able to naturally apply those skills in later grades when they encounter more difficult passages, Sutherland said. But because complex words have different origins, spelling conventions and other features, it's not always easy for older students to apply basic decoding skills to more abstract texts.

The study released this week "is pointing to something that we've been missing in our reading instruction for a long time," Sutherland said.

The decoding threshold

That study refers to the "decoding threshold," which is the benchmark for when students can read text accurately and efficiently. If students are below the threshold, they struggle with reading comprehension on grade-level texts. But instruction in reading comprehension alone is unlikely to help older students progress, Sutherland said.

There has been much attention on science of reading initiatives for younger students over the past few years, with some states putting more focus and resources toward phonics instruction. However, less attention is focused in this area when it comes to older students, Sutherland said.

In 2022, average reading scores for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation's Report Card, declined for both literary and informational texts at both grades 4 and 8 when compared to 2019 results.

The AERDF-ETS study is a follow-up to research released in 2019, both of which used assessment data from ETS-developed tests. The 2019 study included assessment data from 40,000 to 50,000 students, while the new study analyzed data collected from 167,403 students between 2020 and 2022.

The most recent study found that students with poor decoding skills spent less time than their peers when they came across a word they did not know — a lack of effort in deciphering unfamiliar words.

Sutherland said two different instructional programs are being developed — one at State University of New York, Buffalo and another at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville — that aim to support universal upper elementary and middle school reading skills through publicly accessible self-led teacher training.

Sutherland said that "longstanding neglect of explicit instructional support" for decoding in upper elementary and middle schools is the result of "a collective blind spot in the field" and a "failure among literacy researchers and practitioners to recognize that there’s more to decoding complex text than the basic decoding skills taught in early elementary grades."

"Basic 1st and 2nd grade decoding skills aren't going to be predictive of whether an 8th grader is reading proficiently," Sutherland said.