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Addressing Reading Failure at the Secondary Level

Addressing Reading Failure at the Secondary Level: Problems and Issues

Dr Kerry Hempenstall

Some data:

• 1999-2000 Budget forecasted that 20% of Victorian Year 1 students would apply for Reading Recovery.
• By Year 5, only 31% of boys and 49% of girls will have reached the appropriate LAP standard.
• By Year 7, 30% of students cannot read or write properly (ACER, 2000).
• By adolescence, less than 25% of Victorian students who struggled in Year 2 had recovered (Prior, 2001)
• By Year 9, 30% of students lack basic literacy skills (ACER, 2000).
• By Year 10, the lowest 10% have made no reading gains since Year 4 (Melb Univ study - Hill, 1995).
• 39% of students do not complete school (Prof Peter Hill, The Age, 5/8 2000)
• 60 per cent of socially disadvantaged high school students had inadequate literacy skills (Smith Family, 1994).
• 66% of Australian employers consider that high-school leavers are not sufficiently literate to enter the workforce. Croucher, J.S. (2001, July 21). Number crunch. The Age, p.13.
• US surveys of adolescents and young adults with criminal records indicate that at least half have reading difficulties, and in some states the size of prisons a decade in the future is predicted by fourth grade reading failure rates (Lyon, 2001).
• Initial failure predicts future failure (In this study) the probability that a child who was initially a poor reader in first grade would be classified as a poor reader in the fourth grade was a depressingly high +0.88.

Juel, C. (1988). Learning to read & write: A longitudinal study of 54 children from first through fourth grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 437-447.

Why identify early?

Longitudinal studies show that 74% of children who are poor readers in the third grade remain poor readers in the ninth grade.

Addressing Reading Failure at the Secondary Level

A Melbourne University study (Hill, 1995) has found that most struggling students show no discernible improvement in reading between Year Four and Year Ten. Few of these students have access to effective intervention, and their prognosis is grim.

Hill, P. (1995). School effectiveness and improvement: Present realities and future possibilities. Dean's Lecture: Paper presented at Melbourne University, May 24.

Failure to develop basic reading skills by age nine predicts a lifetime of illiteracy. Unless these children receive the appropriate instruction, over 70 percent of the children entering first grade who are at risk for reading failure will continue to have reading problems into adulthood. On the other hand, the early identification of children at-risk for reading failure coupled with the provision of comprehensive early reading interventions can reduce the percentage of children reading below the basic level in the fourth grade (e.g., 38 percent) to six percent or less.

Lyon, G.R. (2001). Measuring success: Using assessments and accountability to raise student achievement. Subcommittee on Education Reform Committee on Education and the Workforce U.S. House of Representatives Washington, D.C. [On Line]. Available: http://www.nrrf.org/lyon_statement3-01.htm

These findings extend into adolescence data previously reported on the persistence of reading disability that is, that children who were initially poor readers in the early school years remain poor readers relative to other children in the sample. This finding suggests that shortly after school entry, the reading achievement of children changes very little relative to their peers. These special services, however, consisted of eclectic approaches to teaching reading that were provided in an inconsistent fashion and for relatively brief periods.

Shaywitz, S.E., Fletcher, J.M., Holahan, J.M., Shneider, A.E., Marchione, K.E., Stuebing, K.K., Francis, D.J., Pugh, K.R., & Shaywitz, B.A. (1999). Persistence of dyslexia: The Connecticut longitudinal study at adolescence. Pediatrics, 104, 1351-1339.

Many of these older children have experienced the debilitating sequence of interacting skill deficits described by Stanovich (1986) as the Matthew effect. For example, the early lack of phonemic awareness leads to a failure to master the alphabetic principle. This further entails slow, error-prone decoding, the overuse of contextual cues, and poor comprehension. This resultant laborious, unsatisfying reading style leads students to avoid text, with a consequential reduction in vocabulary growth, and a broadening of the skill deficit. The lack of practice means fewer words can be read by sight, thereby restricting automaticity. The continued expenditure of cognitive attention on decoding leaves few resources available for comprehension, and so the student’s difficulties are compounded. The longer this set of circumstances prevails, the further delayed the student becomes, the more pervasive becomes the problem, and the more difficult the rescue operation.

Many children with difficulty in learning to read develop a negative self concept within their first two years of schooling.

Chapman, J.W., Tunmer, W.E., & Prochnow, J.E. (2000). Early reading-related skills and performance, reading self-concept, and the development of academic self-concept: A longitudinal study. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 4, 703–708.

“If you identify very-high-risk poor readers (bottom 20 percent of reading ability) in kindergarten and first grade and give them effective, evidence-based instruction, at least 75 percent of this 20 percent will read (Lyon, 2000)”.

Landauer, R. (2000). Facing up to infirmities in special ed. The Oregonian, December 2.

• The gap widens over time At best, our current efforts simply perpetuate the differences that children arrive at school with; at worst, we exaggerate these differences across the time they spend with us.

Allington, R.L. (1991). Beginning to read: A critique by literacy professionals and a response by Marilyn Jager Adams. The Reading Teacher, 44, p.373.

On children who use compensatory strategies such as whole word recognition or contextual strategies. ".... Without accurate decoding skills, these youngsters' performance will deteriorate rapidly in the middle elementary grades, when greatly increasing demands are made on comprehension, and on the ability to recognise a large number of unfamiliar words (Chall, 1983; Mason, 1992).

Spear-Swerling, L., & Sternberg, R. J. (1994). The road not taken: An integrative theoretical model of reading disability. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 27, 91-103.

• Remedies are long, slow, often unsuccessful, and student resistance can preclude success A study by Schiffman provides support for monitoring programs for reading disabilities in the first and second grades. In a large scale study of reading disabilities (n = 10,000), 82% of those diagnosed in Grades 1 or 2, 46% in Grade 3, 42% in Grade 4, and 10-15% in Grades 5-7 were brought up to Grade level.

Berninger, V.W, Thalberg, S.P., DeBruyn, I., & Smith, R. (1987). Preventing reading disabilities by assessing and remediating phonemic skills. School Psychology Review, 16, 554-565.

Reading achievement occurs twice as fast in first grade as it does in third grade.

Alexander, K., Entwisle, D., & Olsen, C.R. (1997). Early schooling and inequality: Socioeconomic disparities in children's learning. London: Falmer Press.

It takes four times as much assistance to improve a child’s reading skills if help is delayed until Year Four than if it is begun in the Prep year. Hall, S. H., & Moats, L. C. (1999). Straight talk about reading: How parents can make a difference during the early years. Chicago: Contemporary Books.

• Reading-intelligence causal link? Children with reading difficulties at age 8 had lower verbal than performance IQ’s; however, there was no difference at age 4. Bishop, D. & Butterworth, G. (1980). Verbal-performance discrepancies: Relationship to both risk and specific reading retardation. Cortex, 16, 375-389.

Much evidence has now accumulated to indicate that reading itself is a moderately powerful determinant of vocabulary growth, verbal intelligence, and general comprehension ability. p.239 Stanovich, K.E. (1993). Does reading make you smarter? Literacy and the development of verbal intelligence. Advances in Child Development and Behaviour, 24, 133-180.

• Females are currently under-identified. A growing body of research suggests that females experiencing learning difficulties are not identified as frequently as males. Njiokiktjien, C. (1993). Neurological arguments for a joint developmental dysphasia-dyslexia syndrome. In A. M. Galaburda (Ed.), Dyslexia and development: Neurobiological aspects of extra-ordinary brains. London: Harvard University Press.

Literacy problems and older children: What focus for instruction in middle and upper primary school or secondary school?

Nationally, more than 30% of Australian children entering high school – mainly in government and Catholic schools – cannot read or write properly. (Australian Council for Educational Research). 30% of students do not complete school. (Professor Peter Hill). Our Desperate Schools. The Age, 5/8/2000.

Should we be focussing on decoding or comprehension? It is true that most reading problems can be traced back to problems of “getting the word off the page” rapidly and effortlessly; however, there are students whose general language development (in addition to their decoding) is also delayed.

In 90% of cases, the source of reading comprehension problems is poor word recognition skills (Oakhill & Garnham, 1988) Stuart, M. (1995). Prediction and qualitative assessment of five and six-year-old children's reading: A longitudinal study. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 65, 287-296. 90% of these children with reading difficulties have their major problem with the development of decoding skills (Lerner, 1989). Report of the Charter G: Ad Hoc Special Committee on Persistent Reading Difficulties. http://www.readbygrade3.com/peer.htm

It has long been assumed that once a student is past the primary grades, phonological processing is no longer critical to word identification and to reading. Our data support the view that across the life span, from childhood to adolescence, decoding words reflects primarily, phonological, rather than orthographic coding. Such findings are consonant with what is becoming overwhelming evidence that phonological mechanisms mediate word identification in all readers, whether beginners or experienced readers. Shaywitz, S.E., Fletcher, J.M., Holahan, J.M., Shneider, A.E., Marchione, K.E., Stuebing, K.K., Francis, D.J., Pugh, K.R., & Shaywitz, B.A. (1999). Persistence of dyslexia: The Connecticut longitudinal study at adolescence. Pediatrics, 104, 1351-1339.

Studies involving adults with reading difficulties have revealed marked deficits in decoding (Bear, Truax, & Barone, 1989; Bruck, 1990, 1992, 1993; Byrne & Letz, 1983; Perin, 1983; Pratt & Brady, 1988; Read & Ruyter, 1985; cited in Greenberg, Ehri, & Perin, 1997).

The adults' performance on phonologically-based tasks was worse than that reading-level matched young children, resembling those of children below 3rd grade. These findings are also consistent with those of Bruck (1992), Byrne & Letz (1983),Fawcett & Nicholson (1995), Penington, Van Orden, Smith, Green, and Haith (1990), and Pratt and Brady (1988). … they may not have received adequate instruction in decoding and spelling to remediate the phonological deficits. p.272 Greenberg, D., Ehri, L. C., & Perin, D. (1997). Are word reading processes the same or different in adult literacy students and third-fifth graders matched for reading level? Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 262-275.

When we gave this (Auditory Analysis Test) and other tests of phonemic awareness to a group of 15 year-olds in our Connecticut Longitudinal Study, the results were the same: even in high school students, phonological awareness was the best predictor of reading ability. Shaywitz, S (No date). Dyslexia. [On-Line]. Available: http://www.sciam.com/1196issue/1196shaywitz.html

“Research suggests that teaching children to read words quickly and accurately can also increase their reading comprehension (Tan & Nicholson, 1997). The theory behind fast and accurate word reading is that good readers are very good at reading words. They have over-learned this skill through much reading practice. As a result, like skilled musicians and athletes, they have developed automaticity, as a result of many hours of word reading practice. What this means is that they have over-learned word reading skills to the point where they require little or no mental effort. As a result, they are able to put all their mental energies into reading for meaning.” G. B. Thompson & T. Nicholson (Eds.) (1998). Learning to read: Beyond phonics and whole language. New York: Teachers College Press.

Literacy problems and older children: What focus for instruction in middle and upper primary school or secondary school? Nationally, more than 30% of Australian children entering high school – mainly in government and Catholic schools – cannot read or write properly. (Australian Council for Educational Research). 30% of students do not complete school. (Professor Peter Hill). Our Desperate Schools. The Age, 5/8/2000.

Should we be focussing on decoding or comprehension? It is true that most reading problems can be traced back to problems of “getting the word off the page” rapidly and effortlessly; however, there are students whose general language development (in addition to their decoding) is also delayed.

In 90% of cases, the source of reading comprehension problems is poor word recognition skills (Oakhill & Garnham, 1988) Stuart, M. (1995). Prediction and qualitative assessment of five and six-year-old children's reading: A longitudinal study. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 65, 287-296.

90% of these children with reading difficulties have their major problem with the development of decoding skills (Lerner, 1989). Report of the Charter G: Ad Hoc Special Committee on Persistent Reading Difficulties. http://www.readbygrade3.com/peer.htm It has long been assumed that once a student is past the primary grades, phonological processing is no longer critical to word identification and to reading. Our data support the view that across the life span, from childhood to adolescence, decoding words reflects primarily, phonological, rather than orthographic coding. Such findings are consonant with what is becoming overwhelming evidence that phonological mechanisms mediate word identification in all readers, whether beginners or experienced readers.

Shaywitz, S.E., Fletcher, J.M., Holahan, J.M., Shneider, A.E., Marchione, K.E., Stuebing, K.K., Francis, D.J., Pugh, K.R., & Shaywitz, B.A. (1999). Persistence of dyslexia: The Connecticut longitudinal study at adolescence. Pediatrics, 104, 1351-1339.

Studies involving adults with reading difficulties have revealed marked deficits in decoding (Bear, Truax, & Barone, 1989; Bruck, 1990, 1992, 1993; Byrne & Letz, 1983; Perin, 1983; Pratt & Brady, 1988; Read & Ruyter, 1985; cited in Greenberg, Ehri, & Perin, 1997).

The adults' performance on phonologically-based tasks was worse than that reading-level matched young children, resembling those of children below 3rd grade. These findings are also consistent with those of Bruck (1992), Byrne & Letz (1983), Fawcett & Nicholson (1995), Penington, Van Orden, Smith, Green, and Haith (1990), and Pratt and Brady (1988). … they may not have received adequate instruction in decoding and spelling to remediate the phonological deficits. p.272

Greenberg, D., Ehri, L. C., & Perin, D. (1997). Are word reading processes the same or different in adult literacy students and third-fifth graders matched for reading level? Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 262-275.

When we gave this (Auditory Analysis Test) and other tests of phonemic awareness to a group of 15 year-olds in our Connecticut Longitudinal Study, the results were the same: even in high school students, phonological awareness was the best predictor of reading ability.

Shaywitz, S (No date). Dyslexia. [On-Line]. Available: http://www.sciam.com/1196issue/1196shaywitz.html

“Research suggests that teaching children to read words quickly and accurately can also increase their reading comprehension (Tan & Nicholson, 1997). The theory behind fast and accurate word reading is that good readers are very good at reading words. They have over-learned this skill through much reading practice. As a result, like skilled musicians and athletes, they have developed automaticity, as a 4 result of many hours of word reading practice. What this means is that they have over-learned word reading skills to the point where they require little or no mental effort. As a result, they are able to put all their mental energies into reading for meaning.”

G. B. Thompson & T. Nicholson (Eds.) (1998). Learning to read: Beyond phonics and whole New York: Teachers College Press. New York: Teachers College Press.

Surely, we can address all the problems at once?

The message in intervening effectively for older students is that it will take considerable time (perhaps a year or two), the chosen intervention must be very effective and efficient to increase the students’ acceleration. It must be intensive – daily for about an hour. It must increase the students’ free reading so as to generalise their new skills to all their reading. It must include daily fluency activities - as fluency is the last feature of reading to improve.

Usually these students have other deficits too – in numeracy, writing, thinking, content knowledge, problem solving. Unfortunately attempts to address all these difficulties together lead to a dilute curriculum in which no discernible progress occurs in any area. It is more effective to focus on the pivotal area of reading.

We found that extended practice was particularly important toward increasing the magnitude of treatment outcomes.

Swanson, H.L. (2001) Research on interventions for adolescents with learning disabilities: A meta-analysis of outcomes related to higher-order processing. The Elementary School Journal, 101, 331-348.

These findings extend into adolescence data previously reported on the persistence of reading disability that is, that children who were initially poor readers in the early school years remain poor readers relative to other children in the sample. The special services, however, consisted of eclectic approaches to teaching reading that were provided in an inconsistent fashion and for relatively brief periods.

Shaywitz, S.E., Fletcher, J.M., Holahan, J.M., Shneider, A.E., Marchione, K.E., Stuebing, K.K., Francis, D.J., Pugh, K.R., & Shaywitz, B.A. (1999). Persistence of dyslexia: The Connecticut longitudinal study at adolescence. Pediatrics, 104, 1351-1339.

The Corrective Reading program development and trialling was based on 5 lessons/week, 3-5.

Hanner, S., & Engelmann, S. (1984, May). Learner verification for the Corrective Reading Program. AADI Newsletter Discussion with local teachers suggests that the student error count increases when lesson frequency drops from 5 to 4 lessons per week, and very significantly when lesson frequency drops from 4 to 3 times per week. (Hempenstall, 2001)

Effective programs make highly effective use of instructional time and provide multiple reading opportunities.

Schacter J. (1999). Reading programs that work: A review of programs for Pre-Kindergarten to 4th Grade.[On-Line]. Available at: http://www.mff.org/edtech/publication.taf?_function=detail&Content_uid1=279

Best results are generally achieved by providing instruction every day, rather than lengthy periods with days between sessions.

Horowitz, J. (2000). Teaching older nonreaders how to read The Reading Teacher, 54, 24-26. The National Literacy Strategy (1998) involves a daily "literacy hour” to attempt to address the problem of reading failure.

Department for Education and Employment. (1998). The National Literacy Strategy: Framework for Teaching. London: Crown.

If reading assistance fails to exert a significant impact on the reading performance of low-achieving older readers one reason is that the instruction provided is not sufficiently intense.

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (2000). National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read. [On-Line]. Available: http://www.nationalreadingpanel.org .

We found that extended practice was particularly important toward increasing the magnitude of treatment outcomes.

Swanson, H.L. (2001) Research on interventions for adolescents with learning disabilities: A meta-analysis of outcomes related to higher-order processing. The Elementary School Journal, 101, 331-348.

Their instructional needs appear to include more intensive practice … further breakdown of the phonological tasks given in training, and longer duration.

Wong, B.Y.L. (2001). Commentary: Pointers for literacy instruction from educational technology and research on writing instruction. The Elementary School Journal, 101, 359-369.

What do new brain imaging techniques tell us? Employing proton echo-planar spectroscopic imaging" (PEPSI), researchers showed that dyslexic and control children differ in brain lactate metabolism when performing language tasks, but do not differ in non-language auditory tasks. The dyslexic students expend between 4 and 5 times the energy as controls for the same phonological tasks in the left anterior, or frontal, lobe of the brain.

Richards et al. (1999). Dyslexic children have abnormal brain lactate response to reading-related language tasks. American Journal of Neuroradiology, 20, 1393-1398.

The boys were taught to analyze sound in spoken words, to attach sounds to letters automatically and to use phonological strategies for translating written words into spoken words. Following treatment, brain lactate elevation was not significantly different from controls. They made significant gains in analyzing sounds needed to decode words and in sounding out unknown words. After the workshop all but one of the boys could read grade appropriate passages.

Richards, et al. (2000). The effects of a phonologically-driven treatment for dyslexia on lactate levels as measured by Proton MRSI. American Journal of Neuroradiology, 21, 916-922. [On-Line]. Available: http://faculty.washington.edu/toddr/dyslexic2.htm

Cutting-edge federal studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) show ''clear brain differences'' between dyslexic and good readers by age 6, Lyon says. As kids are taught with state of-the-art techniques and their reading improves, MRI scans show that ''their brains begin to look more like the others','' Head of the NICHD, G. Reid Lyon says. Dyslexia is a handicap throughout school years Marilyn Elias, USA TODAY http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/19991207/1723076s.htm “Readers, asked to imagine "cat" without the "kah" sound, readily summon "at." And the MRI photographs show their brains lighting up like pinball machines. When the brain gets it, the light bulbs really do go on. Conversely, the brains of people who can't sound out words often look different on MRI pictures. There is less blood flow to the language centres of the brain and, in some cases, not much activity evident at all. But simply put, without the ability to sound out words, the brain is stumped.”

Lally, K. & Price, D.M. (1997). The brain reads sound by sound: 1997 SDX Awards. The Sun. On-Line at: http://www.sunspot.net/readingby9/initial.shtml

Note the left hemisphere before and after structured intensive teaching – 60 hours instruction.

Lyon, G.R., & Fletcher, J.M. (2001, Summer). Early warning systems. Education Matters, 22-29. [On-Line]. Available: http://www.edmatters.org/20012/

Older students:

Why are so many struggling students not noticed until about Year Four and beyond? At about Year Four, there is a marked increase in the number of children referred for reading assistance (Chall, Jacobs, & Baldwin, 1990). This may represents the dawning of teachers’ recognition that the maturational delay hypothesis can no longer be used to explain the lack of reading progress. More salient perhaps is the generally unacknowledged explosion of new words in textbooks at about that time (Carnine, 1982) and of the increased complexity of the words in those texts (Henry, 1991). Many students who have relied upon whole-word memory recognition as their mode for storage and retrieval find the strategy collapses in Year Four. Whereas a word recognition capacity of 400 words is adequate for coping with text up to this time (and many children’s visual memory can manage such a load), the demand increases dramatically to about 4000 words around that year, and up to 7000 words by Year Six (Carnine, 1982), what Share (1995) describes as an “orthographic avalanche” (p.17).

For the student who relies primarily on word shape, the task is similar to that required in visually memorizing 7000 telephone numbers. In those languages that do rely on images rather than an alphabet for their construction, the number of words that are typically employed in print is far less than in English. For example, Chinese adults are said to have a working familiarity with only about 4000-5000 (Adams, 1990). Students who cannot access the phonological route to identify the escalating array of new words obviously struggle, and progress grinds to a halt. In truth, they had difficulties before this time, but perhaps managed to disguise them in classrooms where careful continuous assessment of word attack skills was unavailable.

Unfortunately, this under-identification appears to be even more likely for girls, as their rate of referral for assistance (about 1 in every 4 referrals) does not match the prevalence (about equal with males) of reading problems among females in our society (Alexander, Gray, & Lyon, 1993). A low Woodcock: Word Attack score suggests this scenario in students at (or beyond) Year Four. For younger students it is predictive of their reading future. Inability to decode pseudo-words is indicative of the need for an intensive, carefully designed program that provides at least a reasonable opportunity for the accelerated progress needed if a student is to make headway against his peers. If a student is two years behind his peers he must develop in reading at a rate twice as fast as they do, if he is to catch them by the end of primary school (as they will improve by at least two years over that period). While this conception of reading progress is rather crude it does give the flavour of just how immense a task it is. It also helps explain the chilling finding from a Melbourne University study (Hill, 1995), that for most students in this position there is no discernible improvement in reading between Year Four and Year Ten. Most students do not have access to intervention, and their prognosis is grim. For those students who do receive help it is incumbent upon us to provide the best and most efficient intervention available at the time. This implies that the most salient content must be delivered to students in the most effective manner possible.

The Corrective Reading Program

The CRP is a remedial reading program designed for students in Year 3 and above. It comprises two strands. Decoding and Comprehension, and within these strands are a number of levels. The Decoding strand was the focus of this study, having 4 levels (A, B1, B2, C) corresponding to the students’ decoding capacity assessed with a placement test. Its content and instructional methods are consistent with the findings of the National Reading Panel.

The Corrective Reading Program has been evaluated on many occasions (both the 1978 and 1988 editions), though its effects on phonological processes have not yet been a focus. Most analyses have emphasised word recognition and reading comprehension as outcome variables, and results for a wide range of poor readers have been strong. Studies have noted positive outcomes for learning disabled students (Holdsworth, 1984; Lloyd, Epstein, & Cullinan, 1981; Maggs & Murdoch, 1979), intellectually disabled students (Polloway & Epstein, 1986; Polloway, Epstein, Polloway, Patton, & Bell, 1986), maladjusted boys (Thorne, 1978), with secondary students (Campbell, 1983; Gregory, Hackney, & Gregory, 1982a; Gregory, Hackney, & Gregory, 1982b; Sommers, 1995), with adults (Herr, 1989), with gifted students (Noon & Maggs, 1980).

Facts About The Problem Reader (adapted from Corrective Reading Series Guide)

The Corrective Reading program series is designed to change the behaviour of the problem reader, The specific decoding tendencies of the problem reader suggest what a program must do to be effective in changing this student's behaviour.

• The problem reader makes frequent word identification errors.
• The student makes a higher percentage of mistakes when reading connected sentences than when reading words in word lists.
• Often the student reads words correctly in word lists and misidentifies the same words when they are embedded in connected sentences.
• The specific mistakes the reader makes include word omissions, word additional confusion of high frequency words (such as what and that, of and for, and and the).
• The student also reads synonyms (saying pretty for beautiful).
• The student often guesses at words, basing the guess on the word-beginning or ending. And the student is consistently inconsistent, making a mistake on one word in a sentence and then making a different mistake when re-reading the sentence.
• The student doesn't seem to understand the relationship between the arrangement of letters in a word and the pronunciation of the word.
• Often the student is confused about the "word meaning" (a fact suggested by "synonym reading," "opposite reading," and word guessing). The strategy seems to be based on rules the student has been taught.
• The problem reader follows such advice as: Look at the beginning of the word and take a guess; Think of what the word might mean, and Look at the general shape of the word. The result is a complicated strategy that is often backwards: The student seems to think that to read a word one must first understand the word, then select the spoken word that corresponds to that understanding.
• Although the problem reader may use a strategy that is meaning based, the reader is often pre-empted from comprehending passages. The reason is that the student doesn't read a passage with the degree of accuracy needed to understand what the passage actually says. (Omitting the word not from one sentence changes the meaning dramatically.)
• Furthermore, the student's reading rate is often inadequate, making it difficult for the student to remember the various details of the passage, even if they were decoded accurately. Often the problem reader doesn't have an effective reading

In the Corrective Reading program, the student receives daily practice in oral reading, with immediate feedback. (Only through oral reading can we discover what the student is actually reading.) The student reads word lists with information about how to pronounce various letter combinations (such as th and or). The student also reads sentences and passages composed of words that have been taught. The sentences and passages are designed so they are relatively easy if the student approaches words as entities that are to be analyzed according to the arrangement of letters, but difficult if the student guesses oh the basis of the context or syntax of the sentence. (The sentences are designed so that guesses often lead to mis-identification of the word.)

The mastery tests and checkouts in the series assure that the student observes progress in reading rate and reading accuracy.

The series presents comprehension items in a way that demonstrates the relationship between what is decoded and how it is to be understood. Initially, the comprehension activities are deliberately separated from the decoding activities so that the student's misconceptions about reading are not exaggerated. The comprehension activities, however, show the student that what is read is to be understood.

Finally, the series addresses the problem reader's poor self-image. The series is designed so the student can succeed on real reading tasks. Furthermore, a point system that is based on realistic performance goals assures that the reader who tries will succeed and will receive reinforcement for improved performance.

The poor reader is not a highly motivated student. For this student, reading has been punishing. The student often professes indifference: "I don't care if I can read or not." But the student's behaviour gives strong suggestions that the student cares a great deal. The student's ineffective reading strategies and negative attitudes about reading become more ingrained as the reader gets older. To overcome them requires a very careful program, one that systematically replaces the strategies with new ones and that provides lots and lots of practice.

The problems

An effective corrective reading program must address the specific needs of the problem reader.

1. The learner must learn to look at the order of letters in a word and learn that this order suggests the general pronunciation of the word. Furthermore, the student must learn that the game is simple: First figure out how the letters suggest one should say the word. Then see if the word you say is one that you recognize, one that has meaning. (Note that this strategy is basically the opposite of the one the typical problem reader uses.)

2. The problem reader must receive practice in reading connected sentences that are composed of words that have been taught in isolation. Merely because the student reads words in lists does not imply transfer to written sentences.

3. The student must receive strong reinforcement for working on reading because the task is very difficult and frustrating for the student. The student has received a great deal of evidence that reading is a puzzle that can't seem to be solved.

4. Finally, the student must receive practice in reading a variety of passages. If the student practises reading only narrative passages, the student will not "automatically" transfer the reading skills to textbooks, articles, or other forms of expository writing. Therefore, different styles must be introduced.

The Corrective Reading decoding programs have successful with problem readers because they provide the careful integration, the practice, and the management details that the problem reader needs to succeed. Indeed they were field tested on thousands of students and reworked before they were published.

Selection

The placement test is administered prior to the program and consists of several passages of prose, the rate of accuracy of reading determining the program level for any given student. The test is designed to assess ability at the word level. The story text is not amenable to contextual strategies, and the assessment criteria of rate and accuracy make it difficult for other than skilled decoders to pass unscathed. In the author’s experience it is capable of making the discrimination necessary to place students in any of the 4 levels (A, B1, B2, C), or to detect those whose skills are above or below the entry criteria. Used informally as a posttest measure it frequently has demonstrated that the student would now be correctly placed at the next higher level. This implies that the assessment device is closely related to the specified program objectives. It may be downloaded from http://www.sra4kids.com/teacher/reading/cr/decode/test_1.html

The placement test also ensures that student groups are relatively homogeneous in their decoding ability, and that they are neither over-challenged by the level of difficulty of the program, nor already competent at that level. The test is administered individually and takes about five to ten minutes. Detailed instructions are provided for administration and scoring.

In school settings the reading group teacher usually performs the screening. Typically the screening sample is derived from class teacher reports of students in the middle or upper primary school whose reading progress had been of concern. This teacher-identified group is then assessed with the placement test.

The possible outcomes of such assessments are:

1. the child’s current decoding skill levels are below those of the lowest level of the program (Level A), and would be best addressed with a beginning reading program.

2. the child is appropriate for placement in one of the four program levels, or

3. the child has already mastered the decoding skills taught at each level, and any reading deficits are probably not in the area of decoding.

Depending on the range of Year levels included in the assessment cohort, it is possible that, meeting all the students’ needs would require the provision of several of the levels, most frequently Levels A and B1. Schools then decide which group or groups they are able to supply with a program. In some cases schools decide to provide one program as a pilot, and plan subsequent programs after evaluating the first. This is a reasonable decision, but means that some of the identified students will not receive (immediate) assistance.

This decision usually causes some discomfort, and it is tempting to alter remedial direction and simply supply a little (usually ineffectual) aid to all of the identified students rather than select only a subset for the intensive program. As all of the students who fall within the Program’s range are equally in need of support, the basis for selecting one group must be on grounds other than differential need. Some schools decide to provide the Level B1 program initially, because the majority of such students are in Years Five and Six. Schools which make this choice place a high value on ensuring students to not leave primary school without their receiving some measure of remedial reading assistance.

Other schools choose to offer Level A, as the majority of the eligible students arrive from Year Three and Four. These schools consider such students able to make better progress (being younger), and also will be enrolled at the school long enough to participate in further levels subsequently, if that is deemed necessary. Obviously each of these options is a compromise as it involves excluding some students in need.

In some cases this exclusion is permanent as the senior group leaves the school at the end of that year. In other schools the identified-but-not-treated group will receive assistance in the next round of programs offered by the school. All schools have been enthusiastic about extending their program involvement supported by objective and subjective evaluation of their pilot. On only one occasion has the program been discontinued (albeit for one year), when school resources were inadequate to continue to provide the staff required.

The wait list group provided the source of the non equivalent control group students for my study. It is important for the internal validity of the study to note that the basis for selection in either the experimental or comparison group was not on the basis of greater need, but rather school values. All of the students identified were in similar need, and at each program level displayed a similar degree of reading deficit..

Program Design

There are two major features evident in the CRP. They are the emphasis on decoding skills (phonics) and the Direct Instruction approach to teaching the phonics content. It includes work on both isolated words and connected sentences, but its major emphasis is at the level of word structure. It is made clear to students that the decoding of novel words involves careful word analysis rather than partial cue or contextual guessing. Students are continually prompted to take account of all letters in a word, and become sensitised to common (and often problematic) letter groupings, for example, those beginning with combinations st, bl, sl, fl, pl, sw, cl, tr, dr; or ending with nt, nd, st, ts, mp, ps, cks, ls, ms, th, er, ing, ers, y. The sentences provided are constructed in a manner which allows few clues for contextual guessing, but provides ample opportunities to practise what has been learned in the teacher-presented word-attack segment of the lesson.

Lessons are designed to be provided in groups of up to 15 students. In this study most groups comprised about 10 students. The rationale for this reduction involved the lack experience of the teachers with the program, and the observation that in most groups of poor readers there are usually several students difficult to motivate, and maintain on task. This first hurdle is difficult for teachers used to a less directive model of teaching. Lessons are scripted, and most teachers report requiring at least 20 lessons before reasonable comfort with the approach is achieved. Teacher support is valuable in the early stages to assist in this skill development, and to preclude teacher initiated program changes which may jeopardise program success. The level of support needed varies from teacher to teacher; however, it was not possible in this study to provide the extensive model described by the program designers.

The program designers claim that the program combines the benefits of 1:1 tutoring with the effectiveness of group instruction. This is achieved by the use of choral responses prompted by various signals ( a new skill for most teachers). Not only must teachers follow a script, but they must be able to reliably signal students when to respond, and then pay attention to each student’s response in order to monitor skill development and teaching effectiveness. The results of this monitoring process help determine lesson pacing by controlling the amount of repetition necessary for mastery. The larger the group, the more difficult it is to continuously monitor every student’s progress - thus smaller group sizes are helpful for novice program presenters. As teachers’ reliance on the script diminishes, and as their signalling improves, so their adroitness at student monitoring improves and they are better able to manage larger groups.

The issues of behaviour management looms larger in secondary than primary schools, but may still present difficulties in middle and upper primary schools. Participation in the reading program involved parent, but not student consent; that is, students were not volunteers. Most schools considered the needs of the students too important to allow students the right of veto. To help motivate students whose history has made reading a non-preferred activity, the program includes a points system for each lesson segment. Most schools perceived the advantage of this system and incorporated it successfully into their plan. The potential for program disruption by a few disillusioned students was an additional reason for beginning with smaller group sizes.

Lessons typically range from 45 minutes to one hour, dependent on teacher lesson pacing. Typically pacing improves with experience, but initially some teachers were unable to complete a whole lesson in the time allotted. Program design specifies an optimum schedule of five lessons each week. This level of intensity has been found important for students with reading problems, as they tend to have difficulty retaining new skills and knowledge. For this reason, there is strong emphasis on massed practice for mastery, and spaced practice for retention. If lesson frequency falls too low, retention may be jeopardised leading to a general progress deceleration. However not all schools are able to timetable five lessons per week, and even those which do so found competing events sometimes forced class cancellation.

The Level A program focuses attention on word structure through reviewing letter sound correspondence, and regular rhyming, blending and segmenting activities. It relates these phonemic awareness activities to the written word by initially emphasising regularly spelled words decomposable by using these skills. When this phonic approach is accepted by students as a viable (even valuable) strategy, common irregular words are introduced. In the authors’ view this sequence is important to prevent the jettisoning of the generative decoding strategies because of their apparent inconsistent results if irregulars are initially encountered at the high rate common in authentic literature.

The following skills are taught in Decoding A:

Letter/sound identification; sounding-out (segmenting) orally presented words, and then saying them fast (blending); decoding words of varying degrees of irregularity; reading whole words the fast way; reading short groups of words; sentence reading; spelling. Related skills such as matching letters, and common letter groupings (such as ing, word completion (for example, rhyming), and symbol scanning are included on the student worksheets.

The basic objective in Decoding A is to teach students that there are regularly spelled words, words that are pronounced by blending the sounds of the letters in them. Once students understand that the identification of a word is related to its spelling, irregularly spelled words, such as said and what, are introduced. These words are spelled one way but pronounced in a different, irregular way. The sentence-reading exercises give students practice in reading words that are presented within a context. Usually students who qualify for this program do not understand what decoding is. This problem is magnified when they try to read sentences. Usually, their sentence-reading strategy involves guessing based on the syntax or the position of words within the sentence. For instance, they guess that the first word is the. The objective of the sentence-reading activities is to retrain students in how to read words in sentences.

The typical Decoding B1 lesson is divided into four major parts: Word-attack skills. Group story-reading. Individual reading checkouts. Workbook activities.

Word-attack skills take up about 10 minutes of the period. Students practice pronouncing words, identifying the sounds of letters or letter combinations, and reading isolated words composed of sounds and sound combinations that have been learned by the students. Students earn points for performance in the word-attack portion of the lesson.

Group story-reading follows immediately after word-attack skills. This part of the lesson takes approximately 15 to 20 minutes. Students take turns reading aloud from their student book (storybook). Students who are not reading follow along. The stories are divided into parts. If the group reads a part within the error limit, the teacher presents specified comprehension questions for the part.

Individual reading checkouts follow the group story-reading and take about 10 minutes. Assigned pairs of students read two passages. The first is from the lesson just read by the group; the second is from preceding lesson. Each member of the pair first reads the passage from the current story, then the passage from the preceding lesson. A student can earn points for both passages. Points for the first passage are earned if the student must read the passage within a specified rate criterion and also a specified error criterion. (For instance, the student must read 85 words in one minute, with no more than two errors).

Workbook activities are presented as the last part of the lesson. Some of these activities are teacher-directed and are very important to the students’ skill development. During lessons 1 through 5, students read only isolated sentences (a total of about 75-100 words). The stories begin on lesson 6 and continue on each lesson. Their length increases from about 200 words to 700 by lesson 60.

Students receive practice in comprehension skills with the following activities:

• Orally answering questions about each part of the story after reading the part within an error limit.
• Writing answers to a variety of comprehension items that require call of story events, sequencing, and characters

The daily oral reading checkouts provide each student with a lot of practice in reading connected sentences. Because the student work in pairs, the entire checkout doesn’t take very long, about 10 minutes for both checkouts help students gradually develop acceptable reading rates (from 55 words per minute at the beginning of the program to 90 words per minute at the end).

The workbook activities are carefully integrated with the word-attack activities and with the stories that the students read. From lesson to lesson, there is a careful development of skills in the workbook. It is considered very important for the students to do the workbook activities as part of each lesson. Each worksheet is one page. The different activities provide students with practice in writing sounds copying, answering comprehension questions, spelling and transforming words. Many of the activities deal with word details because these are the details the problem reader tends to ignore.

The following activities are included in Level B word-attack skills.

• Pronouncing words with consonant blends (slam, cast, flip), orally constructing words with endings (adding ed to show to pronounce showed), and identifying the component sounds of orally presented words.
• Identifying the long and short sounds of the vowels o, e, a, and I.
• Identifying the sounds of consonants.
• Identifying the sounds of letter combinations (th, ee, sh, or, ol, ch, wh, ing, er, oo, ea, oa, ai, ou, ar, oul, ir, igh, al) and reading words with those combinations.
• Reading lists of regularly spelled words, such as mat and trip, and irregularly spelled words, such as what and said. • Reading words that contain difficult consonant blends (drop, splash, slip).
• Reading words with endings (dropping, rested)
• Reading silent-e words (save, times, hoped).
• Reading compound words (herself, anybody).
• Practicing patterns drills that demonstrate consistent phonic relationships (big, bag, beg, bug).

The stories in Decoding B1 increase in length, difficulty, and interest. All stories are composed of words that have been taught in the series or words that the students can already read. After new words and word types are introduced in the word-attack activities, the words are incorporated in stories. Furthermore, the introduction of words in stories is cumulative, which means that once words have been introduced, they recur in the stories.

The syntax and structure of the stories are designed for the problem decoder and are designed to correct the mistakes the reader typically makes. Early stories are “low interest” stories because the poor reader must concentrate on a new game - looking at words and identifying them without guessing. With higher interest stories, the reader becomes preoccupied with the content of the story and reverts to habitual, inappropriate decoding strategies, which means that errors increase greatly. Later in the program, after students have practised the game of accurate decoding, the stories become more interesting. Appropriate strategies are now strong enough to be continued under the pressure of more complex language and syntax.

The Corrective Reading Program is often chosen as the intervention program for the RMIT Psychology Clinic because of my experience with it, and its record of success in improving the reading outcomes for children at risk. This has been noted in the empirical studies available in the research literature, and also in the regular evaluations I perform in schools and in the Clinic. At the Clinic we also train parents to provide the program to individual students.

Level A - early 1st Year to early 2nd (Start Rate 45 wpm - End Rate 60 wpm) Level B1 - early 2nd Year to end of 2nd (Start Rate 60 wpm - End Rate 90 wpm) Level B2 - early 3rd Year to end of 3rd (Start Rate 90 wpm - End Rate 120 wpm) Level C1 - early 4th Year to end of 4th (Start Rate 100 wpm - End Rate 120 wpm) Level C2 - early 5th Year to end of 5th. (Start Rate 120 wpm - End Rate 130 wpm): Approximately one grade level in 65 lessons.

Level A - early 1st Year to early 2nd (Start Rate 45 wpm - End Rate 60 wpm) Level B1 - early 2nd Year to end of 2nd (Start Rate 60 wpm - End Rate 90 wpm) Level B2 - early 3rd Year to end of 3rd (Start Rate 90 wpm - End Rate 120 wpm) Level C1 - early 4th Year to end of 4th (Start Rate 100 wpm - End Rate 120 wpm) Level C2 - early 5th Year to end of 5th. (Start Rate 120 wpm - End Rate 130 wpm)

Now, over to more recent publications:                                                                                                                                           

Persistent Reading Deficiencies in Early Education (2025)

“In this study I investigated early elementary teachers’ varying perceptions of their unique strengths and challenges relating to early student foundational development of reading skills (Abacioglu et al., 2019). The problem was the declining teacher identification and effective instruction of early struggling readers among students in grades 1–2. This approach appears relevant because early students with persistent reading deficiencies require unique, systematic instructional strategies to develop reading proficiency (Lovett et al., 2 2021). In addition, teacher identification strategies and screenings must capture students who “fly under the radar,” particularly in the early grades to prevent “wait to fail” instructional approaches and to further support early elementary students with persistent reading problems (Kieffer & Vukovic, 2013, p. 1188). As a result, early students who fail to achieve reading skills proficiency tend to develop negative mindsets regarding reading and often remain weak readers for much of their educational careers without attaining reading goals (Ozernov-Palchik et al., 2017).

Through collection of semi-structured interviews and primary teacher observational data from Mayberry Elementary School (pseudonym), I investigated first and second grade teachers’ perceptions of classroom practices used to identify students with persistent reading deficiencies and teachers’ perceptions of their unique strengths and challenges regarding early student reading proficiency (Abacioglu et al., 2019). The rest of Chapter 1 provides context to the problem of practice, including the problem and purpose statements, significance of the study, research questions, definition of key terms, and a brief summary. Background Achievement in foundational reading skills is critical for every student. Despite the fact that 33% of young students achieve reading skills proficiency through normal classroom practices, 67% of students with varying reading disabilities remain unable to reach desired reading proficiency, largely because of reduced teacher-student engagement quality, school fulfillment, and student persistence (Bratsch-Hines et al., 2018; Peng et al., 2019).

Educators have worked diligently to identify students with persistent reading problems, because students who fail to achieve basic reading proficiency often exhibit increased behavioral effects, decreased teacher-student engagement quality, reduced student persistence, and postsecondary 3 goal attainment (Kieffer & Vukovic, 2013; Peng et al., 2019). Despite efforts to reach set reading proficiencies, 31% of U.S. elementary school students continually exhibit varying persistent reading deficiencies, while 25% of U.S. fourth-grade struggling readers also fail to meet desired math proficiency (Erbeli et al., 2020; Thomas et al., 2020). The issue of how to properly address persistent reading problems in U.S. public-school systems remains significantly acute even after 20 years of increasing attention by researchers (Lovett et al., 2021).

Because teachers’ perceptions of students with behavioral difficulties correlate with teacher-student interaction and engagement quality, additional research is needed to further investigate teachers’ perceptions, classroom behaviors, and the quality of teacher engagement with struggling readers that could increase effectiveness, foundational reading proficiency, and the identification of early-grade struggling readers, (Hernandez et al., 2018). Therefore, when early elementary teachers identify students exhibiting persistent reading problems, interventionists and reading specialists can collectively work to reduce student reading gaps and help these students develop along desired reading continuums (Allen & Loven, 2022). If this issue remains unresolved, struggling readers’ educational achievement will continually erode, because students lack essential, foundational reading comprehension abilities (Capin et al., 2021).

Statement of the Problem

The problem I investigated in this study was the decreasing teacher identification and instruction of struggling readers among students in grades 1–2. This was relevant because persistent reading problems in early elementary school are multifaceted and complex (Vernon Feagans et al., 2018). Although the majority of students develop reading skills through classroom instruction, many remain unable to achieve reading objectives (Bratsch-Hines et al., 2018). For 4 example, 31% of elementary students exhibit persistent reading deficiencies (Thomas et al., 2020). Nearly 25% of fourth-grade struggling readers fail math proficiencies (Erbeli et al., 2020). As a result, struggling readers experience continual academic failures, placing them at risk of remaining well behind their peers (Miles et al., 2019). The pandemic further exacerbated persistent reading barriers among early elementary students, causing 124,000 school closures in 27 U.S. states, exposing 55 million students to isolation, increasing emotional and psychological trauma, depression, posttraumatic stress, and attention deficits (Minkos & Gelbar, 2020).

In fact, COVID-related school closures decreased kindergarten student reading gains by 66%, approximately 31% greater than when students attend in-person classes (Bao et al., 2020). This was relevant because struggling readers often exhibit negative, in-class socioemotional effects, depressive symptoms, and decreased classroom engagement, eroding academic fulfillment, because they lack reading skills (Peng et al., 2019). Past instructional practice research in this area has failed to produce relevant findings (Capin et al., 2021). Poor attitudes about reading and academic failures further perpetuate students’ persistent reading deficits throughout school (Ozernov-Palchik et al., 2017). As a result, unresolved persistent reading problems impact students’ future behavioral, educational, financial, and social well-being (Lovett et al., 2021). Only 10%–15% of U.S. public- school students are identified with varying reading deficiencies (Al Dahhan et al., 2021). Teachers are critical in identifying struggling readers, because they first observe signs of reading deficiencies (Virinkoski et al., 2018). Many educators report, however, that their teacher training programs lack relevant training regarding identification of students with varying learning deficits (Jones et al., 2019). Additionally, recent 5 observation studies have discovered that teachers’ whole group instruction methods have become increasingly inadequate in addressing the unique needs of struggling readers (Folsom et al., 2019).

Students with persistent reading difficulties benefit from methodical, purposeful, and progressive reading instruction that provides continuous teacher-student feedback, involvement, and engagement (Allen & Loven, 2022). In addition, teacher development programs that equip educators with positive contact experience supports during classroom instruction might support the development of meaningful and equitable educational systems that elevate young students’ foundational reading achievement (Glock et al., 2018). If persistent reading problems remain unaddressed, the quality of U.S. public-school education will continually decline and subject struggling readers to poorer socioemotional health, higher school dropout probabilities, reduced career mobility, and lower lifetime wage earnings.

Conclusion

The purpose of the study was to investigate first- and second-grade teachers’ perceptions of effective practices they have used to identify struggling readers and increase early students’ foundational reading proficiency. This study includes my investigation of early elementary teacher perceptions of their unique strengths and challenges related to early student foundational reading skills’ development (Abacioglu et al., 2019). Results reiterate the need for caring teachers to positively impact young students’ classroom attention, focus, achievement, persistence, and engagement.

Participants in this study revealed that when primary grade teachers collaborate shared knowledge across grade levels, young struggling readers receive interventions indicative of increased early reading success. Collective interview results also solidify the dire need for districts and administrators to initiate an immediate and intentional early student foundational reading skills development focus through primary grade small group intervention strategies for struggling readers to experience desired increases in both early students’ reading assessments and proficiencies alike. Even though reading proficiency is needed for every student, persistent reading problems in early elementary school have remained problematic for more than 100 years. Struggling readers who complete the elementary grades often face significant literacy challenges throughout 100 their school-age years and for much of their lives, resulting in reduced lifetime wage earnings, health quality, and career mobility (Folsom et al., 2019). Early student reading deficiencies, however, should not subject young students to continual lifetime failures and depressive mindsets (Fuchs et al., 2019).

As teachers acquire more resources and training needed to promote struggling reader identification and develop a better understanding of how teachers’ behaviors and actions affect young student populations, future incorporation of corrective, small group reading supports can change the way that early, effective reading intervention is done to ultimately meet the needs of students who exhibit persistent reading problems once and for all”.

Reed, William Steven, "Persistent Reading Deficiencies in Early Education" (2025). Digital Commons @ ACU, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 850.

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Mitigating reading failure in adolescents: Outcomes of a Direct Instruction reading program in one secondary school (2020)

“International and national data continue to identify poor literacy standards among secondary school students. The researchers, in collaboration with a metropolitan secondary school in Perth, Western Australia, elected to use the Direct Instruction Reading Mastery program to improve students’ reading skills. Data on reading performance was collected from 59 Year 7-9 students identified by their teachers as having poor reading skills. Students were assessed using the Woodcock Reading Mastery III and were retested twice during the remainder of the year. Teaching staff were observed delivering the program and were interviewed in the final term of the year to ascertain their experiences while using the program. Results showed a statistically significant improvement in students’ reading performance. There was a moderate, statistically significant correlation between higher reading improvement and higher attendance. The program was effective for students regardless of equity group. Semi-structured interviews with the teacher and teaching assistants delivering the program indicated they were overwhelmingly positive about the program but identified difficulty delivering it with fidelity. This was also noted during classroom observation. The results from this research support the efficacy of using Direct Instruction programs, such as Reading Mastery, to improve the reading outcomes for adolescent students who are struggling to read. However, they also highlight the complexity of influencing reading success for students in secondary schools, with factors such as attendance and fidelity of delivery influencing the success of the program.”

Main, S., Backhouse, M., Jackson, R. et al. Mitigating reading failure in adolescents: Outcomes of a Direct Instruction reading program in one secondary school. AJLL 43, 152–166 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03652051

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Inadequate foundational decoding skills constrain global literacy goals for pupils in low-and middle-income countries (2025)

“Learning to read is the most important outcome of primary education. However, despite substantial improvements in primary school enrolment, most students in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) fail to learn to read by age 10. We report reading assessment data from over half a million pupils from 48 LMICs tested primarily in a language of instruction and show that these pupils are failing to acquire the most basic skills that contribute to reading comprehension. Pupils in LMICs across the first three instructional years are not acquiring the ability to decode printed words fluently and, in most cases, are failing to master the names and sounds associated with letters. Moreover, performance gaps against benchmarks widen with each instructional year. Literacy goals in LMICs will be reached only by ensuring focus on decoding skills in early-grade readers. Effective literacy instruction will require rigorous systematic phonics programmes and assessments suitable for LMIC contexts.

Learning to read is the most important outcome of a child’s primary school education. If a child does not learn to read in primary school, then they will not be able to use reading to access the curriculum in secondary and tertiary education. High levels of literacy promote human capital accumulation, thus promoting income, employment, health benefits, and social participation for individuals, and poverty reduction and economic development for societies1. However, research indicates that approximately 57% of children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are unable to read with a basic level of comprehension by age 10 (refs. 1^,2). This staggering figure comes despite record investments in global education over the past 20 years. LMICs spend between 3.5% and 4.3% of gross domestic product on education, and education is a major target for international development assistance3. These investments have supported substantial rises in primary school enrolments to over 90% globally but have not brought meaningful increases in learning and literacy4.

Research on low literacy achievement in LMICs has principally focused on systemic factors, such as teacher career progression structures, monitoring and accountability measures, school management capacity and classroom infrastructure1^,5^,6. Our approach instead considers the problem in relation to the science of reading. There is a large body of psychological research on how children learn to read and how they can best be taught7. This research has made major inroads into literacy policy and practice in high-income countries but has had limited impact in LMICs so far. One major insight from this research is that learning to read in an alphabetic writing system requires mastery of a range of lower-level reading subskills7. Most crucially, pupils must acquire the understanding that letters represent sounds, and they must learn to retrieve letter-to-sound mappings fluently to decode printed words. This decoding process allows pupils to use their spoken vocabulary to access the meanings of unfamiliar printed words7, and it provides the basis for developing readers to get the reading practice vital for building proficiency through the later primary and secondary school years8. There is a strong consensus that the development of decoding skills requires high-quality, systematic phonics in the initial years of reading instruction7.

In high-income countries, early-reading curricula often have a strong focus on the development of decoding skills through systematic phonics7, and these skills are often assessed and reported as part of the instructional programme using standard instruments such as the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS)9 or through national phonics screening10. In fact, a majority of US states now have legislation in place requiring early screening for reading disabilities, with most making reference to the assessment of decoding skills (including 17 states that specifically mention use of DIBELS instruments11). In contrast, the Global Proficiency Framework12 is the main framework agreed by all major international development agencies for stating reading progress targets in LMICs and it is focused largely on comprehension. Although this framework makes some reference to decoding, the word ‘phonics’ does not appear in its 146 pages, and it appears to suggest that new letter–sound correspondences may continue to be introduced any time from grade 1 to grade 9. Moreover, much of the data formally recorded in LMICs relates to schooling inputs and enrolments rather than learning outcomes13, and there is a dearth of information reported on pupils’ literacy, including whether they are acquiring basic decoding skills2.

The absence of regular assessments of decoding for pupils in LMICs poses a challenge to understanding the poor reading outcomes in these countries. However, it is possible to evaluate the decoding skills of pupils in LMICs using the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA)14, a suite of reading tasks and assessment protocols modelled on DIBELS but designed for use in LMICs. The EGRA was created by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and partner agencies to permit accurate assessment of student reading achievement. It has been used to measure the effectiveness of reading interventions, to guide instructional programmes and in academic research (see ref. 15 for a review). The EGRA differs from assessments specifically designed for cross-country comparisons in high-income countries, such as the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and the Programme for International Student Assessment (which measure reading comprehension differences across countries at age 10 and 15, respectively), in that it is not overseen by a centralized assessment agency. However, the EGRA’s strong theoretical basis, design standards and consistent procedures14 allow for the construction of instruments that meet high psychometric standards for assessing pupils’ foundational reading skills in a way that is comparable (if not psychometrically equivalent) across different countries and for different languages15.

Our work brings together hundreds of EGRA surveys conducted in LMICs over a period of 15 years that have assessed over half a million pupils primarily in a language of instruction. This comprehensive aggregation of EGRA surveys provides a systematic organization of EGRA data in terms of reading subskills across the first three instructional years for a variety of languages and countries. Our aim is to assess whether children are acquiring the foundational decoding skills to become successful readers. We focus on four EGRA decoding tasks for which there are comparable DIBELS measures: letter name identification, letter sound identification, non-word reading and oral reading fluency (in passages). Scores indicate the number of letters, letter sounds, non-words (also known as pseudowords such as ‘vib’ or ‘slint’) and words read accurately in 1 minute. Our analyses sought to quantify decoding performance across the first three instructional years against benchmarks for the corresponding DIBELS tasks, seeking to assess whether pupils from LMICs are on a trajectory to becoming proficient readers. Our final analysis investigated the relationship between performance on the four decoding tasks and reading comprehension.

Results

Our results showed strikingly poor performance on all measures of decoding and, critically, that performance tends to fall further below the benchmarks required for proficient reading with each instructional year. In the following, we describe performance on the four EGRA decoding tasks before turning to statistical analyses investigating (1) pupil progress across instructional years, (2) deviation from benchmarks with each instructional year, and (3) the relationship between decoding performance and reading comprehension.

Figure 1 summarizes the findings of 230 EGRA surveys comprising 694 subsurveys undertaken in 48 countries, 96 languages and 22,656 schools, involving 526,862 pupils learning to read in alphabetic writing systems. The numbers of schools and pupils included in the sample should be considered estimates because in 12 of the 230 EGRA surveys (5%) the reported sample sizes are not disaggregated across different language or instructional year cohorts. Of the EGRA surveys, 75% were given in a local or national language, and 25% were given in 1 of the 4 main former colonial languages (English, French, Spanish or Portuguese). The languages and countries included in the analysis, together with the relevant EGRA survey numbers for each language and country, are provided in Supplementary Tables 1 and 2, respectively. Each of the 2,373 data points in Fig. 1 represents an average score across pupils included in an EGRA subsurvey for a particular reading subskill assessment. These data are compared against benchmarks for the corresponding English language DIBELS tasks assessing these reading subskills in the USA (ref. 9, pages 123–124 for benchmarks). The ‘substantial-risk’ (black) criterion reflects the DIBELS benchmark goal for each task averaged across the instructional year. Pupils scoring below this benchmark are deemed to require additional strategic support beyond the core curriculum to reach proficiency goals. The ‘severe-risk’ (red) criterion reflects the DIBELS at-risk cut score for each task averaged across the instructional year. Pupils scoring below this criterion are deemed to be at particularly high risk of reading failure and to require intensive intervention. Benchmarks are available only where appropriate: the DIBELS test for letter name identification is not given in the third instructional year (as almost all pupils would be expected to know their letter names at that point) and the DIBELS test for oral reading fluency is not given in the first instructional year (as few pupils would be expected to read fluently at that point).”

Crawford, M., Raheel, N., Korochkina, M., & Rastle, K. (2025). Inadequate foundational decoding skills constrain global literacy goals for pupils in low-and middle-income countries. Nature Human Behaviour, 9(1), 74-83.

Legislating Literacy: The Need for Reading Reform in the United States (2025)

INTRODUCTION

“Andrew was diagnosed with dyslexia in the second grade. Before his official diagnosis, he struggled with reading, writing, and spelling to a much greater degree than his classmates. Andrew grew frustrated and discouraged with his lack of progress, and his love for school quickly dissipated. Even though his teachers clearly saw him floundering, Andrew’s public school did not screen him for any learning disabilities. Only after his mother had him evaluated by a speech-language pathologist, he was officially diagnosed. Due to the limited resources in his public school for students with learning disabilities, Andrew’s mother placed him in a private school that specialized in educating dyslexic students. His new school provided him with instruction tailored to his unique needs, which helped place him back on track with his peers. Now in the sixth grade, Andrew has made great strides in his reading and writing abilities, and his love for school has returned. Although Andrew was lucky to have received the intervention he needed, not every student is as fortunate. Many students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities remain in public schools that have limited resources, which inhibits their ability to succeed.

Like Andrew, many students’ learning disabilities are overlooked when intervention and proper instruction is crucial. Countless schools continue to teach children with disproven methods and inadequately prepared teachers, which affects not only dyslexic students, but all students learning to read. The failure of our education system to teach children to read is reflected in poor standardized test scores across the country. Ensuring the success of children is crucial, and students should be taught using proven methods. Even though some children learn to read on their own, other students require more intensive instruction. As such, all states should pass legislation mandating literacy instruction based on the science of reading, implementing strong teacher preparation policies to ensure the qualifications of educators, and requiring dyslexia screenings for all students in in the sixth grade, Andrew has made great strides in his reading and writing abilities, and his love for school has returned. Although Andrew was lucky to have received the intervention he needed, not every student is as fortunate. Many students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities remain in public schools that have limited resources, which inhibits their ability to succeed. Like Andrew, many students’ learning disabilities are overlooked when intervention and proper instruction is crucial.

Countless schools continue to teach children with disproven methods and inadequately prepared teachers, which affects not only dyslexic students, but all students learning to read. The failure of our education system to teach children to read is reflected in poor standardized test scores across the country. Ensuring the success of children is crucial, and students should be taught using proven methods. Even though some children learn to read on their own, other students require more intensive instruction. As such, all states should pass legislation mandating literacy instruction based on the science of reading, implementing strong teacher preparation policies to ensure the qualifications of educators, and requiring dyslexia screenings for all students in in the sixth grade, Andrew has made great strides in his reading and writing abilities, and his love for school has returned. Although Andrew was lucky to have received the intervention he needed, not every student is as fortunate. Many students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities remain in public schools that have limited resources, which inhibits their ability to succeed.

Like Andrew, many students’ learning disabilities are overlooked when intervention and proper instruction is crucial. Countless schools continue to teach children with disproven methods and inadequately prepared teachers, which affects not only dyslexic students, but all students learning to read. The failure of our education system to teach children to read is reflected in poor standardized test scores across the country. Ensuring the success of children is crucial, and students should be taught using proven methods. Even though some children learn to read on their own, other students require more intensive instruction. As such, all states should pass legislation mandating literacy instruction based on the science of reading, implementing strong teacher preparation policies to ensure the qualifications of educators, and requiring dyslexia screenings for all students in kindergarten to the third grade.

Although it may be too early to assess whether recent legislation in these areas has influenced students, science-based reading instruction, strong teacher preparation programs, and the benefits of dyslexia screenings have all been researched and proven effective if implemented correctly. If all states pass legislation supporting these areas, the country’s dismal reading scores may improve, and students will become stronger readers. Part I of this Comment will provide an overview of the nationwide literacy gap, the historical reading wars, and the various approaches to literacy instruction. The Comment will then focus specifically on dyslexic students, problems faced by educators, and literacy legislation generally. Part II of this Comment will examine and compare the reading scores of various states to determine the efficacy of recently passed legislation. Finally, Part III will provide recommendations and predictions for the 2024 reading scores based on which laws appear to be effective.

A. BACKGROUND

The Literacy Gap Nationwide statistics have shown a decline in reading performance that began even before the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found that only 35% of fourth graders were considered proficient readers. This percentage decreased from 37% in 2017 and continued to decline to 33% in 2022.20 Although the pandemic may be responsible for some of the decline since 2019, the rate of proficient readers has consistently been lower than expected. Although there is no single reason for the below-proficient reading scores, they can partly be attributed to the differences in literacy instruction across the country. For example, in 2022, 34% of fourth graders in Rhode Island were proficient readers compared to 43% of fourth graders in Massachusetts. This disparity may stem from the different teaching methods each state implements. States enact their own laws, and each school district determines the best methods to enforce those laws. This state-by-state approach hinders uniformity in reading instruction across the country and likely contributes to the gaps in nationwide reading scores.

B. Implications of Illiteracy

Extensive research has shown a direct connection between reading failure and delinquency. Students who struggle to read are much more likely to end up in the criminal justice system or impoverished. Further, a study from 2011 found that students who are not proficient readers by the end of the third grade are four times more likely to drop out of school than those who do read proficiently. Given the importance of literacy in society, closing the achievement gap between poor and proficient readers should be a main concern of the states. If children are taught to read early with effective, proven methods, then reading failure can be prevented in all but a small percentage of children with severe learning disabilities. Even though the pandemic may have disrupted an already weak system, the literacy gap can still be closed.

C. The Reading Wars

In the 1980s and early 1990s, reading instruction became highly politicized. In what became known as the “Reading Wars,” the best practices for teaching children to read were widely debated. Some people supported whole language, which emphasizes textual meaning, and others preferred phonics instruction, which emphasizes word-decoding skills. Despite numerous studies, articles, and books on the various instructional techniques, the Reading Wars remained in effect for many years. Thus, the debate between phonics and whole language made it extremely difficult for teachers to instruct children using consistent, proven methods.

1. Whole Language

The first approach debated in the Reading Wars was a holistic theory called whole language, which emphasizes learning words in the context of whole texts rather than breaking them down into smaller parts (like individual letters or phonemes). Supporters of whole language argue that it introduces beginning readers to the “joy of reading” through stories and characters, “rather than numbing them into inattention and unmotivated boredom” through phonics instruction. Although this theory acknowledges the importance of phonics in learning to read, whole language focuses on the needs of each individual student instead of using direct, systematic, and uniform instruction. The whole language approach introduced a cueing system to help students determine the meaning of unknown words. Often referred to as “three-cueing,” this approach instructs students to guess at unknown words or consider pictures to determine which word would make sense in a sentence. The three-cueing system focuses on grapho-phonemic cues (letters/sounds), syntactic cues (grammar), and semantics (comprehension). If one system fails, the view is that the other systems might compensate, which often leads to the correct guessing of words. Although many believe in the efficacy of three-cueing and whole language, neuroscientific studies have determined that children do not learn to read by simply guessing at unknown words. Evidence suggests that the whole language and three cueing approaches fall short in providing children with the structured and clear instruction necessary for them to effectively link spoken language with written words. Accordingly, the whole language approach has faced disapproval by scientists and phonics advocates, and many states have recently banned teachers from using cueing approaches in classrooms.

2. Phonics

The second approach debated in the Reading Wars was phonics-based instruction, which emphasizes teaching students to decode words by sounding out individual letters or letter combinations. There are various ways to teach phonics, including synthetically, analytically, systematically, or holistically (such as through whole language). Of these approaches, researchers have found that systematic instruction, which teaches letter-sound correspondences in an ordered progression, is most effective for beginning and struggling readers. Rather than instructing students to figure out the correlation between sounds and their letter patterns, teachers explicitly tell students the letter-sound connections in a methodical and sequential way. All children instructed in phonics, including those from different socio-economic backgrounds, those with disabilities, or those with reading difficulties, notice improvements in their decoding abilities and reading comprehension skills.

Research indicates that phonics plays a crucial role in a reading program based on empirical evidence, as the ability to decode words is fundamental to deriving meaning from text. Accordingly, instructing students with these techniques should take precedence over other non-phonics-based approaches. The National Reading Panel Report In 1997, Congress attempted to settle the Reading Wars by assembling the National Reading Panel (NRP) to assess the efficacy of the different literacy instruction programs. The panel examined hundreds of studies and released a report in 2000 identifying the five areas of reading instruction proven to produce skilled reading.

These areas, which became known as the “five pillars of reading instruction,” were phonemic awareness (the identification of different sounds that make up speech), phonics (the decoding of new words by matching sounds to letters), fluency (the ability to read accurately and quickly), vocabulary (the recognition and understanding of words), and comprehension (the construction of meaning from text). The report emphasized that these five pillars of literacy are essential to every effective reading instruction program. In addition to establishing the five pillars, the panel made other findings about reading instruction. The group noted that understanding the relationship between sounds, letters, and spelling patterns directly correlates to reading achievement. The panel also found that reading aloud with guidance and feedback improves reading and fluency.

The report emphasized that reading comprehension in younger students significantly depends on their oral language abilities, comprehension of syntax, grammar, vocabulary, and idioms, as well as their general and topic-specific background knowledge. These findings from the NRP impacted the general knowledge of literacy instruction and the best practices by which children learn to read. However, despite the panel’s findings, many of the ineffective methods identified in the report, including the three-cueing model, remained in school curricula. Schools continued to use materials supporting the cueing model, as teachers trusted the books that endorsed cueing, which had been relied upon for decades. Accordingly, the NRP’s attempt to settle the Reading Wars fell short, as the disproven methods were still being implemented.

The Reading Wars Have No Winner

Despite the NRP’s efforts to declare a winner to the Reading Wars, neither side can win. Reading comprehension and strong phonics skills are both necessary for learning to read. Notwithstanding the benefits of phonics-based instruction in pronouncing words, the approach is less effective in promoting reading comprehension. If teachers instruct children using only phonics, students at higher grade levels will be able to decode complex text but will be unable to understand it. Thus, elements from both sides of the debate are necessary for teaching children to read. To make matters more difficult, however, phonics and whole language simply cannot coexist within a classroom. Founded on fundamentally different principles, phonics and whole language each claim priority in the focus of educators and readers. Even though it is commonly understood that reading involves both phonics and comprehension, the initial approach to teaching reading often emphasizes one method over the other. Determining which approach will be primary and the other secondary depends on the particular grade and age of the student. Therefore, because elements of phonics and whole language are both required to teach children to read, as well as the fact that they cannot exist both equally and simultaneously, the Reading Wars have no clear winner. However, given the strong disapproval that whole language and cueing approaches have received, as well as the fact that phonics-based instruction is proven beneficial for all students, educators should focus on implementing phonics into their curricula.

D: Other Approaches to Reading

Although whole language and phonics-based instruction were at the center of the Reading Wars, other approaches to reading are used in many classrooms, several of which derive from whole language and phonics principles. Among the most prominent of these theories are balanced literacy and structured literacy.

1. Balanced Literacy

Balanced literacy, which derived from the whole language approach, was created as another attempt to resolve the reading wars. This theory combines both phonics and cueing and relies on the premise that children are “natural readers.” There is less emphasis on sounding out words and more on exposure to books and the enjoyment of reading. Balanced literacy underscores the importance of teachers’ autonomy and expertise, suggesting that instruction should be tailored to meet the unique needs and strengths of each student. Although the NRP’s report found the three-cueing model of whole language to be inefficient in teaching children to read, the concept is widely used in balanced literacy instruction. A survey in 2019 showed that 75% of elementary teachers taught reading in K–2 classrooms using the three-cueing model. Most educators are trained using this model, and it is reinforced by the prevalent curricula and assessments used in schools, which prioritize learning to read through meaning first. Despite the prevalence of balanced literacy and three-cueing in classrooms, studies have shown that cueing takes attention away from the letter sounds and makes the development of phonics skills more difficult. As such, balanced literacy alone is an ineffective method for teaching literacy, and many states have banned the use of cueing methods in classrooms. Instead, educators and policymakers have been recently advocating for the use of structured literacy instruction when teaching students to read.

2. Structured Literacy

Structured literacy is an umbrella term encompassing various evidence-based programs and approaches. These programs focus on the “science of reading” and draw from neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and brain research. Structured literacy advocates for the systematic teaching of the elements critical to proficient reading and writing. Evidence-based instruction may include scripted lessons, customized reading instruction tailored to meet the needs of students, and rigorous criteria for meeting program standards. Studies have shown that structured literacy is beneficial to all students and essential to struggling readers and those with language-based learning disabilities, such as dyslexia. Although some students will still need supplemental reading instruction, most students who receive instruction based on the science of reading are able to read more efficiently than students taught with whole language, balanced literacy, and three-cueing. Therefore, proponents of structured literacy have recommended that programs based on the science of reading be prioritized and implemented into all reading curricula.

E. Students with Dyslexia

Notwithstanding the debate between the many reading approaches, dyslexia was not a central issue in the Reading Wars. During that time, the differing opinions of how students learn to read made it extremely difficult for dyslexic children to receive appropriate intervention and education. It would have been challenging for lawmakers to pass legislation on dyslexia treatment and identification without taking a side in the conflict. As such, until fairly recently, the needs of dyslexic students were not taken into consideration. However, now that research shows all students learn to read through structured literacy and instruction based on the science of reading, there has been a shift towards implementing these methods into reading education. Similar studies have shown that reading achievement will improve overall if all students are taught to read using approaches that work for students with dyslexia.

What Is Dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a neurological learning disability that causes difficulty reading, writing, and spelling. People diagnosed with dyslexia face difficulties distinguishing the individual speech sounds within a word and understanding the correlation between the letters and sounds. It is challenging for dyslexic individuals to read quickly, organize written and spoken language, and comprehend longer reading passages. Although the severity of the condition can vary among individuals, brain imaging has revealed differences in the way dyslexic brains develop and function. As such, dyslexia can make it hard to achieve academic success, and many children with dyslexia receive special education, accommodations, or extra support services.

There is no single test for dyslexia, but screening students for symptoms can help identify those at risk. Screenings are not formal diagnoses; they merely assess the risk of dyslexia and determine the need for further diagnostic assessments. If students are identified as having foundational skill gaps, they may immediately receive individualized instruction before a designation of special education eligibility. Despite the importance of early screenings to ensure children with dyslexia receive appropriate intervention, not every school mandates these screenings.

Notwithstanding neuroscientific technology, identifying and diagnosing dyslexia in those deemed at risk can be challenging. Methods of diagnosis are not always clear, and states tend to implement a range of different assessment tools that vary in length and content. Furthermore, the complexity of dyslexia requires that diagnoses be given by professionals, such as “reading specialists, school psychologists, speech-language pathologists, [or] special educators.” Schools that lack these qualified individuals may face difficulties properly diagnosing children. Due to the difficulties with diagnosis, dyslexia “is often misdiagnosed or missed entirely.” According to the International Dyslexia Association, only about 5% of dyslexic students receive the condition can vary among individuals, brain imaging has revealed differences in the way dyslexic brains develop and function. As such, dyslexia can make it hard to achieve academic success, and many children with dyslexia receive special education, accommodations, or extra support services.

There is no single test for dyslexia, but screening students for symptoms can help identify those at risk. Screenings are not formal diagnoses; they merely assess the risk of dyslexia and determine the need for further diagnostic assessments. If students are identified as having foundational skill gaps, they may immediately receive individualized instruction before a designation of special education eligibility. Despite the importance of early screenings to ensure children with dyslexia receive appropriate intervention, not every school mandates these screenings. Notwithstanding neuroscientific technology, identifying and diagnosing dyslexia in those deemed at risk can be challenging. Methods of diagnosis are not always clear, and states tend to implement a range of different assessment tools that vary in length and content.

Furthermore, the complexity of dyslexia requires that diagnoses be given by professionals, such as “reading specialists, school psychologists, speech-language pathologists, [or] special educators.” Schools that lack these qualified individuals may face difficulties properly diagnosing children. Due to the difficulties with diagnosis, dyslexia “is often misdiagnosed or missed entirely.” According to the International Dyslexia Association, only about 5% of dyslexic students receive proper identification and support. Additionally, most students with dyslexia are not identified or diagnosed until at least the third grade, and many go unrecognized until adolescence or adulthood. By the time many children are diagnosed, it is often too late to teach them the skills needed to be successful readers. As a result, students with dyslexia fall behind in school and contribute to the gap in literacy scores.

Teaching Students with Dyslexia

Although students with dyslexia face many difficulties, appropriate teaching methods can ensure that dyslexic students are academically successful. Some students with dyslexia need interventions, such as specialized tutoring, assistive technology, extended time on tests, or access to audiobooks. Many also need Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) that provide academic modifications and accommodations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).123

Regardless of the specific treatment provided, research indicates that professionals should not wait for a formal dyslexia diagnosis before initiating reading treatment and intervention. Unlike the whole language and phonics debate that left the education community torn with uncertainty, the evidence of how children with dyslexia learn to read is clear. Students with dyslexia benefit the most from evidence-based treatments emphasizing thorough instruction in the five pillars of reading. Structured literacy is extremely beneficial for students with dyslexia, while balanced literacy and its lack of decoding instruction is not. Nevertheless, despite thorough research in both programs, there is no universally effective approach for teaching students with dyslexia or other reading difficulties.

F. Problems with Teaching

Although it is clear how students with and without dyslexia learn to read, many students still struggle. In addition to budget issues and teacher shortages, a major explanation is the curriculum that teachers themselves are taught to use. Teacher preparation programs are largely ineffective, as only 25% of programs teach new educators all five pillars of reading instruction. Many of these programs fail to train teachers in phonics and phonemic awareness, as these skills are taught more intensely in special education programs. Because special education teachers are in such high demand, many school districts struggle to hire them. This results in unprepared teachers ineffectively instructing students to read. Furthermore, much of the recent research has yet to be incorporated into teacher training programs, commonly adopted curricula, or professional development initiatives. As a result, these efforts to train educators often deviate from scholarly recommendations. Notwithstanding the scientific contributions to understanding how children learn to read, translating emerging evidence into classroom instruction has been challenging. The science may be clear, but “what to teach, when, how, and for whom at [what] level” is much less evident. As such, “[f]lawed teacher training and instructional materials[,]” among other factors, prevent children from receiving sufficient instruction.

G. Literacy Legislation

Over the past few years, states have become increasingly aware of the illiteracy problem and have enacted legislation to combat the issue. The movement began with the dyslexia community, who brought the issue to the limelight. Parents were frustrated that their children were paying for the faulty reading approaches taught in schools. Through legislation, parents forced school districts to update their literacy instruction. Early legislation was focused only on dyslexia; however, as time went on, the conversation evolved to focus on how all children learn to read. Although the dyslexia community raised the red flag, the problem has shifted to the nationwide curriculum.”

Williams, Lia M. (2025) "Legislating Literacy: The Need for Reading Reform in the United States," Roger Williams University Law Review: Vol. 30: Iss. 1, Article 8. Available at: https://docs.rwu.edu/rwu_LR/vol30/iss1/8

No-fee school consistently outperforms Progress in International Reading and Literacy benchmarks: Presenting early grade reading data from a case in Makhanda, Eastern Cape’ (2024)

“Importance of early grade reading

There is much research to support the statement that ‘literacy, built upon a firm foundation of basic reading, is used as one of the primary measures of school efficacy’ (Pretorius et al. 2016:4). Weak reading has been linked to lack of scholastic achievement, low self-esteem, discipline issues as well as high levels of school dropout (Connor & Frederick 2014). Learning to read can thus be described as a fundamental skill which enables not only active participation in the curriculum but also forms the basis for lifelong success and opportunity (Hulme & Snowling 2011). Evidence suggests that if learners have not reached expected levels of proficiency in ‘learning to read’ strategies in the early years of schooling, there will be little to no improvement in reading ability without intervention or remediation (Bigozzi et al. 2017; Friedman & Kern 2009; Lonigan, Burgess & Anthony 2000; Pretorius et al. 2016). It is important to note here again that in the South African context, CAPS assumes learners have successfully learnt to read by the end of Grade 3 and thus, does not include any explicit teaching of how to read from Grade 4 onwards, where the focus switches to developing comprehension and semantic skills.

Much of the research on early grade reading has focussed on Oral Reading Fluency (ORF), which is the ability to read text quickly, accurately, and with meaningful expression (Rasinski & Hoffman 2003; Valencia et al. 2010). This is probably because ORF has been recognised as an indicator of reading comprehension (Fuchs et al. 2001), with reading comprehension being the ultimate goal of reading and where the stumbling block seems to lie with South African learners. Studies concerning reading in a second language (L2) are not as extensive as that for learners reading in their first language (L1) (Schaefer & Kotze 2019; Spaull 2015; Pretorius & Spaull 2016). In this article, we measured learner performance in their L2 (English) using measures of ORF and reading comprehension.”

Long K.A. & Bowles T.N., 2024, ‘No-fee school consistently outperforms Progress in International Reading and Literacy benchmarks: Presenting early grade reading data from a case in Makhanda, Eastern Cape’, South African Journal of Childhood Education 14(1), a1376. https://doi.org/ 10.4102/sajce.v14i1.1376

So, how much has reading failure changed in these new times – compared to my older times?