The old adage, “students learn to read, then read to learn,” focuses on ensuring that students achieve literacy proficiency by third grade, at which point, the curriculum becomes more difficult and their reading skills are put to use to learn the material.
However, since the pandemic, fewer students are proficient readers even into their middle and high school years, where teachers are not prepared to equip students with the basics.
The Advanced Education Research & Development Fund (AERDF), a national nonprofit organization, recently released a report that provides research-backed recommendations for supporting older readers.
The report, The False Divide: Why ‘Learn to Read, Read to Learn’ Fails Older Readers — and How to Fix It, is the culmination of five years working with partners including 85 school districts, several universities and assessment providers to survey 1,500 teachers in grades 3 to 8, analyze 85,000 student reading assessments and pilot interventions with 30,000 students.
Among their conclusions: State policy must advance K-8 foundational literacy standards and require developmentally appropriate assessments.
“It’s time to scrap ‘learn to read, then read to learn,’” Rebecca Kockler, executive director of AERDF’s Reading Reimagined Program, said in a statement. “Literacy is not a switch that flips from decoding words in third grade to independently comprehending text in fourth. We don’t explicitly teach older students the advanced reading skills that they need. Fixing this requires us to shift our collective mindset about how students learn to read.”
According to results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 30 percent of eighth graders in the U.S. can read proficiently. AERDF’s research highlights several reasons why this may be:
- A gap in advanced decoding skills underpins the literacy crisis for older readers. Researchers found that although these students may be able to decode simple words, they haven’t developed advanced skills to decode the more complex, multisyllabic words that appear in later grades. “Without sufficient decoding skills to drive automatic word recognition, reading development stalls — and students cannot comprehend what they read,” the report states.
- Older students are not explicitly taught the advanced reading skills that they need. Multisyllabic words follow different patterns of spelling and pronunciation. “As students encounter more complex texts, they need more advanced literacy skills to read fluently and efficiently,” according to the report. “This requires explicit instruction in multisyllabic decoding, morphology (using word parts to infer meaning), sentence structure, vocabulary, and fluency. But most curricula and most classrooms don’t cover these topics systematically. We stop teaching foundational literacy skills far too early.”
Recommendations
State education agencies should revise academic standards to include advanced foundational literacy skills in grades 3-8, according to the AERDF’s report. To identify where students are struggling and how to support them, states should also require the adoption of high-quality, developmentally appropriate literacy screeners for all students in K-8 that assess both early and advanced skills.
At the local level, the report calls on districts to adopt technology that can scale advanced literacy instruction by delivering individualized instruction on advanced foundational skills to free teachers up to read and discuss books with students and instill in students an enjoyment of reading as they develop their skills.
Teachers, meanwhile, can start implementing simple instructional routines that support advanced foundational reading skills and make use of existing modules in their schools’ high-quality instructional materials that cover advanced foundational literacy skills.
