Our Middle School Reading Scores are Dropping – Help!

Thanks for the post. I have grown weary of many of the so-called SoR people wagging their finger and insisting weak phonics instruction the culprit in all weak reading scores. There have been excellent articles/books written for teachers in recent years on the complex issue we call comprehension. I taught a literacy class at H.S. for students who were on IEPs. My class was routinely composed (mostly) of students who were excellent decoders, but who failed comprehension assessments on material they had read with accuracy, and students who presented with a "mod-severe dyslexic" profile and really could not read the text on their own due to weak word identification. If you read the text to the latter group, they could ask/answer questions pertaining to the selection, reason and infer, etc. Clearly this (smaller) group of students are impacted by weak decoding skills and will benefit from more intensive instruction during elementary school. We know that the state tests tend to emphasize content area reading and we have all seen students excel reading grade level material when the content is familiar to them, but struggle with unfamiliar content. While there are factors that can render text more or less difficult to read and comprehend, "grade level" text is itself a nuanced concept. I have noted a dearth of content area instruction as we "hammer" ELA and math in hopes of raising test scores. A familiar pattern in upper elementary grades these days is to alternate, after lunchtime, between teaching science and social studies content delivering a half year of science and a half year of social studies. Oh, as many schools where I live dismiss an hour early on Wednesdays for teacher planning time, content instruction only receives attention 4 days per week. I am fairly certain content areas should be getting more emphasis and they offer particularly fertile ground for teaching and developing vocabulary, critical thinking and reasoning plus opportunities to respond through writing. While I appreciate Tim's point that we must teach students with "grade level" materials, I am concerned about how we address the students who present with that dyslexic profile I mentioned. I spent my career teaching these students and often noted that given the intensity and regularity of instruction they required, I could make a difference, but ignoring their issues and simply reading grade level texts to them did not address their oftentimes basic word identification difficulties.

Dewey-
There is not a lot of research on this, but the research that exists indicates that teaching learning disabled kids with grade level texts should be preferred. The point isn't to leave these kids behind but to create situations in which you can teach these students to deal with the complexity.

tim

I agree that we teachers haven't had the training we need on how to teach with more challenging texts. I know it is hard for me to wrap my head around, as struggling students have so many gaps, gaps in skills that should have been attained in primary grades. I have the same question as Jill's: what do you recommend that will allow teachers to acquire that knowledge. I have a vested interest this year, particularly, because I will be working with fourth grade students performing in the lowest quartile on state testing. Thank you for any information you can give me.

Cindy--
That is a big part of what my book is about -- it provides practical advice on what needs to be taught as well as guidance as to how to teach it.
tim

As usual Tim, what you write is very important for educators to understand.

I read this blog faithfully and gave taught special education reading and ELD for more than 25 years. This year I have returned to a position I had years ago to work with higher levels Els at the middle school level. I have purchased the kindle version of your book on leveling. And I am left feeling somewhat overwhelmed. My long experience teaches me that the kids need much more writing, discussion level analysis and sentence building and deconstructing. I can do all of this with a group of kids pulled out, one text and make my own materials. So for example, The GIVER, as the common text. However, I am to support all the teachers with their given text, giving me 60 minutes per week with a given student. All the ELD teachers in my large district have this mandate.
My problem is best practices never seems to emphasize that TIME must be allotted for students to do this work in order to catch up. My attitude is do what you want with the above average kids but plan well for the kids that are behind. Thoughts?

Lwj--
You are certainly correct about the importance of time. That's why, when organizing instruction, begin considering the amounts of time needed. I strongly believe that kids should be getting 2 hours per day of reading and writing instruction (that's at least twice what any other subject gets -- but it does include reading, writing, literature, spelling, oral language -- so it doesn't seem unreasonable). Then, I focus on the things that need to be learned and I've organized those into words and parts of words, text reading fluency, reading comprehension, and writing. They are all essential, so I want classroom instruction to be divided roughly among these (they don't need to balance in a day, but they should over a week or two). Tier 2 instruction is different in that it can afford to target one of these areas without worrying about covering everything else (thus, the Tier 2 teacher may focus on phonics for kids who are struggling with that aspect of reading -- and she should be able to depend on the classroom teacher to cover everything else, etc.). Working with complex text is specifically a reading comprehension and fluency issue (the teacher may use some of the word work and writing to support this work, but the reading of the texts themselves goes into those text reading categories).

There are all kinds of ways that a Tier 2 teacher can contribute to this. For example, for kids who are far behind, Tier 2 might take kids through the classroom text ahead of time (preteaching vocabulary, offering guided decoding support, practicing fluency), so that when the complex text comes up in class, these students will be closer to the level of their classmates and more likely to participate. Giving struggling readers a double dose can be very helpful, and that tends to be very motivational since it gives these kids a chance to succeed along with their peers.

Co-planning this kind of thing is not that difficult. Essentially, you need to know what text the kids are going to take on next week, and you do everything you can to strengthen kids' ability to handle that text.

tim

Thank you for your response Tim, and for your patience with my texting errors. I will ruminate on your answer.

Thank you for giving attention and excellent suggestions to improving reading instruction at the middle school level.

Rather than provide a daily block of two hours to reading instruction, it might be a good idea to integrate reading instruction into content classes like science and social studies. Every teacher should be a reading teacher even at the middle school level.

The teacher is the key!

Promoting professional development in reading instruction is not sufficient. Two hours of professional development is a weak triage that will never significantly improve the massive reading instruction problem. Teachers who have been indoctrinated into the failed reading level approach will require extensive efforts to change their flawed reading instructional practices!

It is time to create a paradigm shift in reading instruction at the woeful colleges of education. We can avoid professional development triage by nipping the problem in the bud and ensuring that pre-service teachers learn appropriate ways to teach reading and writing at the middle school level.

Your awesome suggestions should be incorporated into pre-service instruction for teachers.

We still have a long way to go!

You mention your book here:
“Timothy Shanahan Sep 06, 2025 05:55 PM
Cindy--
That is a big part of what my book is about -- it provides practical advice on what needs to be taught as well as guidance as to how to teach it.
tim”

What is the name of the book?
Thank you

Helen--
Shanahan, T. (2025). Leveled reading, leveled lives. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press.

tim

You said in your article that fluency development continues for students through 8th grade.. where could I find some research or articles to support that? I believe in this whole heartedly but unfortunately teachers in my intermediate buildings feel like fluency should not be worked on past 2nd grade, and instead what 3rd-5th graders need is comprehension only. I'd love to get some discussion going around fluency at our PLC's. Thank-you

When my 5 year old child began school late last century , she had been well prepared with my basic phonic programme and sight words but within six weeks , on a dose of the schools predictive WL readers , she was thoroughly confused and could read nothing . I believe this also happens with middle school children with reading weaknesses . Consequently working for decades with hundreds of remedial students I avoid these WL leveled readers like the plague. It took many , many weeks to remediate my child, and I kept her home to avoid the damnable school readers. I am still angry at those infernal readers ! They belong in the trash can or for cut up activities .

For me the very annoying current phrase" we got it wrong in the past , but now we know better' , should be replaced with " We had many things right in the past but for no good reason but largely based on ideology ,thoroughly destructive reading methods were introduced , and we need to regain some of what what we lost ". In reply to Timothy's 'no research ' argument , above I would suggest in the past classroom teachers succeeded because they were not confounded by diabolical ideology ,foisted on them by academics . Instead they focused on the academic achievement of the student instead , uncluttered by theoretical nonsense .That explains , for me why many ( but admittedly not all ) of the classroom teaching practices in the distant past ( earlier last century) align with current neuro and cognitive sciences and research.
Successful classroom teachers not academics in the past trained student teachers. There is very little research Timothy mentions , that I find in conflict with good past practices.

One of the main features , I am thinking about is the involvement of parents, friends , older siblings etc in the teaching of struggling students.
This is where the concept of reading workbooks that anyone can use. comes in .The workbooks I am thinking of are those of the old American basal readers ,used by NZ in the 1960s and 70s , and the academic American workbooks of Curriculum phonics and Professor Heilman's phonics , loaded up correctly with constant revision and a multitude of examples and situations , which cognitive science would now support. We ,, in our private schoolroom. used the Ginn 100 series because they had humour as they covered word study skills , structure vocabulary, phonic analyses ( phonics that was complete but too slow ), comprehension skills and more. They were complemented by phonic readers , trade books, of the child' s choice and interest of lower or higher levels , for home reading, phonic, and high frequency dictation and spelling lists and phonic games and drills. With direction given for use on each page these workbooks were suited and adapted for 'anyone ' (with patience ), using them for individual tuition. Consequently in tuition the parent or other was directed on how to work through the set pages at home with the child. These lessons for the parent were half an hour a week and they could phone and request advice during the week which included advice on rebellious children which is very common with remedial students. If a child had difficulty with a page , this was noted and similar or the same page repeated then and later. In this era of busy parents older and able students in the school could be used for the tuition. Dyslexic children particularly can need a phenomenal amount of practice.
This feature of involving parents and other non professionals in a very elementary child's reading instruction and remedial work was still dominant , along with explicit, systematic phonics ,when NZ had the highest reading standards on international reading tests as were the American workbooks in classes for those in the bottom half of the achievement level. I am not considering this old workbooks model be considered for high achievers at higher grade level but good for particularly middle and upper school. lower achievers. Incidentally Marie Clay ignored this aspect of literacy history altogether in her dastardly flawed research in the 1960-70s.

Michelle-
The idea that oral reading fluency continues to develop long after the primary grades can be drawn from the various studies of normative performance (that 4th graders are significantly more fluent than 3rd graders, 5th graders are more fluent than 4th graders, and so on up through 8th grade has long been known (both for oral and silent reading). Here are several examples.

Barth, A. E., Stuebing, K. K., Fletcher, J. M., Cirino, P. T., Romain, M., Francis, D., & Vaughn, S. (2012). Reliability and Validity of Oral Reading Fluency Median and Mean Scores among Middle Grade Readers When Using Equated Texts. Reading psychology, 33(1-2), 133–161. https://doi.org/10.1080/02702711.2012.631863

DIBELS 7th grade norms
https://dibels.amplify.com/docs/DIBELS8thEditionGoals_7.pdf

DIBELS 8th grade norms
https://dibels.amplify.com/docs/DIBELS8thEditionGoals_8.pdf

https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/fluency/articles/fluency-norms-chart-2017-update

https://resources.corwin.com/sites/default/files/fisher_et_algrades_k-12_figure_2.5.pdf

In Grade 2, variation in fluency explain about 80% of the differences in reading comprehension. In other words, if you could get all the kids equal on fluency, the differences in comprehension ability would decline by a whopping 80%. That is because initially the biggest difference in reading performance is due to differences in decoding ability. By grade 8, this shrinks to about 25%. That obviously is much smaller but it is still a large segment of performance.

tim

I think somewhere in getting degrees to teach ELA at the secondary level, the memo was to teach texts and not comprehension and writing craft. The explicit teaching of comprehension stratgies and text structure as student texts become more complex for our 10-15 year olds is vital to their continued growth and success as readers, and content learners. Content area teachers tend to love their content, so they struggle to understand the student who basically views their beloved topic as a foreign language. Helping these teachers explicity teach the literacy of their content is an ongoing challenge in my district curricular role, but it is a challenge that is yielding great results for the teachers and students. Any pointers for working with middle and high school teachers would be appreciated!

Hi… on the GL Assessment Dyslexia Screener the result for 10 year old boy suggested a few signs of dyslexia observed . How as a classroom teacher do I help this child as there is no learning support in our school for this level of dyslexia.
Thanking you

AnnMarie-

Indicating that signs of dyslexia are observed is too general to be useful. No one would have any idea what to do to help such a student. A dyslexia diagnosis is a general category that has no pedagogical value (it says he is having trouble or might be, but it tells you nothing about what the trouble is).
sorry.

tim

Jennifer--
More specifics... no problem.
I would suggest that you go into the Publications section of this blog and there are powerpoints and articles there about teaching with complex text -- with lots of examples, including Literacy and the ACT, along with any of the items on disciplinary literacy, literacy in social studies and science, and on complex text.
Good luck.
tim

One thing that I suggest for middle school teachers is to become familiar with the work of our mutual friend, Dr. Tim Rasinski. His way of doing repeated reading has resulted in better fluency and comprehension for students of all ages, including middle school children. One of the additional benefits of his method of repeated readings and teachers providing his ever-popular word ladders is that students learn more about sound-symbol relations and how to utilize them. BTW, he gives away free word ladders every week on Twitter. One of the things that surprised me is that many of our younger teachers are not aware of his work.

Thanks to Dr. Shanahan for shining a much needed light on disciplinary text reading by students in elementary grades!

A couple of points.

Fluency instruction for disciplinary reading should focus on slowing down and include frequent integration of writing while reading. Students need to record questions and their thoughts directly on the pages of the disciplinary text that they are reading. These efforts will enhance the use of critical thinking and personal inquiry that will catalyze a fuller comprehension of the disciplinary text. Bottom line: Students need to slow down, think, and write as they read disciplinary texts.

Advocacy of professional development to ameliorate the deficiencies in instruction related to disciplinary reading is not sufficient. Occasional PD triage will never overcome the tremendous deficiencies teachers have in instructing disciplinary reading.

The epigram of measuring twice and cutting once is appropriate in this situation.

We must address the real deficiencies found within the woeful colleges of education. Pre-service teaching must emphasize appropriate ways to teach students how to read disciplinary texts.

A reading instruction paradigm shift will not occur with a 2-hour PD session. Fix the problem at the root: the colleges of education.

I find it interesting that studies show that higher scores in earlier grades do not translate to higher scores in later grades. I know this question is focused on phonics, but is this phenomenon, especially in the modern context, due to lack of proper motivation and reading incentives in classrooms? Are phonics over-emphasized in earlier grades over other aspects of reading like comprehension and connectivity to reading? From a middle and highschool perspective, many students arrive in class with very negative attitudes toward reading, and half the battle is penetrating these negative mindsets in students in order to increase their literacy. I think the lower Decoding abilities present in older students might be due to 'How' they are taught to read, rather than a deficit in phonics. Growing a student's ownership of their reading in highschool and increasing their motivation to read seems increases their quality of writing and comprehension of the texts they encounter.