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The Importance of Decoding and Word Recognition in Long-Term Reading Success

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 10:14:45 -0800

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Word-Level Reading Skills Lay the Foundation for Skilled Reading

In reading development, there are early foundational skills that lay the foundation for later reading success. Developing these skills takes time, intentional practice, and feedback from a skilled teacher. Much like a coach teaches a basketball player how to dribble and shoot a basketball, a reading instructor teaches learners how to decode and build automatic word recognition. The importance of decoding cannot be overemphasized; Share (1997) described decoding as the critical word learning mechanism in alphabetic language. This is important because successful decoding leads to automatic word recognition. Therefore, knowing how to support readers in successful decoding is imperative to reading success.

If you have taught younger grades, such as first or second grade, you are probably familiar with what decoding and word recognition are and how to teach learners to decode and automatically recognize the words written on the page. However, if you are an upper elementary, middle, or high school teacher, you probably received little training in your teacher preparation program on supporting readers who are learning to decode and build automatic word recognition, yet you probably have had students who require support in building these skills.

As a former upper elementary and middle school teacher, I recall very little instruction in early literacy, but in the classroom, I needed the skills to teach middle grade learners how to successfully decode new, often multisyllabic, words while building their word recognition skills to become proficient readers. So, in this article, we cover what decoding and word recognition are and how to assess them. Then, be sure to return for the next article that discusses how to support learners in developing decoding and word recognition skills based on assessment results.

What is Decoding?

Put simply, decoding comprises the ability to “get words off the page.” Although decoding skills can be distilled into a simple explanation, the process of learning to decode is much more complex than the simple explanation conveys.

Decoding is a hallmark of skilled reading (Adams et al., 1997; Fletcher & Lyon, 1998; Rack et al., 1992; Share, 1995; Stanovich & Siegel, 1994; Vellutino et al., 1997) and is considered one of the most critical reading skills (Wang et al., 2019) because of its connection to comprehension (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Wang et al., 2019).

So, just what is decoding? According to Gough and Turner (1986), decoding is dependent on knowledge of letter-sound correspondence rules that lead to reading isolated words quickly and accurately. It is the sophisticated ability to translate words from print to speech and the “act of deciphering a new word by sounding it out” (Foorman et al., 2016, p. 38). While this may seem relatively simple to a skilled reader, decoding consists of sophisticated subskills that lead to later reading success (National Reading Panel, 2000).

Decoding Subskills

A precursor to reading the words on a page is the ability to hear individual sounds (i.e., phonemes) in words, to break apart those sounds into individual units, and then blend the sounds together to produce the sounds in a word (National Reading Panel, 2000). These skills are built through phonological awareness instruction that explicitly teaches learners how to segment and blend sounds at the word level, syllable level, onset and rime level, and finally, at the phoneme level (Blachman, 2000; Lane et al., 2001).

Building phonological awareness requires readers to recognize words at the sentence level, for instance, without reading a word on the page, a reader needs to know that the sentence “The doghouse is red.” is composed of four words that each have their own meaning. Then, learners move to the syllable level to recognize that doghouse is made up of two syllables: dog + house. Next, learners move to the onset and rime level where they learn to separate any sound that comes before the vowel (r in red) from the rime, which is the vowel and anything that comes after it (ed in red). Then, at the phoneme level, learners segment and blend the sounds with teacher support. The phoneme level is the final stage of developing phonological awareness where learners are first taught how to blend together individual phonemes, such as /r/ /e/ /d/ to produce /red/ before being asked to segment (break apart) the individual sounds in a word, since that is a more difficult skill. The process of building phonological awareness at each level is imperative to future reading success as measures of children's phonological awareness, such as attending to and manipulating phonemes, is connected to long-term academic success (Adams, 1994).

As learners build their phonological awareness, they build letter-sound correspondence that is necessary for decoding success (National Reading Panel, 2000). Through systematic phonics instruction, learners gain the necessary skills to read and spell words (Harris & Hodges, 1995). Once readers have the ability to sound out words, with repetition, they start building automatic word recognition.

What is Word Recognition?

As readers become increasingly proficient decoders, automatic word recognition develops. Automatic word recognition is defined as the ability for a reader to decode text instantly without conscious effort (Kuhn et al., 2010; La Berge & Samuels, 1974; Logan, 1997). The skill of word recognition develops through repeated practice and exposure to text and words. Automatic word recognition is crucial for long-term reading success as it allows for fluent, accurate, and expressive reading (Wolf, 2018), and, more importantly, attention to be given to word meaning (Moats, 1998).

Considering the importance of successful decoding and automatic word recognition, it is crucial to assess students' abilities to determine the areas that they may struggle with so teachers can provide targeted instruction that improves decoding and word recognition skills.

Assessing Decoding and Word Recognition Skills

The importance of assessing decoding and word recognition skills cannot be understated, especially for adolescent readers who are not proficient and are not likely receiving instruction focused on decoding and word recognition. Underdeveloped decoding and word recognition skills will impede reading comprehension until these early foundational skills are strengthened. In an earlier article, we discussed a Critical Link between Decoding and Reading Comprehension. The article highlights a recently discovered decoding threshold — students below the threshold are unlikely to improve their reading comprehension. Lower than expected decoding and word recognition skills are often an indicator of dyslexia (Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2005). Thus, assessing students' abilities to decode and automatically recognize words will help identify students who require additional instruction to build word-level skills, and, possibly, even require individualized education services.

When assessing students' abilities to decode and automatically recognize words, they are often presented with a list of isolated words and asked to say the words aloud (Wren, 2004), without giving the meaning of the words, which occurs during vocabulary assessments. The words selected for the decoding task are expected to be in students' oral vocabulary with a combination of phonetically regular (e.g., dog) and irregular words (e.g., one), along with nonsense words (e.g., gorf). In assessing word recognition, the list of isolated words is based on the expected words that students are supposed to read automatically given their current grade level (Christ & Cramer, 2011).

In primary grades, both decoding and word recognition are usually orally administered using one-on-one assessments, such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) or the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE). However, when learners can independently decode, likely beginning in 3rd grade, decoding and word recognition tests can be administered silently using online assessments, such as ReadBasix, that allow teachers to assess multiple students in parallel. ReadBasix, asks students to recognize sight words and decode nonwords (Sabatini et al., 2019).

Often, assessments separate identifying letters and real words from producing possible pronunciations of nonwords. However, the ReadBasix approach uniquely combines assessing word recognition and decoding to measure multiple aspects of word knowledge: an understanding of letter-to-sound correspondence, knowledge of spelling patterns, and recognition of the visual representation of real words. To do this, ReadBasix asks students to decode three types of words: real words, nonwords, and pseudohomophones, which are nonwords that sound exactly like real English words when pronounced, for instance bloo. Measuring students' knowledge in this manner allows one subtest to efficiently evaluate both word recognition and decoding simultaneously. You can find out more about how ReadBasix assesses word recognition and decoding here.

Implications

To ensure the foundation of reading is laid through strong decoding and word recognition, readers need to be skilled in decoding unfamiliar words with ease and accuracy. Therefore, educators of all grades need to have the tools that help identify gaps so that students' decoding and word recognition abilities can be monitored until they demonstrate proficiency since these skills lead to long-term reading success.

Bibliography

Adams, M. J. (1994). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. MIT press.
Blachman, B. A. (2000). Phonological awareness. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Rosenthal, P. D. Pearson, and R. Barr (eds.), Handbook of reading research, 3, pp. 483-502. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Christ, T., & Cramer, R. (2011). Assessing word recognition and fluency using an informal reading inventory. Michigan Reading Journal, 43(1), 4.
Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7, 6-10. https://doi.org/10.1177/074193258600700104
Kuhn, R. M., Schwanenflugel, P. J., & Meisinger, E. B. (2010). Aligning Theory and Assessment Fluency: Automaticity, Prosody and Definitions of Fluency. Reading Research Quarterly, 45, 230-251. https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.45.2.4
Harris, T., & Hodges, R. (Eds.). (1995). The literacy dictionary. International Reading Association. Hoover, W. A., & Gough, P. B. (1990). The simple view of reading. Reading and Writing, 2, 127-160. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00401799
La Berge, D., & Samuels, S. J. (1974). Toward a Theory of Automatic Information Processing in Reading. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 293-323. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(74)90015-2
Logan, G. D. (1997). Automaticity and Reading: Perspectives from the Instance Theory of Automatization. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 13, 123-147. https://doi.org/10.1080/1057356970130203
Moats, L. C. (1998). Teaching decoding. American Educator, 22(1), 42-49.
National Reading Panel (U.S.) & National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S.). (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: an evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Sabatini, J., Weeks, J., O' Reilly, T., Bruce, K., Steinberg, J., & Chao, S.-F. (2019). SARA Reading Components Tests, RISE forms: Technical adequacy and test design, 3rd edition (Research Report No. RR-19-36). Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.
Share, D. L. (1997). Understanding the significance of phonological deficits in dyslexia. English Teacher's Journal, 51, 50–54.
Shaywitz, S. E., & Shaywitz, B. A. (2005). Dyslexia (specific reading disability). Biological Psychiatry, 57(11), 1301-1309.
Wang, Z., Sabatini, J., O'reilly, T., & Weeks, J. (2019). Decoding and reading comprehension: A test of the decoding threshold hypothesis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(3), 387.
Wolf, G. (2018). Developing reading automaticity and fluency: Revisiting what reading teachers know, putting confirmed research into current practice. Creative Education, 9, 838-855. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2018.96062
Wren, S. (2002). Methods of Assessing Cognitive Aspects of Early Reading Development.

Improving Word Recognition and Decoding Skills

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 10:14:06 -0800

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Using Assessment Data to Guide Word Recognition and Decoding Instruction

Early on in my teaching career, I completed a course in teaching learners to decode using phonics. This course taught all of the phonemes and graphemes along with their correspondences while providing cute activities with fun pictures for students to color. It was sold as the complete package for reading success. But, it did lack an important component—a meaningful assessment that could guide instruction. I did not realize the lack of assessment until a couple of years later when I was completing a master's program in reading and literacy. During a course in early literacy, I was exposed to valid and reliable one-on-one assessments that provide meaningful data to guide instruction, including phonics screeners (e.g., CORE Phonics Survey, 95 Percent Group's Phonics Continuum) and decoding measures (e.g., Test of Word Reading Efficiency) that can be used with a wide range of learners including those in Grades K-2 who require read aloud measures. I also explored silent reading measures, including computer-based assessments that measure word recognition and decoding skills (e.g., ReadBasix) that can be used in Grades 3 and up.

In my course of study, I learned that after administering a word recognition and decoding assessment, the next step is to analyze the results. In word recognition and decoding, determining which subskills (see our previous article, The Importance of Decoding and Word Recognition in Long-Term Reading Success, that details specific subskills) are strengths and those that require additional support is important. Based on the analysis of assessment results, teachers create instructional plans to help learners become skilled decoders and automatic word readers.

Analyzing the Results

Any sound assessment will provide meaningful actionable results. When analyzing the assessment results, you will want to look at what students were able to do and what they require additional support in according to the assessment. If students score low on the word recognition and decoding assessment, it is critical that they receive explicit instruction in decoding skills since researchers have found a connection between decoding skills and successful comprehension.

In one study, Wang and colleagues (2019) found a decoding threshold that is connected to reading comprehension, which is discussed in a previous article, A Critical Link Found between Decoding and Reading Comprehension. The research with over 40,000 students in grades 5-10 determined that when a reader scores below a certain threshold on the ReadBasix assessment, there was no relation between decoding and reading comprehension, meaning an inability to effectively decode severely impedes comprehension. Conversely, researchers found that when a reader scored above the decoding threshold, there was a positive linear relation between decoding and reading comprehension, i.e. the stronger decoding skills are — the stronger comprehension skills will be. These findings are similar to those of other researchers, such as Perfetti and Hart (2001) and Shankweiler and colleagues (1999).

Thus, no matter what assessment is used for measuring word recognition and decoding, it is important to remember that skilled word recognition and decoding is a precursor to proficient reading comprehension and requires direct instruction to build the necessary reading skills that contribute to comprehension. If students demonstrate a need for decoding instruction by scoring low on the assessment, it is important that teachers create a plan for instruction that will help meet students' needs.

Planning for Instruction

To plan for instruction, I suggest using the backward design process outlined by Wiggins and McTighe (2005) in their book, Understanding by Design. The authors outline a 3-stage process to meet students' instructional needs: 1. Identify desired results; 2. Determine acceptable evidence; and 3. Plan learning experiences and instruction.

1. Identify desired results. In this stage, educators determine which knowledge and skills students should gain. When the goal is to support readers in becoming skilled decoders with automatic word recognition, the required skills include:

Building phonological awareness, including blending and segmenting word parts and phonemes
Establishing the letter-sound correspondence
Analyzing mono- and multi-syllabic words based on syllable types and letter combinations
Developing automatic word recognition of sight words

2. Determine acceptable evidence. The next stage determines how educators will know when students have achieved the desired results. At this point, it is imperative to select the type of assessment that will be used. The assessment needs to be aligned to the desired results. So, in this instance, the assessment needs to measure phonological awareness, phonics skills, word analysis, and sight words.

3. Plan learning experience and instruction. In the final stage, educators create learning experiences that will equip students with the desired knowledge and skills. The amount of instructional intervention required for students varies; however, researchers suggest that elementary-aged students require at least 8-16 weeks with 30-120 minutes per day and that secondary students require more time in intensive intervention to make progress (Vaughn et al., 2012). Therefore, students will receive an intensive intervention that builds the sound-to-letter correspondence and utilizes word analysis to build automatic word recognition.

Since it is rare to have resources available to provide one-on-one instruction for 30 minutes, it is important to note that students can be grouped together based on their specific reading skill needs. For instance, if all students in a class or grade-level completed the same reading assessment that measured word recognition and decoding, you can analyze the results to determine groups of 3-5 students who will benefit from similar instruction. In small groups, increasing the time to 45 minutes may be helpful.

Instructional Planning Example

Let us say you analyze students' data and find that your students require an intervention on foundational decoding skills, namely phonics instruction. It is likely that at least some of them fall below the decoding threshold, suggesting that those students lack the knowledge of sound-letter correspondence and have significant difficulty recognizing words that are relatively common in the English language. Students' inadequate word recognition skills present a substantial barrier and significantly impact their ability to comprehend texts. It is important to note that readers must be able to decode a word and connect its pronunciation to meaning to add it to their sight word vocabulary.

If students lack knowledge of sound-letter correspondence, they need to be taught phonemic awareness, which is the ability to detect, identify, and manipulate phonemes in spoken words, or the understanding that spoken language can be broken into phonemes. Students also need to know that a phoneme is the smallest unit of spoken language that makes a difference in a word's meaning. For example, the phonemes /s/ and /f/ are different and impact the meaning of the word sat compared to fat.

When planning learning experiences, you should begin with easier tasks and move to more difficult tasks to build the student's phonemic awareness. A set of instructional learning experiences is outlined below.

Initial learning experiences begin with rhyming activities that build phonological awareness, such as the activities found at Reading Rockets.
Then, learning experiences move to blending and segmenting word parts and phonemes. For word-part blending and segmenting, compound words will be used, such as doghouse or toothbrush, with picture cards. And, for phoneme blending and segmenting, words that have two phonemes will be used, such as am or no, before moving to longer words. For more blending and segmenting activities, refer to Reading Rockets.
Finally, learning experiences use picture cards to sort by the sound, such as this sort.

The next set of activities focus on building students' phonics understanding. For these, you should use activities focused on phonics instruction to build the grapheme-phoneme correspondence.

The first type of learning experience should follow an explicit and systematic phonics plan.
While creating instructional activities, consider using manipulatives to teach the grapheme-phoneme correspondence (see, Elkonin boxes).

The third stage of activities builds students' automatic word recognition. Activities include opportunities to work with larger units of language and irregular words, often called sight words.

You should plan learning experiences focused on teaching larger units of language including word families and spelling patterns, including phonograms, and onsets and rimes.
Finally, high frequency sight words should be taught to build automatic word recognition from the Fry Sight Word List and the Dolch Sight Word List.

What About Students Who Don't Fall Below the Decoding Threshold?

Although the decoding threshold marks a need for intensive intervention in word recognition and decoding, students who demonstrate some command of decoding skills but are not yet proficient require a different set of learning experiences to increase their decoding skills and build automatic word recognition. This is important because students who have difficulty in accurately decoding words may become frustrated with their speed and start skipping words, which impacts comprehension. When students have to slow down and sound out words, it impedes their ability to comprehend the text due to interrupted attention given to the text (Arrington et al., 2014 [PACT]). Rather than focusing on the early literacy skills as previously mentioned, students who have some command of word recognition and decoding require different learning experiences that focus on word analysis.

Learning experiences should include an effective form of word analysis skill instruction to explicitly learn the six syllable types. Resources include those from the Meadows Center, the University of Utah Reading Clinic, and Rewards.
In building word recognition, students learn advanced word analysis skills, such as letter combinations (e.g., /ee/ as in the words meet, greet, and feet), advanced syllable types, such as vowel consonant e as in make and consonant -le as in stable. Advanced word analysis instructional materials can be found at the Meadows Center.

Final Thoughts

Once readers are able to effectively analyze words to sound out unknown words while building the number of automatic words, readers no longer require explicit instruction in word recognition and decoding. At this point, students will be ready for instruction in other foundational reading skills. Be sure to measure students' skills after providing instructional intervention, or even midway, depending on the intervention length; use the same word recognition and decoding assessment for pre and post testing so that you can monitor students' progress. If you don't have a reliable assessment that measures word recognition and decoding along with other reading skills in Grades 3-12, look to the ReadBasix assessment to provide meaningful data that can guide learning experiences and instruction.

Bibliography

Arrington, C. N., Kulesz, P. A., Francis, D. J., Fletcher, J. M., & Barnes, M. A. (2014). The contribution of attentional control and working memory to reading comprehension and decoding. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18, 325–346.
Perfetti, C. A., & Hart, L. (2001). The lexical basis of comprehension skill. In D. S. Gorfien (ed). On the consequences of meaning selection: Perspectives on resolving lexical ambiguity, pp. 67-86. American Psychological Association; Washington, DC.
Shankweiler, D., Lundquist, E., Katz, L., Stuebing, K. K., Fletcher, J., Brady, S., et al. (1999). Comprehension and decoding: Patterns of association in children with reading difficulties. Scientific Studies of Reading 31: 69–94.
Vaughn, S., Wanzek, J., Murray, C. S., & Roberts, G. (2012). Intensive interventions for students struggling in reading and mathematics. A practice guide. Center on Instruction.
Wang, Z., Sabatini, J., O'reilly, T., & Weeks, J. (2019). Decoding and reading comprehension: A test of the decoding threshold hypothesis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(3), 387.
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. ASCD.

What Educators Want from a Reading Assessment

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Dr. Yevgen Borodin

We administered a survey on what educators really thought about and wanted from their reading assessments. What we learned from the 100+ educators who responded to the survey surprised us, but the most interesting findings were in what educators actually wanted from their assessments.

Demographics.The respondents were K-12 administrators representing 36 states; 11% of the respondents were from urban districts, 24% — suburban, 65% — rural. In terms of district size, 43% were under 600 students 25% — 600–2.5k, 9% — 2.5k-5k, 8% — 5k-10k, 11% — 10k-25k, and 3% 25k+.

Survey findings

Use of Technology. Three quarters of the districts (75%) were using Google Classroom, and the remainder was mostly split between Schoology (14%), Canvas (11%), and SeeSaw (7%) — some districts used more than one LMS. But a few districts were also using other LMS such as Microsoft Classroom, Otus, Edgenuity, and Edmentum. Overwhelmingly, educators wanted to be able to administer their assessments through the learning management system they used.

Purchasing Assessments. Districts used a variety of funding sources to purchase their reading assessments, most often Title I funding, local funding, and grants. However, CARES and ESSER funding is now available for purchasing high-quality assessments that will help address learning loss by accurately assessing students' academic progress and assisting educators in meeting students' academic needs, including through differentiating instruction.

Use of Assessments. We learned that 60% of the respondents were using two and 20% three or more assessments, suggesting there is no one-size-fits-all assessment out there. Interestingly, despite school closures, only 5% of respondents did not use any reading assessments in the 2020–21 SY. It was no surprise that the majority of districts were gravitating to F&P, iReady, NWEA, and STAR, with STAR being the clear winner used by 40% of the respondents; however, 5% were planning to drop STAR for iReady, DIBELS, NWEA, F&P, and Capti Assess (similar to STAR, but more thorough). F&P, iReady, and NWEA were used in roughly 25% of districts each. The second tier was represented by DIBELS and Lexia Rapid at under 10% of districts, followed by a long tail of emerging reading assessments, including Capti Assess, DRA, mClass, AimsWeb, etc.

Satisfaction with Assessments. What surprised us was how dissatisfied the respondents were with the popular assessments such as F&P, iReady, NWEA, and especially STAR. Only 10% of the districts were happy with their assessments, but there was no clear winner. More than 50% of the respondents were somewhat satisfied, and a third (33%) were not happy with their assessments. What is more, many respondents expressed concerns that their reading assessments (across the board) were taking too much time to administer, and yet were not thorough enough. In fact, a number of administrators complained about inconsistent results, which made educators question assessment accuracy and validity. That is why many administrators were on the lookout for any new research-based assessment that would address their concerns.

The Need for Speed vs. Thoroughness. When asked for the one thing that they would change about their assessment, 16% of respondents wanted to make their assessments shorter because they either wanted to reclaim some of the instructional time or wanted to assess students more frequently. Interestingly, 9% of the respondents wanted to be able to assess more reading skills, which is in conflict with the desire for shorter assessments. Assessment designers know that the more questions they use to assess a specific skill, the more accurate and consistent the results will be. What we found particularly interesting is what seems like a contradiction between the need for a faster assessment vs. an assessment that is more thorough (in breadth — the variety of skills assessed, and depth — the number of questions and the amount of time devoted to each skill).

Usability Improvement Requests. Additional requests included easier to understand reports (12%), help with preparing interventions (11%), and improved ease of administration (9%). The report improvements included requests for more details on the performance of at-risk students, opportunities for students to explain their answers, easier to understand for students and parents, and more focus on areas of struggle. Requests for help with intervention were related to the reports, including actionable reports and automatically created interventions.

So, what did educators want from a reading assessment? Opinions differed, but most educators were dissatisfied with the "popular" assessments, and wanted a faster yet more accurate assessment that produced consistent results and that worked with their existing Learning Management Systems.

Assessing the Strands of Skilled Reading | Science of Reading Assessment by Capti

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 10:12:59 -0800

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Hollis Scarborough's conceptualization of the Reading Rope illustrates the interconnected skills students must master to read proficiently. Being able to measure the various skills is important in identifying reading difficulties. So, how do you assess each strand? Continue reading to learn how Capti Assess measures foundational reading skills that contribute to reading success.

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WR / Phonological and Orthographic Awareness

Phonological and Orthographic Awareness is measured by evaluating students’ accuracy and awareness of the alphabetic principle and print concepts (phonemes, syllables, word stress, and letter-to-sound relationships), and orthographic patterns (letter-to-meaning relationships). Phonological and orthographic awareness assessments are primarily for readers in Kindergarten to Grade 2 and are typically delivered one-on-one. Therefore, these skills are precursors to skilled decoding.

WR / Decoding

Decoding can be measured by assessing a student’s ability to produce the sound-to-letter correspondence using real and nonsense words. ReadBasix™ uses real, nonsense, and pseudohomophones (words that sound like real words when decoded) to measure students in Grades 3+ decoding skills.

WR / Sight Recognition

Sight recognition tests ask students to identify real vs. nonsense words. ReadBasix™ does this by asking students to classify individual words as a real word, not a real word, or sounds like a real word.

LC / Background knowledge

Background Knowledge is difficult to measure because it relies on the text’s context. If students read about volcanoes, background knowledge will be specific to volcanoes. ETS ReadAuthentix™, a scenario-based assessment of higher-level reading skills, measures background knowledge to provide meaningful data on what students know about the topic before taking part in authentic reading tasks.

LC / Word-level skills

Word-Level Skills include vocabulary and morphology. To measure these skills, students rely on their knowledge of words and the morphemes that comprise them. ReadBasix™ measures a student’s vocabulary and morphology knowledge by identifying synonyms and closely related words and word parts or morphemes.

LC / Sentence Processing

Sentence Processing refers to the skill of making meaning across a sentence based on the various discourse markers that signal relationships. ReadBasix™ uniquely measures a student’s understanding of syntax and semantics through sentence processing tasks that identify the relationships inherent in a sentence.

LC / Verbal Reasoning

Verbal Reasoning relies on the ability to make inferences and unlock the meaning of figurative language. ReadBasix™ measures verbal reasoning through text-based reading comprehension questions that ask students to integrate text information in order to make inferences and draw conclusions.

LC / Literacy Knowledge

Literacy Knowledge is a skill that is often measured in younger grades. Reading assessments for older readers assume that the test taker will know how to read using print concepts, such as reading a text from top to bottom and left to right. ReadBasix™ uses nonfiction genres on each subtest.

Assessing the woven strands

Reading Fluency is often measured silently for readers beyond Grade 2. Older readers are expected to process more complex texts in school and on reading assessments. ReadBasix™ measures reading fluency using a timed passage.

Skilled Reading requires readers to execute various skills at different times while monitoring for understanding of the text. This means skilled readers are able to recognize when to rely on various skills, such as decoding unfamiliar words or analyzing the meaning of a morpheme. ReadBasix™ measures skilled reading by asking students to read non-fiction passages and answer questions that require basic reading comprehension.

A Critical Link Found between Decoding and Reading Comprehension

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 10:12:27 -0800

Dr. Yevgen Borodin

Students below this decoding threshold are unlikely to improve their reading comprehension in subsequent years

It is a well-known fact that the ability to decode printed texts is critical to reading. It is intuitive that the better your students can decode text, the better their reading comprehension will be. However, until now, no one knew what was the critical decoding threshold below which students would not be able to improve their reading comprehension.

In two large studies, ETS® researchers examined the relationship between decoding and reading comprehension. The researchers were not only able to find the exact threshold below which reading comprehension broke down, but also revealed that students below the threshold in grades 5–9 experienced virtually no growth in their reading comprehension over the course of 3 years!

The details of the research can be found in this 50-page peer-reviewed Journal of Educational Psychology publication. Below is the summary of the findings and instructional implications.

The Summary of Findings

A study with 11,000 students in Grades 5–10 found a reliable decoding threshold (235 in ReadBasix) below which there is no relation between decoding and reading comprehension, and above which there is a positive linear relation. This means that the better students were at decoding, the better their reading comprehension was, but only if they were above the threshold.

Another study with 33,000 students in Grades 5–9 found that the students below the threshold had significantly lower initial reading comprehension scores compared to their peers. The students above the threshold exhibited an acceleration in reading comprehension growth as they moved up in grade level. In contrast, the students below the threshold had virtually no annual growth in reading comprehension over the period of 3 years!

Remarkably, the threshold and a lack of growth in reading comprehension among the students below the threshold remained stable across the grade levels. Regardless of grade level, a decoding score below the threshold reliably predicted low reading comprehension. Finally, there was a significant number of students who were below the decoding threshold even in Grades 10.

Instructional Implications

To improve scores across all subjects and grades, focus on the students with a low decoding skill
If your students are struggling with reading comprehension in Grades 5–12 — assess decoding
Students' reading comprehension will not improve until they cross the decoding threshold
Do not count on your students on being able to self-teach vocabulary before they cross the threshold
Decoding interventions are necessary for students below the threshold regardless of their grade
Decoding interventions will not improve reading comprehension until students cross the threshold

Speaking is Natural — Reading is Not

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Brian Ash

Humans, in our current form, have been around for approximately 300,000 years. We have older hominid ancestors such as Homo Erectus, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and more. Over four million years ago, our ancestors became bipedal (Wayman, 2012). The advantage of being bipedal allowed our ancestors to develop a large brain capacity (Gruss & Scmitt, 2015) as less energy was spent moving, compared to four-legged animals. Less energy spent moving meant more energy spent thinking. Another key advantage of bipedalism was that it freed up our ancestors' hands to gesture and create tools. Being able to communicate through sounds and gestures was crucial to our ancestors' survival as a species, which was facilitated by our excess brain power. All of the aforementioned hominid species, and likely even earlier hominid species, could speak in some form. Some scientists estimate that we have been speaking for up to two million years (Uomini & Meyer, 2013). Thus, speaking is almost as natural to us as walking. For instance, children in France grow up to speak perfect French with a french accent, while children in China do the same with Mandarin or Cantonese. Speaking is literally hard-wired in our brains and essential for survival (Dessales, 2009).

Example: Spiders and snakes can be dangerous and deadly, despite their minuscule size compared to humans. Many of us are afraid of snakes and spiders, despite our tremendous size and strength differences. You are supposed to be afraid of lions, tigers, and bears. Those creatures are fellow apex predators and are massive. They will easily beat us in a fight. However, snakes and spiders are not massive predators. Therefore, why are we afraid of them? This fear has been passed down to us, culturally through the medium of speech. Humans and other hominid species were able to create sounds and gestures to inform other humans that we should avoid such creatures. The humans who were able to speak, understand, and convey these messages were more likely to survive and pass along their genes–SPEAKING IS NATURAL!

The Formation of Writing and Reading

Writing and reading are relatively new skills for humans. The oldest confirmed piece of writing is the Kish Tablet (see Figure 1), found near the ancient Mesopotamian city-state of Kish in modern day Iraq. It is confirmed to be from around 3500 BC making it approximately 5500 years old (Woods, 2010).

Figure 1. Kish Tablet

The writing on the Kish tablet can be called proto-cuneiform (Woods, 2010); historians can tell by the lack of any structure that the scribes at this time were still creating the system of writing for Mesopotamia (Woods, 2010). Think about how amazing that is–humans, who had been nomadic creatures for millenia, came up with a means of preserving their speech across time and space. This type of writing codified itself into a set structure that all scribes could turn back into speech. The first writing system in the world is called cuneiform (see Figure 2), which is a series of lines and hashes. The different lines represent different syllabic sounds, not individual letters (Olson, 2009). Humans had not yet invented a system of writing that attached symbols to individual phonemes (sounds).

Figure 2. Cuneiform tablet

Humans did not use this writing system to record stories or messages as they did not have free time or writing materials to create writing for enjoyment. Rather, writing was used for record keeping, some of the first writings are royal inventories, such as “The King has 300 sheep, 500 bushels of wheat, and 100 gold ingots” (Simpson, 1971). During this time, reading and writing were limited to the highest level elites: royalty, religious leaders, and the scribes who were record keepers. Egyptian scribes were in school for up to 12 years to learn the complex system of writing called hieroglyphics (Elder, 2017). Therefore, despite the fact that humans invented reading and writing almost 6,000 years ago, an extremely small number of humans were able to decode the secrets of the text. Large numbers of humans did not start to learn to read and write until the classical and Hellenistic periods thousands of years later (Morgan, 1998). Even then, before the invention of the printing press, reading and writing were restricted to the educated elite.

Figure 3. Egyptian Hieroglyphics

The first humans to create a system of writing that we would recognize today were the Phoenicians, a sea-faring people from modern day Lebanon (Howard, 2012). Phoenicians were known for being expert traders, and their trading journeys brought them into contact with peoples and civilizations that did not have scribes who could read and write in cuneiform, hieroglyphics, or other symbolic alphabets. Sometime around 1050 BCE Phoenician traders invented a way of encoding individual sounds on clay tablets, pottery, papyrus, and anything else they could use (Scott, 2018). By creating a system of writing that used phonetic symbols (graphemes) that represented sounds (phonemes), they could construct their entire language using this new tool– the ALPHABET! The alphabet got its name from the first two Greek letters–Alpha and Beta. The Greeks, who were very close geographically to the Phoenicians and had extensive contact with them, learned to use this alphabet as well. They even added something crucial–vowels (Cross, 2009)! The Phoenician and Greek alphabets are the basis of the alphabet we use today (see Figure 4 for the evolution of the English alphabet).

Figure 4. Evolution of the English alphabet

While the alphabet, in its earliest form, is roughly 3,000 years old, humans and other hominid species have been speaking to each other for up to 2 million years! Therefore, while speaking is a total natural occurrence for human brains, reading is not! In reality, reading is a new phenomenon for our species that requires our brains to create new neural connections in order to process the squiggly little markings, turn those squiggly little lines into sounds, and combine the sounds into something our brains instinctively recognize–spoken words (Dehaene 2010). Since reading is not a natural process, it is not picked up by our brains as easily as speaking, it is simply too new and novel for our brains. This is why some people really struggle to read despite having excellent speaking skills.

Although speaking is as natural to a human as walking, our brains are not designed to read from birth. We need to be taught how to use a certain set of acquired skills to translate the symbols on a page, statue, movie screen, etc. and turn them into the spoken language our brain is naturally programmed to understand (Dehaene, 2010). This is why, when we read aloud or silently, we are still speaking either externally or internally to create the spoken language our brain needs to understand the symbols. Our brains are constantly attaching meaning and context to certain symbols on a page. This is called orthographic mapping.

Reading is a complex skill that is not naturally acquired through life experiences like speech is. Humans and other hominid species have been speaking for thousands of generations. We have been reading in large numbers for only the last several generations. Therefore it is unrealistic and unreasonable to expect children to learn how to read naturally. Learning how to read requires specific, repetitive instruction to create the neural connections in our brains that allow us to read. Understanding the skills required for reading and measuring those skills is of utmost importance to teachers, educators, and administrators.

The Science of Reading

In recent decades, many educational leaders have adopted the scientifically-based Science of Reading model for understanding how students learn to read. The Science of Reading acknowledges the complexity of reading, and presents a pathway for how proficient reading develops. A commonly used metaphor for the complexity of reading, based on the number of skills reading requires, is Scarborough's Reading Rope (see Figure 5). Scarborough (2001) conceptualized lower (word recognition) and upper (language comprehension) strands. All of the skills are intertwined, and as readers become more accurate, fluent, and increasingly automatic through repetition and practice, they become skilled readers.

Figure 5. Scarborough's Reading Rope

Given the complexity of learning to read, it is important for educators to draw on the decades of reading research that informs the Science of Reading. Specifically, learners require explicit instruction in letter-sound correspondences to acquire reading skills and comprehension (Dehaene, 2010) through letter-by-letter decoding instruction (i.e., phonics instruction; National Reading Panel, 2000). As students learn to decode and automatically recognize words, Ultimately, successful reading is built on a solid foundation in reading skills, such as word recognition and language comprehension, which promote learners' abilities to accurately read words and comprehend the meaning of the text.

Bibliography

Wayman, Erin (2012) , "Becoming Human: The Evolution of Walking Upright"
Gruss, L.T. & Scmitt, D.(2015), “The evolution of the human pelvis: changing adaptations to bipedalism, obstetrics and thermoregulation”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 370:1-13.
Dessales, J.L. (2009), Why we talk: The evolutionary origins of language. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Woods, Christopher (2010), "The earliest Mesopotamian writing", in Woods, Christopher (ed.), Visible language. Inventions of writing in the ancient Middle East and beyond (PDF), Oriental Institute Museum Publications, vol. 32, Chicago: University of Chicago, pp. 33–50, ISBN 978-1-885923-76-9
Olson, David R.; Torrance, Nancy (February 16, 2009). The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-86220-2.
Simpson, W. (1971), The Ancient Near East. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. p. 25.
Scott, John C (2018), "The Phoenicians and the Formation of the Western World". Comparative Civilizations Review. 78 (78).
Cross, Andrew (2009), The Development of the Greek Alphabet within the Chronology of the ANE
Uomini, Natalie Thaïs, Georg Friedrich Meyer (2013), “Shared Brain Lateralization Patterns in Language and Acheulean Stone Tool Production: A Functional Transcranial Doppler Ultrasound Study” https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0072693
Elder, Gregory (2017), “In ancient Egypt, scribal school was the path to the priesthood and the good life” ‘https://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/2017/09/13/in-ancient-egypt-scribal-school-was-the-path-to-the-priesthood-and-the-good-life/'
Morgan, TJ (1998), “Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds”
Dehaene, Stanislas, Felipe Pegado, Lucia W Braga, Paulo Ventura, Gilberto Nunes Filho, Antoinette Jobert, Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz, Régine Kolinsky, José Morais, Laurent Cohen (2010), Nov 11, How learning to read changes the cortical networks for vision and language, 3;330(6009):1359-64. doi: 10.1126/science.1194140. Epub 2010
National Reading Panel (U.S.) & National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S.). (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read : an evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Scarborough, H. S. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In S. Neuman & D. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook for research in early literacy (pp. 97–110). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

How Can We Make Vocabulary Instruction Matter?

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Dr. Margaret Opatz

Building Conceptual Knowledge to Improve Vocabulary

The importance of vocabulary knowledge is no more apparent than in its contribution to reading comprehension. In fact, an enduring finding of reading researchers is how much vocabulary knowledge influences reading comprehension (e.g., Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Baumann et al., 2003; Becker, 1977; Davis, 1942; NRP, 2000; Whipple, 1925). Research tells us that real comprehension cannot happen without adequate vocabulary. Readers need to know between 95% and 98% of the words in a text to successfully comprehend it (Hsueh-Chao & Nation, 2000; Laufer, 1989; Schmitt et al., 2011). Further, broad vocabularies have been found to help with word decoding by giving students a way to confirm that what they sound out is actually a word (e.g., McBride-Chang et al., 2005; Mezynski, 1983).

So, while we know vocabulary's importance in reading, what is it? So often in classrooms, vocabulary is simplified to be 8-10 isolated words that students are to learn during the week. Basal reading programs identify the words to focus on, and provide definitions, weekly activities, and an assessment that likely asks students to match the words to their definitions. This type of vocabulary routine was something I experienced as a teacher and continue to see in classrooms today. But is that vocabulary routine enough?

Based on what research tells us, the simple answer is: No! First, it is impossible to learn enough vocabulary to thrive by direct instruction alone. Second, words live in sentences, which live in paragraphs and larger texts. Teaching words in isolation neglects the context within which the word lives. To really build vocabulary knowledge, we need to move past the definitional level and learn to handle the subtleties and complexities of syntax, context, and funds of knowledge.

What is Vocabulary?

A simplified explanation of vocabulary is the body of words known to an individual person. However, vocabulary also refers to all of the words included in a language. According to Payack (2023), English has over 1 million distinct words. The sheer number of words in English highlights the need to acquire more than 8-10 words per week as mentioned above; at that rate, the student will only learn 3,250 words in 13 years of school (10 words x 13 years x 25 instructional weeks). It is easy to see that direct instruction alone will not be sufficient enough to acquire the quantity and quality of word knowledge required to be literate in today's society.

Types of Words

Educational researchers have theorized various constructs to demonstrate the difference between words. For instance, Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2002, 2008) proposed a 3-tiered system of words. Tier 1 words are those used in everyday conversation. The language used is informal and used when communicating with friends or family, either in writing or in conversation. Tier 2 words are general academic words that are used across content areas (e.g., science, social studies, math). These words help to construct academic texts. For instance, the word analyze can be used in language arts to analyze a novel, in history to analyze a historical account, and in science to analyze the results of an experiment. Understanding the meaning of tier 2 words is critical for comprehending academic texts.

Tier 3 words are found in specific domains and less frequently in non-discipline specific usage (Beck et al., 2002, 2008; Coleman & Pimentel, 2011). Tier 3 words have also been called technical terms (Harmon, Wood, & Medina, 2009) that value precision in meaning (Fang, Schleppegrell, & Cox., 2006; Snow, 2010; Snow & Uccelli, 2009). For instance, scientific words, such as fumarole and lahar are unique to volcanology, have precise meanings, and are not used across disciplines.

How Does Vocabulary Knowledge Develop?

Distinguishing between the different types of words is important for instruction, as is knowing how vocabulary knowledge develops. Vocabulary knowledge development includes more than memorizing a definition (Johnson & Pearson, 1984; Nagy & Scott, 2000), it is multifaceted with word knowledge acquisition occurring incrementally.

Stages of Development

Researchers have conceptualized vocabulary development in multiple ways with the understanding that knowing the meaning of a word is not all or nothing (Beck & McKeown, 1991; Nagy & Scott, 2000). Research commonly recognizes the progressive development of word knowledge that can vary from not knowing a word, to knowing parts of the word, to being able to use it in a sentence, to being able to know how it relates within a complex network of disciplinary knowledge. Dale (1965) proposed dimensions of knowing a word with 4 incremental stages:

Stage 1—Never having seen the term before
Stage 2—Knowing there is such a word, but not knowing what it means
Stage 3—Having context-bound and vague knowledge of the word's meaning
Stage 4—Knowing the word well and remembering it

Between stages 3 and 4, vocabulary knowledge moves from receptive to productive. Receptive vocabulary refers to the capability to comprehend the meaning of a word when a student hears or sees the word as compared to being able to use the word in writing or speech, which is productive vocabulary (Zhou, 2018). Words develop through phases as a student gains more knowledge about the word, then through repeated exposure and learning, they begin to use the word until they reach stage 4. At this stage, a student knows synonyms of the word and the meaning of polysemous words, words with more than one meaning. Knowing the multiple meanings of a word includes knowing the precise and general meanings of a word. For instance, knowing a word well, such as prime, includes knowing the precise meaning, as in math, of a number greater than one that is not the product of two smaller numbers as compared to its general meanings of high quality or of first importance. This example leads to another important point: vocabulary does not develop in isolation.

Assessing Vocabulary Skills

The importance of assessing vocabulary is well-established in schools as evidenced by students often completing weekly assessments to measure their ability to remember the meaning of the words of the week. However, using vocabulary measures to identify students who may be struggling to read proficiently is not as widely employed. Given vocabulary's influence on comprehension, evaluating vocabulary knowledge with a simple and quick yet reliable measure helps to determine which students require additional support.

When selecting a measure, it should include mostly tier 2 words with some tier 3 words and be designed in a way that measures word knowledge in isolation and in context. When students complete a vocabulary assessment that does not present words in context, they have to know the meaning of the word without relying on the context to guess the word. Having students select a synonym (e.g., smart—intelligent) of a given word or match a topical associate (e.g., voice—talking) are two ways to measure word knowledge without providing a context.

Measuring vocabulary knowledge within context is also important as it captures what students can do with the words they know (American Educational Research Association, 2015). Providing context allows students to show whether or not they know the general meaning of a word or the meaning that belongs within the sentence. While many vocabulary assessments exist, ReadBasix quickly measures vocabulary knowledge in both isolation and in context. The vocabulary subtest employs synonyms and meaning associates to measure students' vocabulary knowledge with no context provided, while the reading comprehension subtests measure vocabulary knowledge in context. You can find out more about how ReadBasix assesses vocabulary here.

Implications

Ensuring meaningful vocabulary instruction in the classroom rests on the educator's ability to measure what students know. Educators of all grades need to have the tools that help identify gaps and monitor progress so that students' vocabulary development can be supported to aid in successful reading comprehension.

Bibliography

American Educational Research Association. (2015, January 26). Margaret McKeown Discusses Research on Vocabulary Assessment. [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49vxKZcj7dY
Anderson, R. C., & Freebody, P. (1981). Vocabulary knowledge. Comprehension and teaching: Research reviews, 77-117.
Baumann, J. F., Edwards, E. C., Boland, E. M., Olejnik, S., & Kame'enui, E. J. (2003). Vocabulary tricks: Effects of instruction in morphology and context on fifth-grade students' ability to derive and infer word meanings. American educational research journal, 40(2), 447-494.
Beck, I.L., McKeown, M.G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. The Guilford Press.
Beck, I., & McKeown, M. (1991). Conditions of vocabulary acquisition. In R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Handbook of reading research, Vol. 2, (pp. 789–814). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2008). Creating robust vocabulary: Frequently asked questions and extended examples (Vol. 10). Guilford Press.
Becker, W. (1977). Teaching reading and language to the disadvantaged—What we have learned from field research. Harvard Educational Review, 47(4), 518-543.
Bromley, K. (2007). Nine things every teacher should know about words and vocabulary instruction. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 50, 528-536. https://doi.org/10.1598/JAAL.50.7.2
Coleman, D., & Pimentel, S. (2011). Publishers' criteria for the Common Core State Standards in English language arts and literacy, Grades 3–12. Washington, DC: CCSSO & NASBE.
Davis, F. B. (1942). Two new measures of reading ability. Journal of Educational Psychology, 33, 365-372.
Fang, Z., Schleppegrell, M. J., & Cox, B. E. (2006). Understanding the language demands of schooling: Nouns in academic registers. Journal of Literacy Research, 38(3), 247–273. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15548430jlr3803_1
Harmon, J. M., Wood, K. D., & Medina, A. L. (2009). Vocabulary learning in the content areas: Research-based practices for middle and secondary school classrooms. In K. D. Wood & W. E. Blanton (Eds.), Literacy instruction for Adolescents: Research-based practice (pp. 344-367). The Guilford Press.
Hsueh-Chao, M. H., & Nation, P. (2000). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language, 13(1), 403-30.
Hulstijn, J. (2001). Intentional and incidental second language vocabulary learning: A reappraisal of elaboration, rehearsal and automaticity. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction. Cambridge University Press.
Johnson, D. D., & Pearson, P. D. (1984). Teaching reading vocabulary. NZCER Press.
Kucan, L. (2012). What is most important to know about vocabulary? The Reading Teacher, 65(6), 360-366.
Laufer, B. (1992). How much lexis is necessary for reading comprehension? Vocabulary and Applied Linguistics, 126-132.
Mezynski, K. (1983). Issues concerning the acquisition of knowledge: Effects of vocabulary training on reading comprehension. Review of Educational Research, 53(2), 253-279.
Nagy, W. E., & Scott, J. A. (2000). Vocabulary processes. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. 3, (pp. 269–284). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Payack, P. J. J. (2023, January 25). No. of words. The Global Language Monitor. https://languagemonitor.com/category/number-ofwords/
Rieder, A. (2003). Implicit and explicit learning in incidental vocabulary acquisition. Paper presented at the EUROSLA Conference, Edinburgh.
Schmitt, N., Jiang, X., & Grabe, W. (2011). The percentage of words known in a text and reading comprehension. The Modern Language Journal, 95(1), 26-43.
Snow, C. E. (2010). Academic language and the challenge of reading for learning about science. Science, 328(5977), 450-452. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1182597
Snow, C. E., & Uccelli, P. (2009). The challenge of academic language. In Olson, D. R., & N. Torrance (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy (pp. 112-133). Cambridge University Press.
Whipple, G. (Ed.). (1925). The twenty-fourth yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education: Report of the National Committee on Reading. Public School Publishing.
zhong, h. f. (2018). the relationship between receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge: a perspective from vocabulary use in sentence writing. the language learning journal, 46(4), 357-370.

Putting Lexile in Its Place: Addressing Teachers’ Misunderstandings of the Lexile Framework

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Dr. Margaret Opatz

While text leveling scales, such as Lexile, have been a cornerstone in education for decades (Smith et al., 1989), the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS; Kendall, 2011) increased the emphasis of text complexity in education immensely. Conversations around text complexity became the focus of CCSS reading professional learning opportunities. While it is important to understand what makes a text complex, over the decade since the CCSS adoption, many educators have unfortunately misconstrued what the purpose of Lexile is, believing that a text leveling scale provides absolute measures and that students should always read texts that are within a “just right” range (Schwanenflugel & Knapp, 2015).

Given that Lexile is ubiquitous, we wondered how educators' use and perceive Lexile today. In a national survey, we asked 150+ educators about Lexile's place in education and found that Lexile is used in ways that go beyond the scope of its purpose—often incorrectly. So, we think it is important to put Lexile in its place by addressing its misunderstandings.

The Lexile Framework for Reading

The Lexile Framework for Reading includes over 300,000 books with a Lexile level. Like any text-leveling scale, Lexile focuses on the quantifiable aspects of a text to calculate its difficulty. This means that longer sentences and less frequent words in texts contribute to a higher Lexile score; shorter sentences and more frequent words contribute to a lower Lexile score (Lennon & Burdick, 2004). While Lexile computes a level for a text, it also provides a measure for reader ability.

The strength of Lexile is having a common metric that helps match students to texts (Metametrics, 2017), allowing for better access to materials as texts are matched to students' zone of proximal development (ZPD; Vygotsky, 1978). While matching students to texts is an asset of Lexile, we wondered how educators use Lexile in their practice.

Educators' Uses and Perceptions of Lexile

In a national survey of 150+ educators, we asked educators how they used and perceived Lexile. Some of their responses revealed a misunderstanding, and subsequent misuse of Lexile, which is cause for concern.

Uses. Given that Lexile's strength is its ability to match readers and texts, its uses should reflect this strength. While educators in our survey did mention matching students with texts, they also mentioned using Lexile to:

measure students' reading levels and progress at the class, school, or district level,
level texts within a classroom or school library, and
communicate with students, their families, or administrators about students' progress.

The previously outlined uses are consistent with what Metametrics, the creator of the Lexile Framework for Reading, describes as its strengths.

Misusing Lexile as a diagnostic. Other less common Lexile uses by educators demonstrated a misunderstanding of Lexile's purpose, namely using Lexile as a diagnostic tool. A few educators described Lexile as the “diagnostic tool” that can be used to demonstrate progress and determine learning gaps to better prepare for differentiated instruction. While Lexile can demonstrate progress from one administration to the next, it is not a diagnostic assessment.

When we think about diagnostic assessments in medicine, they are used to confirm or rule out conditions and diseases before the doctor creates a treatment plan. Using Lexile as a diagnostic reading assessment would be like using a thermometer to determine underlying health concerns. A thermometer can tell the medical provider whether or not the patient has a fever, but it cannot tell why. This is exactly what Lexile can do; it provides a number, which can tell us if the reader is within an expected grade-level range or if there is cause for concern and deeper probing through a diagnostic reading assessment is required.

Perceptions. Although a lot changed during the time of the COVID pandemic, teachers' perceptions of the importance of Lexile measures did not change. When we asked educators about the importance of Lexile before and after the pandemic, nearly ¾ of educators said that its importance did not change because of the pandemic. One educator mentioned that Lexile is a “measurement on which a child's reading level is measured,” so she was not sure why it would be different. Other teachers suggested that Lexile is only slightly important since they have other tools that focus on measuring students' reading skills that are standards-based and go beyond providing a singular reading level.

Satisfaction. When asked about their satisfaction with Lexile, over half of respondents said they were at least somewhat satisfied with Lexile. Educators who said they were satisfied mentioned the use of Lexile to match students with texts as a reason for their satisfaction. One teacher mentioned that she was able to find the “right” texts for her students to read. Conversely, some of the educators who said they were dissatisfied with Lexile shared the sentiment that Lexile does not give them enough information to support students. In some ways, it is like taking an individual's temperature, finding out the individual has a fever, and not knowing what to do about the fever.

Confidence. What is interesting is that over 30% of the respondents reported a lack of confidence in how to use Lexile, which suggests that professional development in the use of Lexile is needed. One respondent who said she was completely confident in interpreting results, reported that she cautiously uses interpretations of students' results because of the storied history of readability formulas. She suggested that Lexile provides insight, but not an absolute truth of what a student can do or what they require instructionally. Her suggestion supports the need for additional reading measures that illuminate students' strengths and areas of need.

Misplaced expectations. The most common theme to emerge from respondents' open-ended responses relates to mixed feelings about Lexile. It seems teachers recognize the power of using Lexile to match students to books, but feel like the instructional implications are unclear. However, the sentiment is a result of a misunderstanding of what Lexile is and, consequently, misplaced expectations. By design, Lexile is intended to match students to books, not diagnose reading difficulties. A novice teacher's story about her use of Lexile illuminates the danger of misunderstanding an assessment's purpose.

As a first year teacher, the educator looked for measures that would help her identify what her middle school students needed to become skilled readers. When her school's literacy specialist talked about Lexile, the teacher thought that she had found the “magic ticket.” She administered the assessment and then spent time looking for and buying books for her classroom library that matched students' Lexile levels and interests. She helped students find high interest books at their Lexile level throughout the school year. Then, to her dismay, students did not improve their reading skills, and quantitative measures provided by Lexile remained stagnant from administration to administration.

The teacher believed that much like Goldilocks, the “just right” book, would set students up for success. In hindsight, she realized that what she did not take into consideration was that Lexile is a measure that provides a number representing how well a reader comprehends a text based on text leveling, specifically, word frequency and sentence length. In conversations with more experienced teachers, she recognized the need for explicit instruction in reading skills and processes to better meet students' needs. She also realized that students need to increase the complexity of texts they read throughout the school year as compared to reading within their “comfort” zone.

The Power of Lexile

Lexile can help mitigate learning loss by matching students and instructional materials at appropriate levels. One teacher shared that to overcome post-COVID lockdowns and subsequent learning loss, her school used Lexile measures to plan instruction based on students' reading levels. By taking students' reading levels into consideration, teachers at her school were able to find appropriate texts, in students' ZPD, aligned to curricular goals. Then, over the course of the school year, they included more complex texts that gained in complexity until meeting grade level expectations by the end of the year. Teachers using Lexile measures in this way, allowed students to strengthen their reading skills with easier texts before being placed into more difficult texts. This teacher also used a diagnostic reading assessment in tandem with Lexile to better understand what students were able to do and what skills students required additional support.

The real power of Lexile comes when it is partnered with a diagnostic assessment. By partnering Lexile with a diagnostic reading assessment, educators receive a more holistic picture of what a reader can do and the areas where the reader requires support. Then, the teacher can use the Lexile measure to match the student to appropriately leveled texts during instruction. The combination of Lexile with a diagnostic reading assessment strengthens the data teachers receive to create instructional plans that improve reading outcomes.

Many reading assessments now include Lexile (see the list) to provide a starting point for text complexity to better meet curricular goals; however, most of these are not diagnostics, but benchmarks. Recently, Metametrics and Capti partnered to offer a Lexile measure as part of Capti Assess with ReadBasix. Including Lexile on a diagnostic reading assessment allows teachers to receive necessary data to better meet students' reading needs, thus creating a place for Lexile that supports curricular goals through its intended purpose: matching readers with texts.

Bibliography

Kendall, J. S. (2011). Understanding common core state standards. ASCD.
Lennon, C., & Burdick, H. (2004). The Lexile framework as an approach for reading measurement and success. [White paper]. The Lexile Framework for Reading. https://cdn.lexile.com/m/resources/materials/Lennon__Burdick_2004.pdf
Metametrics (2017). Lexile measures and grade levels. https://lexile.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/T1.4.FAQ_LM-and-Grade-Levels.pdf
Schwanenflugel, P. J., & Knapp, N. F. (2015). The psychology of reading: Theory and applications. Guilford Publications.
Smith, D. R., Stenner, A. J., Horabin, I., Smith, M. (1989). The Lexile scale in theory and practice. Final Report.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.

Harnessing the Power of Lexile | Step-by-Step Reading Instruction Guide

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Dr. Margaret Opatz

What is the Lexile Framework for Reading?

The Lexile Framework for Reading is an approach to reading that places readers and texts on the same measurement scale (Lexile Educator Guide) with the purpose of putting students on the path to success in school, college and careers (Understanding Lexile Measures).

Content. The Lexile Framework includes quantitative measures of over 300,000 books and 100 million websites and online books and articles (Lexile Educator Guide). Sites such as NewsELA, CommonLit, and ReadWorks use Lexile to report text difficulty.

Uses. Lexile provides a common metric to match readers and texts. Therefore, uses reflect the ability to match readers and texts. Common uses of Lexile include:

measuring students' reading levels and progress at the class, school, or district level,
leveling texts within a classroom or school library, and
communicating with students, their families, or administrators about students' progress.

What to Do with Lexile

Since Lexile provides a common metric for readers and texts, it can help combat learning loss through differentiated reading instruction using a variety of texts that are thematically-linked on various Lexile levels. Lexile provides guidelines for connecting readers to texts. Given the vast number of texts with a Lexile measure, there are endless ways to capitalize on the framework. One method of using Lexile is to sequence texts to make them accessible to learners. The process of sequencing texts with a focus on Lexile, ensures that students work toward accessing more complex texts as they strive for college and career readiness.

Using Text Sets

Educators have long used text sets to achieve curricular goals in content areas such as writing and science (Opatz & Nelson, 2022; Nelson & Opatz, in press). Although scholars have defined text sets differently (Batchelor, 2019; Lupo et al., 2020 ), the underlying concept is that they are a group of related texts (we use related loosely here given that the relatedness could be content) such as volcanoes in science, or the format of infographics used in marketing campaigns. When using Lexile to create text sets, teachers can utilize the quantitative analysis of each text to ensure texts are sequenced in ways that build students’ reading skills while keeping in mind the cognitive demand that goes into reading more challenging texts. To do so, teachers need to find a middle ground that allows students to engage in productive struggle (Hess, 2006). This means that intentionally-designed text sets utilize the quantitative information in order to sequence the texts (Fleming et al., 2015) in a way that builds knowledge from one to the next as the complexity increases. In doing so, students enter into morecomplextexts with enough background knowledge to make sense of the advanced texts. The ultimate goal of text sets designed with Lexile is to slowly build a bridge from students’ current Lexile levels to grade level expectations.

Creating Text Sets with Lexile

Text sets can be created for individual students, a small group of students, or for the entire class. The same concept of matching readers with texts that increase in complexity over time exists no matter the number of students involved, though some modifications are made when providing reading interventions. Specifically, an additional step is included when designing text sets for reading interventions—unpack data—since students complete a diagnostic reading assessment that provides detailed data to guide the intervention.

Steps for Creating a Text Set for the Whole Class

When designing a text set for the whole class using Lexile, follow these five steps:
1) Administer Lexile;
2) Set the end goal;
3) Determine the focus;
4) Find appropriately-leveled texts; and
5) Sequence texts (see Figure 1).
Each step is explained below.

Figure 1: Building a Bridge Steps

Step 1: Administer Lexile

The first step in creating a text set is to establish quantitatively where students are reading by administering an assessment that reports a Lexile scaled score. Having a Lexile measure allows educators to know what level of texts students can comprehend, and how students compare to grade level expectations. Once a teacher has a baseline score for each student, it becomes possible to select texts at appropriate difficulty levels for creating a text set.

Step 3: Determine the focus

Once the end goalis set, determine which discipline (e.g., ELA, science, social studies) and topic (e.g., natural processes that change landscapes or The Great Depression) to focus on. Determining the focus limits the searching of texts and sets educators up for success in the next step.

Step 4: Find appropriately-leveled texts

When the focus is selected, educators can use Lexile’s Find a Book tool to find texts that match the intended grade level, Lexile level, and category. To build knowledge over time and help readers access more complex texts, search for 3-5 books that can be sequenced and help build students' content knowledge and reading skills.

Step 5: Sequence the texts

In the final step, sequence the texts in a way that begins with the lowest Lexile level and ends with the highest Lexile level. Consider the qualitative measures (i.e., text layout, purpose and meaning, text structure, language features, and knowledge demands) in this step to determine how the content in each text connects from one to the next. Doing so will help to facilitate students’ knowledge and build the requisite knowledge necessary for reading more advanced texts throughout the set.

Steps for Creating a Text Set for a Reading Intervention

While the steps previously outlined work well for whole class instruction, when providing a reading intervention, Lexile’s use is enhanced when it includes a diagnostic reading assessment. The same steps apply, but having a thorough assessment that pinpoints students’ areas of need is imperative when planning for reading intervention.

When designing a text set for a reading intervention using Lexile, follow these five steps:
1) Administer Lexile and a diagnostic reading assessment;
2) Unpack the data;
3) Set the end goal;
4) Determine the focus;
5) Find appropriately-leveled texts; and
6) Sequence texts (see Figure 2).
Each step is explained below.

Figure 2: Building a Bridge Steps for Intervention

Step 1: Administer Lexile and a diagnostic reading assessment

When planning a reading intervention, more sound data is needed than a few data points provided by benchmark assessments and the difficulty of the text that a student can comprehend. While many assessments now provide a Lexile measure, most of them are benchmark assessments; consider using a diagnostic reading assessment, which can inform reading interventions by providing detailed information on foundational reading skills (e.g., word recognition, decoding, vocabulary, morphology, sentence processing, reading efficiency) to identify the student’s area(s) of need. It is also important to receive the Lexile measure in conjunction with information on foundational reading skills in order to select appropriately-leveled texts.

Step 2: Unpack the data

After the diagnostic assessment is complete, unpack the data to determine students’ areas of need. Ask:

Which foundational reading skills do students require support?
What are the trends in students’ scores, percentiles, and grade equivalency?
Which reading skills are students’ strengths?
Which foundational reading skills are limiting students’ success in reading?

A base line Lexile score provides knowledge of the appropriate level of text that can be used during a reading intervention.

Step 3: Set the end goal

Next, the teacher sets goals for the student’s intervention based on the diagnostic information. Goals are based on foundational reading skills and range from strengthening the letter-to-sound correspondence through phonics instruction to identifying the relationship in a sentence based on various discourse markers to being able to recognize and explain the meaning of the most common derivational morphemes. With the end in mind, instruction can be planned using the backward design process (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005).

Step 4: Determine the focus

In an intervention setting, it is important to select a disciplinary focus that can build necessary background knowledge and contribute to academic success in other content areas. The impact of background knowledge on comprehension is well documented (Fisher, Ross, & Grant, 2010; Marzano, 2004; Neuman, Kaefer, & Pinkham, 2014). Therefore, using reading intervention time to read content-area texts that develop background knowledge, builds a bridge to comprehending grade-level texts while providing critical instruction for readers.

Step 5: Find appropriately-leveled texts (and identify target words for vocabulary learning)

A strength of Lexile’s Find a Book tool is that it allows educators to search for topics across grade levels to match students to ‘just right’ books. To find texts, search relevant keywords or topics within Lexile Tools. Given the importance of vocabulary instruction in reading interventions (e.g., Hiebert & Kamil, 2005; Wright & Cervetti, 2017), use Lexile’s Word Lists (Elmore, 2020) feature that identifies the words that matter and that students will encounter in texts. This is an important feature given that teaching word meanings supports comprehension when readers meet those words in texts (Wright & Cervetti, 2017).

Importantly, this tool can help to counteract the Matthew effect for target word learning (Hiebert & Kamil, 2005). The “Matthew effect” was introduced decades ago by Stanovich (1986) who described the Matthew effect as the

facilitation of further learning by a previously existing knowledge base that is rich and elaborated. A person with more expertise has a larger knowledge base, and the large knowledge base allows that person to acquire even greater expertise at a faster rate. (p. 381)

The Matthew effect stems from the biblical adage from the book of Matthew declaring that while the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. To counteract the Matthew effect, students require focused tier-2 interventions that support target word learning (Coyne et al., 2019). Using the Word Lists tool is one way to identify target words that are worthwhile for teaching and for identifying the texts that contain those words.

Step 6: Sequence texts

In the final step, sequence the texts in a way that begins with the lowest Lexile level and ends with the highest Lexile level. Consider the qualitative measures in this step to determine how the content in each text connects from one text to the next. Doing so will help to facilitate students’ knowledge and build the requisite knowledge necessary for reading more advanced texts throughout the set.

Final Thoughts

To harness the power of Lexile, educators can create and sequence text sets for the whole class and reading interventions. Creating a text set builds a bridge between what students can do and grade-level expectations, and ensures students work toward college and career readiness.

References

Batchelor, K.E. (2019). Using linked text sets to promote advocacy and agency through a critical lens. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(4), 379–386. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.906
Coyne, M. D., McCoach, D. B., Ware, S., Austin, C. R., Loftus-Rattan, S. M., & Baker, D. L. (2019). Racing against the vocabulary gap: Matthew effects in early vocabulary instruction and intervention. Exceptional Children, 85(2), 163-179.
Elmore, J. (2020). Lexile® wordbank and academic vocabulary in K-12. Metametrics Research Brief. https://metametricsinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Lexile-WordBank-and-Academic-Vo cabulary-in-K-12-1.pdf
Fisher, D., Ross, D., & Grant, M. (2010). Building background knowledge. The Science Teacher, 77(1), 23.
Fleming, J., Catapano, S., Thompson, C. M., & Ruvalcaba Carrillo, S. (2015). More mirrors in the classroom: Using urban children's literature to increase literacy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Hess, K. (2006). Cognitive complexity: Applying Webb DOK Level's to Bloom's Taxonomy. National Center for Assessment. NH.
Hiebert, E. H., & Kamil, M. L. (2005). Teaching and learning vocabulary: Bringing research to practice. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Lupo, S.M., Berry, A., Thacker, E., Sawyer, A., & Merritt, J. (2020). Rethinking text sets to support knowledge building and interdisciplinary learning. The Reading Teacher, 73(4), 513–524. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1869
Marzano, R. J. (2004). Building background knowledge for academic achievement: Research on what works in schools. ASCD.
National Governors Association, Council of Chief State School Officers (2010). Supplemental information for appendix a of the common core state standards for English language arts and literacy: New research on text complexity. Washington, DC: National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers.
Nelson, E. T., & Opatz, M. O. (in press). Developing critical mentor text sets to embrace students' writer identities. English Journal.
Neuman,S. B., Kaefer, T., & Pinkham, A. (2014). Building background knowledge. The Reading Teacher, 68(2), 145-148.
Opatz, M. O., & Nelson, E. T. (2022). Building bridges: Curating text sets to connect to learners' lives. The Reading Teacher, 75(4), 521–525. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2058
Stanovich, K. E. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21, 360–406. https://doi. org/10.1598/rrq.21.4.1
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. ASCD.
Wright, T. S., & Cervetti, G. N. (2017). A systematic review of the research on vocabulary instruction that impacts text comprehension. Reading research quarterly, 52(2), 203-226.

Is the Science of Reading the same as Phonics?

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Dr. Margaret Opatz

Expanding the View of the Science of Reading

Lately, in conversations with other educators and even in the news, the Science of Reading often comes up. This is not surprising since multiple states are implementing broad reforms to train K-3 elementary school teachers in how to teach reading using the Science of Reading framework. During these conversations, teachers often tell me about how the Science of Reading is the same as teaching phonics. News headlines also lead with the amount of money that is being invested in states to implement phonics-focused reading instruction.

So, what is the Science of Reading? Is it simply phonics; is that where the science ends? While phonics is a component of the Science of Reading, the framework is much more complex than simply sound-to-letter correspondence.

In our previous article, we looked at the findings from the Reading for Understanding (RfU) Initiative by the U.S. Department of Education that evaluated extensive research to explain how reading has changed over the past few decades. RfU researchers found that 21st century readers need to be proficient in a variety of reading skills and have the ability to critically think about and analyze the ever-expanding world of information.

Literacy researchers have identified skills that lead to proficient reading. The identified skills are the crux of the Science of Reading framework, and extend well beyond phonics. The Science of Reading framework is a constantly-evolving field as new research emerges (e.g., see the work of Stanislas Dehaene). In this article, we will dig into the Science of Reading and the foundational reading skills that, when taught together, lead to proficient reading.

What is the Science of Reading?

When we talk about the Science of Reading, we are referring to a vast, interdisciplinary body of scientifically-based research about reading and issues related to reading and writing. For the past 5 decades, scholars from cognitive psychology, education, special education, linguistics, and neuroscience, among others, have contributed to scientifically-based reading research in multiple languages across the world. This research informs how proficient reading and writing develop, why some individuals have difficulty, and how to effectively assess and teach reading and writing. Importantly, the Science of Reading has helped educators understand the cognitive processes that lead to reading proficiency while debunking various methods, such as the 3 cueing system, that are not scientifically based.

Figure 1. Scarborough's Reading Rope, Scarborough (2001)

Reading Skills

In an attempt to find the best ways of teaching children to read, the National Reading Panel (NRP, 2000) reviewed reading research and identified 5 scientifically-based elements that lead to reading success—phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. To show the interconnected nature of reading skills, Scarborough (2001) conceptualized a Reading Rope that visually demonstrates the strands of reading that are woven together to construct skilled reading (Figure 1). The strands in the Reading Rope consist of language comprehension skills, including background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge, and word recognition skills, including phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition.

More recently, the RfU Initiative focused on possible explanation for skilled and developing reading “beyond letters and words, including the linguistic, cognitive, and dispositional characteristics, which have been shown to influence comprehension in past research but are not yet entirely understood” (Pearson et al., 2020). The RfU research illuminates the skills and knowledge that are the foundation for reading comprehension — specifically linguistic and cognitive skills.

Scarborough (2001) posited that word recognition skills include phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition. Other researchers (e.g., Pearson et al., 2020) have deemed decoding as a linguistic skill that comprises word and higher level language skills. Decoding is a requisite skill to becoming a proficient reader. Decoding is the ability to apply knowledge of grapheme-phoneme, or letter-sound correspondence (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; NRP, 2000) to translate print to speech (Foorman et al., 2016). Decoding is a crucial 1st step in learning to read, but once word-level skills are well developed, other skills become crucial to reading success, namely, skills related to higher order language skills (Alonzo et al., 2016 [LARRC]).

Language comprehension skills in Scarborough's Reading Rope include background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge. Similarly, Pearson and colleagues (2020) suggest that language-related skills, such as knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, and disciplinary discourse, be called higher order language skills. Language-related skills combine to construct knowledge of academic language, which influences reading comprehension, especially as readers move through school.

An additional classification of skills identified by Pearson and colleagues (2020) includes cognitive skills. Research points to the importance of cognitive skills in the role of reading comprehension. Specifically, the process of activating “information relevant to the situation described in a text, to suppress irrelevant information (inhibitory control), to monitor comprehension, to engage in successful inference, and to remember and follow sets of directions (self-regulation)” (Pearson et al., 2020, p. 59, emphasis in original).

Similarly, Scarborough (2001) included background knowledge as one of the language comprehension strands. Being able to activate relevant background knowledge is an important skill that can facilitate comprehension; however a lack of background knowledge may inhibit reading comprehension for some readers. For instance, a reader who cannot activate relevant information and maintain sustained attention while reading a text will likely not comprehend and form a coherent model of the text (Arrington et al., 2014 [PACT]). In addition, several research studies (e.g., Barnes et al., 2015 [PACT]) have found that less skilled readers not only have difficulty comprehending the text as a whole, but also struggle to comprehend at the local level–paragraphs and sentences. Readers need to be able to maintain attention and recognize when comprehension is fragmented and breaks down in order to construct meaning from more advanced texts as they move through school. These metacognitive and self-regulatory behaviors are key to reading success.

Expanding the View of the Science of Reading

So, when it comes to the Science of Reading, phonics is a crucial first step to reading success, but remember, phonics is only one part of a wider range of skills included in the Science of Reading. Once a reader has mastered the letter-sound correspondence, it is critical to build higher-level language skills and develop the cognitive skills that lead to successful reading comprehension. Assessing foundational reading skills is important not only to intervention programs, but also to more effective general instruction; we turn to assessment next.

Implications for Assessment

Knowing the Science of Reading framework and the variety of skills it takes to read is important for being able to support learners in becoming skilled readers. Another critical aspect is to know how to assess reading skills to pinpoint what may be causing reading difficulties. Although there are several reading assessments available, the one that focuses on most of the skills mentioned in this article is ReadBasix, a.k.a. RISE. This assessment was created for adolescent learners in grades 3-12 to measure 5 foundational skills that contribute to reading comprehension. The skills and the corresponding assessment include: 1) word recognition and decoding, 2) vocabulary, 3) morphology, and 4) sentence processing, and 5) reading efficiency. In the next series of articles, we will look at each skill in more depth to provide insight into what each skill is and how we can best support readers in becoming proficient readers.

Bibliography

Alonzo, C. A., Yeomans-Maldonado, G., Murphy, K., Bevens, B., & LARRC (Language and Reading Research Consortium). (2016). Predicting second grade listening comprehension using prekindergarten measures. Topics in Child Language Disorders, 36, 312–333.
Arrington, C. N., Kulesz, P. A., Francis, D. J., Fletcher, J. M., & Barnes, M. A. (2014). The contribution of attentional control and working memory to reading comprehension and decoding. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18, 325–346.
Barnes, M. A., Ahmed, Y., Barth, A., & Francis, D. J. (2015). The relation of knowledge-text integration processes and reading comprehension in seven to twelfth grade students. Scientific Studies of Reading, 19, 253–272.
Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and special education, 7(1), 6-10.
Foorman, B., Espinosa, A., Wood, C., & Wu, Y. (2016). Using computer-adaptive literacy assessments to monitor the progress of English language learner students. (REL 2016-149). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast.
National Reading Panel (US), National Institute of Child Health, Human Development (US), National Reading Excellence Initiative, National Institute for Literacy (US), & United States Department of Health. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction: Reports of the subgroups. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.
Pearson, P. D., Palincsar, A. S., Biancarosa, G., & Berman, A. I. (2020). Reaping the Rewards of the Reading for Understanding Initiative. National Academy of Education.
Scarborough, H. S. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In S. Neuman & D. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook for research in early literacy (pp. 97–110). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

What Does it Take to Read in the 21st Century?

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 10:06:43 -0800

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Redefining literacy in an ever-changing, digital world

Introduction

Our previous article chronicled the evolution of communication by illustrating how oral language developed as a natural form of communication, while writing and reading were developed much later as a means of keeping records, and are therefore not natural skills, but rather learned skills. This understanding makes it clear why learning to read and write can be a challenge—they are learned skills that require the brain to rewire connections in order to recognize the markings, letters, and numbers on a page as meaningful symbols, which is the basis of the science of reading framework.

With the science of reading framework in mind, this article will review the Reading for Understanding (RfU) Initiative by the U.S. Department of Education that explored how reading and literacy have changed over the past few decades. Among other things, this initiative led to the creation of a new reading assessment (ReadBasix) focused on specific foundational reading skills that contribute to reading success. You can read the full 300-page RfU report, or read this summary of RfU findings. Now, let's dive into the RfU Initiative to reveal what researchers found when they looked into what it takes to read in the 21st century.

The Reading for Understanding Initiative (RfU)

In 2009, the Institute of Education Services in the U.S. Department of Education established the RfU Initiative to respond to the stagnant reading comprehension scores observed over the previous three decades. The initiative funded research and development to improve reading comprehension for learners in pre-K through grade 12. Five research teams focused on understanding and improving the development and pedagogy of reading comprehension; and one team, from Educational Testing Service (ETS), focused on assessment.

While evaluating what it takes to read in the 21st century, RfU researchers completed an extensive review of cognitive and science literature and various assessment reforms (e.g., Common Core State Standards, Race to the Top, Partnership for 21st Century Skills, etc.). Researchers found that the meaning of “reading and comprehension” has undergone significant changes over the past few decades; and therefore, how we help children learn across grade levels should also change.

Exponential Growth of Information

A significant change in literacy includes the exponential and continuous growth in the amount of information. Think about this for a minute—according to Internet statistics, in 1994, there were 2,738 websites, and as I write this, there are over 1.9 billion websites. This fact alone illustrates the extreme difference required for skilled reading today as compared to 25-50 years ago. Historically, even during some of our (my) lifetimes, we had limited sources of information—newspapers, encyclopedias, books, radio, and television. With the invention of the Internet, our sources have increased exponentially and continue to increase, which creates various demands on readers.

While students today are digital natives, they require a unique skill set that will enable them to make informed decisions about the credibility of online sources and information. To do this, they must have foundational reading skills that allow them to access the information on the page or screen, AND the ability to think critically to decipher fact from fiction. The need for high-level thinking skills are greater now than perhaps ever before.

Elements of Literacy in the 21st Century

With the understanding of reading demands, RfU researchers identified elements of literacy that inform reading in the 21st century—print, language, text and discourse, conceptual understanding or thinking, and the social nature of reading. Together, these elements make reading look very different from previous decades.

Print.

RfU researchers found that the modern understanding of print differs markedly from previous concepts of print. What was once simply understanding the alphabet has turned into recognizing print in different fonts, shapes, and styles. For instance, a reader needs to recognize print that is bolded, italicized, underlined, bulleted in lists, or in different forms of outlines, to name a few.

Additionally, print requires readers to make sense of connected text that includes letters, words, spaces, spelling, and punctuation marks with various text structure indicators, such as indentations, symbols, effects, and titles. Further, readers need to interpret charts, maps, and tables while connecting them to the meaning of the text. All of the variations of print are even more pronounced on digital technologies, which bring about their own difficulties as readers of the 21st century must be able to navigate digital spaces on all sorts of screens and devices navigating web links, drop-down menus, and other web features—these sorts of demands did not exist just a short time ago.

Language.

RfU researchers established that language has more impact on comprehension than previously thought. They found that the systems of language—phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics—contribute to reading success. While it has been widely accepted that early literacy rests upon an understanding of the letter-sound relationship, researchers found that an understanding of academic and disciplinary language contribute to more advanced levels of reading comprehension in middle and high school. This means that readers need explicit academic vocabulary and language instruction.

Readers need to know the meaning of general academic vocabulary, which includes words such as analyze and evaluate (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002) that can be used across multiple disciplines. For example, analyze can be used in several different disciplines: Literary critics analyze a novel; Historians analyze a historical event; and scientists analyze the results of an experiment.

Readers also need to know discipline-specific vocabulary, which is unique to content areas (e.g., Hiebert & Lubliner, 2008). Discipline-specific vocabulary includes technical terms (Harmon, Wood, & Medina, 2009) and values precision in meaning (Fang et al., 2006; Snow, 2010; Snow & Uccelli, 2009). For example, words such as deciduous and flagella, are unique to science, have precise meanings, and are not used across disciplines (Fang, 2006).

The acknowledgement of the role academic language plays in reading success highlights the implicit language of schooling or content-area reading. To truly make sense of academic language, readers need to construct meaning beyond the word level to the sentence and text level. Readers need to know how authors of academic texts condense information into compact sentences and paragraphs, and the techniques authors use to create a sense of authority in what they convey to readers. By understanding the construction of sentences and texts as a whole, readers are able to make sense of complex, academic texts, which ultimately leads to increased reading proficiency.

Text and Discourse.

In building on language knowledge, RfU researchers also found that it is important for readers to understand the construction of texts for various discourse communities (e.g., scientists, historians). Researchers determined that readers need to form a coherent mental memory model of the text's content that closely aligns with the intended meaning of the text. To do this, readers need to explicitly recognize how various texts are constructed, including text structure and discourse community expectations. For instance, readers need to know how stories differ from informational texts that employ a cause and effect or comparative text structure. Further, they need to know the intricacies of discourse communities, or how specific fields of study construct texts. Understanding discourse communities includes, for example, recognizing how scientists construct texts with a concern for how the world is organized and how it came to be that way (Martin, 1993; Zerbe, 2007), whereas historians present information collected from various sources and try to construct historically accurate texts. It is also important to note that the ever-expanding information available on the Internet requires readers to evaluate the authenticity of the discourse to determine its credibility and relevance to the intended field—which is no easy task.

Conceptual.

RfU researchers framed the conceptual element as the knowledge, skills, and strategies that support more complex reading goals to extend meaning beyond basic comprehension while navigating various texts. This means inferring, elaborating, analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating, reasoning, and interpreting multiple sources of information. Given the ever-expanding state of information, being able to critically think and evaluate texts is an essential skill for 21st century readers.

Social.

The final element of 21st century reading maintains the idea that reading is a social and cultural construct. Therefore, reading requires understanding the social situation or context surrounding the creation of a text. Readers need to understand the historical and cultural context that informed the writing of a text. For instance, there are significant social implications for a text written during the early months of the global pandemic. Readers who were not alive during this time period or were too young to comprehend what was happening will have to acknowledge the historical time period and the societal events to make sense of the fear espoused by authors.

Further, the cultural context calls for an understanding of the societal implications for the reader after reading the text. The social element suggests that readers recognize multiple perspectives and are able to construct multiple interpretations of a text, which is a sophisticated skill that takes time and a lot of practice to master.

Implications

So, what do these elements of literacy mean for readers of the 21st century? Instructional and assessment implications suggest a drastic change to how readers are taught and assessed.

First, reading instruction requires explicit teaching in all foundational reading skills that lead to basic reading comprehension and in advanced skills that enable readers to perform higher-level thinking, such as analyzing and synthesizing information.

Second, diagnostic assessment is imperative for measuring foundational reading skills that may limit readers' comprehension and readers' abilities to utilize advanced skills, as well as for measuring the said advanced skills.

RfU researchers developed two diagnostic assessments to measure foundational reading skills and advanced reading skills. The first assessment, ReadBasix, measures word recognition and decoding, vocabulary, morphology, sentence processing, and reading efficiency. This assessment accurately measures and identifies foundational reading skills impeding a reader's comprehension. The second assessment, ReadAuthentix, measures global reading literacy utilizing a scenario-based approach that requires students to synthesize and evaluate multiple sources of information to solve real life problems or make decisions.

In summary, reading in the 21st century requires a new skill set that supports readers in navigating digital spaces and critically analyzing information. To perform higher level skills, readers first need to master the foundational reading skills that lead to successful reading comprehension. Proficient foundational reading skills and the ability to think critically comprise what it takes to read in the 21st century.

Bibliography

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New York, NY: Guilford.
Fang, Z. (2006). The language demands of science reading in middle school. International Journal of Science Education, 28(5), 491-520. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500690500339092
Fang, Z., Schleppegrell, M. J., & Cox, B. E. (2006). Understanding the language demands of schooling: Nouns in academic registers. Journal of Literacy Research, 38(3), 247–273. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15548430jlr3803_1
Harmon, J. M., Wood, K. D., & Medina, A. L. (2009). Vocabulary learning in the content areas: Research-based practices for middle and secondary school classrooms. In K. D. Wood & W. E. Blanton (Eds.), Literacy instruction for adolescents: Research-based practice (pp. 344-367). New York, NY: Guilford.
Hiebert, E. H., & Lubliner, S. (2008). The nature, learning, and instruction of general academic vocabulary. In A. E. Farstrup & S. J. Samuels (Eds.), What research has to say about vocabulary instruction (pp. 106-129). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Martin, J. R. (1993). Technology, bureaucracy and schooling: Discursive resources and control. Cultural Dynamics, 6(1), 84-130.
Snow, C. E. (2010). Academic language and the challenge of reading for learning about science. Science, 328(5977), 450-452. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1182597
Snow, C. E., & Uccelli, P. (2009). The challenge of academic language. In Olson, D. R., & N. Torrance (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of literacy (pp. 112-133). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Zerbe, M. J. (2007). Composition and the rhetoric of science: Engaging the dominant discourse. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

NAEP Scores Fall; Now What?

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 10:05:38 -0800

Dr. Margaret Opatz

The Need for High-Quality Diagnostic Data to Inform Instruction and Accelerate Remediation

The education-world and the nation have been ablaze about the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results in reading and math for 4th graders. The results show a decrease in both reading and math. This is the largest decrease in reading scores since 1990 and the first ever decline in math scores since the assessment was first administered in 1969. While the latest NAEP data is only available for 4th graders, it is reasonable to assume that students across all grades have experienced learning loss, at least, to some extent.

So, what can we do about the decline in reading and math scores? How long will it take to remediate them? And what can we do to accelerate remediation? Since an improvement in reading skills has been shown to lead to an improvement in mathematics (Glenberg et al. 2012), let's focus on remediating reading first.

Here's what we know.

Reading scores for 9-year-olds dropped by an average of 5 points; however, lower-performing students experienced even bigger declines. For instance, students at the 10th percentile dropped by 10 points, while students at the 90th percentile dropped by only 2 points. In determining what this means, Mervosh (2022) suggests that 1 point of decline is equivalent to 3 weeks of learning. This means that higher performing students are 6 weeks behind, while lower performing students fell 30 weeks behind! Therefore, according to the NAEP reading results, students require weeks or months of additional instructional time to make up for the decline in scores. Providing 6 to 30 weeks of additional instruction to catch students up is challenging if not unrealistic. You can dig into more of the NAEP results here.

Let's contextualize this.

The now 4th graders were 7 or 8 years old and in the 2nd grade when schools were shut down and instruction was interrupted or, at the very least, hosted online. We are seeing the effects of 2nd graders being taught how to read via Zoom. Teaching reading is hard enough, yet when we add in the distance learning component, it becomes even harder to teach 20-30 students how to read.

Over the past 2 years, 4th graders may have missed instruction in 2nd and 3rd grades. According to the CCSS, 2nd and 3rd graders are expected to build word recognition, decoding, and fluency skills. Specifically, they are expected to:

Know and apply phonics and word analysis skills to decode words;
Distinguish between short and long vowels in regularly spelled, one-syllable words;
Know the spelling-sound correspondences for common vowel teams (e.g., ea, ee);
Decode regularly spelled two-syllable and multisyllabic words with long vowels and with common prefixes and suffixes;
Identify words that are inconsistent but have common spelling-sound correspondences;
Read grade-level irregularly spelled words; and
Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

These skills are critical to building long-term reading success. Without established word recognition and fluency skills, a reader struggles to make sense of the words on the page as all of their brain power is exhausted on sounding out, or decoding, each word (Berninger & Richards, 2002; Cutting et al., 2009).

Being a fluent reader aids in comprehension as the language comes off the page at a rate that is understandable. For instance, think of a YouTube video that keeps buffering compared to one that plays smoothly, it is much easier to comprehend what is happening when the video plays at an appropriate rate, just like fluent reading. While we do not know whether or not students were taught these foundational skills, we can hypothesize that reading struggles are partly attributable to interrupted schooling.

Can we accelerate remediation?

Intervention research tells us that the best thing we can do is determine what is causing reading difficulties and then create supplemental intervention plans that help make up for lost time (e.g., Haager et al., 2007). To speed up remediation, it is critical to create intentional reading lessons that target the specific skills students need to become proficient readers. This should encompass creating instructional groups that include students with similar needs, as well as one-on-one interventions for learners significantly behind grade-level expectations.

One issue is that 4th or 5th graders are no longer supposed to be learning to read, but rather are expected to be reading to learn in content areas (Chall, 1983). In my work with teachers, I often hear upper elementary, middle, and high school teachers say they do not know where to start when a student struggles to read successfully. Now, with the newest NAEP results, it is clear that teachers of all grade levels will have to know where to start and how to provide meaningful interventions that lead to skilled reading.

Where do I start?

Before deciding on an intervention strategy and going shopping for interventions, the best place to start is to diagnose reading problems. You will need a diagnostic reading assessment that can identify the gaps in learners' reading skills well beyond phonics. You will need an assessment that can dig deep into every foundational skill and accurately measure student proficiency. Only when you know exactly which skills your students are struggling with, will you be able to create an effective intervention plan.

Although there are several popular assessments that could support teachers in identifying gaps, most of them were designed for benchmarking to be administered 2-3 times a year; most of these optimize assessment time and are NOT sufficiently deep or reliable to be diagnostic. It is imperative to have a valid and reliable diagnostic assessment with a sufficient breadth and depth of assessment. This is important because you need accurate data to better meet your students' needs by creating and providing targeted reading interventions.

In an earlier article, we reviewed what to look for in a high-quality diagnostic reading assessment. It now seems timely to share that article as our nation works to uncover our students' reading difficulties and get to work supporting them in becoming skilled readers.

Bibliography

Berninger, V. W. & Richards, T. L. (2002). Brain literacy for educators and psychologists. USA: Academic Press.
Chall, J. (1983). Stages of reading development. New York: McGraw Hill.
Cutting, L. E., Materek, A., Cole, C. A., Levine, T. M., & Mahone, E. M. (2009). Effects of fluency, oral language, and executive function on reading comprehension performance. Annals of Dyslexia, 59(1): 34–54.
Glenberg, A., Willford, J., Gibson, B., Goldberg, A., & Zhu, X. (2012). Improving reading to improve math. Scientific Studies of Reading, 16(4), 316-340.
Haager, D., Dimino, J. A., & Windmueller, M. P. (2007). Interventions for reading success. Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company.
Mervosh, S. (2022, September 1). The pandemic erased two decades of progress in math and reading. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/us/national-test-scores-math-reading-pandemic.html
National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers. (2010). Common core state standards. Washington, DC: National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers.
U.S. Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress, (NAEP), NAEP long-term trend assessment results: Reading and mathematics 2022. https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/ltt/2022/

What to Look for in a Diagnostic Reading Assessment

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Dr. Margaret Opatz

As a former teacher, I recall striving to figure out what was causing my students to struggle with reading. I’d review their previous year’s state ELA assessment results and get an overall understanding of where my students fell within reading proficiency. I’d see that my students were highly proficient, proficient, approaching proficient, or below proficient. These four levels told me something about my students, but not enough to identify their strengths and areas of need, so I’d administer a diagnostic reading assessment to find out where I should focus my instruction.

Now, after 2 years of potentially interrupted reading instruction due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is even more important to identify where students are in their reading development and abilities. This is especially true for students who are expected to read to learn (grades 4-12), but may have gaps in their foundational reading skills due to interrupted instruction. This is where you will need a diagnostic assessment, but how do you choose a good one?

Characteristics of a Diagnostic Reading Assessment

When looking for a diagnostic assessment, there are certain characteristics to check. First, look for a diagnostic assessment that matches your purpose (e.g., the reading skills you want to assess). Then, look at the length of the assessment and examine its reliability and validity. To find these, you may have to go beyond marketing materials and look into technical documentation or reports, or just ask the customer representatives to give you the details.

Foundational skills. Depending on your purpose, you should select a test that measures the specific reading skills you want to focus on. It is important to measure more than just reading comprehension because often one or more of its component skills impede a reader’s ability to proficiently comprehend a text. That’s why a solid diagnostic reading assessment should measure foundational reading skills which are the stepping stones to proficient reading comprehension. The foundational reading skills that are critical to reading include decoding, word recognition, vocabulary development, morphological (word parts) awareness, sentence processing, and reading efficiency. Gathering information on the foundational skills will allow you to pinpoint areas of need to support students in becoming skilled readers.

Length. We all wish that assessments were quick and accurate. Unfortunately, the shorter the assessment, the less reliable and valid it will be. A good diagnostic assessment should include 20-30 items for each skill to provide insight into the reader’s abilities (the number of items may vary depending on their type). It is even better if you can assess each skill with a separate test because you do not have to administer them all at once, and a single short test is easier to fit into your class schedule. Often, assessments only claim to be diagnostic, but they do not include enough items to provide instructionally diagnostic information. Some assessments seem to include enough items to measure a single skill, but claim to measure multiple foundational skills. Beware, they may have low reliability or validity!

Reliability. If you assessed a student multiple times over a short period of time, you would expect that the student’s scores would be similar, right? Unfortunately, many assessments will produce wildly different scores. Reliability refers to the precision of the score and the consistency of the results from one test to the next. While the scores in reading comprehension may sometimes fluctuate due to students’ background knowledge, you should expect that a good diagnostic assessment produces a reliable measure, at least, for the foundational skills. A reliable diagnostic assessment should have a Cronbach's alpha score of at least 0.7 for each reading skill it claims to measure.

Validity. Finally, any good assessment should measure what it claims to measure. If an assessment has high reliability, you can feel fairly confident that it is measuring what it is meant to measure, indicating validity. Yet, there are a couple of things to examine when determining an assessment’s validity. And you may need to look into the technical manuals or, better yet, peer-reviewed publications about the assessment to see what the researchers who created the assessment say about its validity. First, look at the theoretical framework of the constructs to determine whether the research behind the assessment supports the intended measures and uses; marketing language can easily go well beyond what is supported by research. Then, examine research or technical reports to determine how the assessment has been correlated with other standardized measures. For instance, if a new reading assessment designed to assess comprehension is highly correlated with a well-known, standardized comprehension measure, such as the Gates–MacGinitie reading test, the new assessment is considered to be trustworthy. Conversely, if an assessment has weak correlation with a well-known test, it lacks validity.

So, what does a good diagnostic reading assessment look like? It really depends on your purpose. However, as a general rule, a good diagnostic reading assessment covers foundational skills, includes 20-30 items per skill, and provides a reliable and valid measure of each skill. You may have to do some research to justify your choice of the assessment, but it will be all worth it when you get results you can trust.

To learn more about the qualities of a good diagnostic assessment, watch the webinar below.

As a teacher, what I am looking for in a diagnostic assessment is… to look at all of those different foundational skills to determine if there are weaknesses...

Sean Morrisey

Teacher, ELA Standards Leader, Frontier Central SD, NY

Capti

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Students below this decoding threshold are unlikely to improve their reading comprehension in subsequent years

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