It’s time to talk about the elephant in the room: America has a problem with reading comprehension in high school.
Most U.S. teens aren’t reading on grade level.
Twelfth grade reading scores are lower than they’ve been in 20 years.
Thirty-three percent of 8th graders are reading at a level that is “below basic,” meaning they struggle to follow the order of events in a passage or to even summarize its main idea.
No doubt you’ve seen the effects. Maybe you’ve been feeling pressure to “fix” the reading comprehension problems in your middle and high schools for several years now.
As pressure ratchets up — thanks to a mountain of data showing more kids than ever are falling behind — how do we even begin to fix the problem?
The answer may be hard to hear: If we truly want kids to overcome this issue, we have to go back to the beginning.
This Isn’t A Pandemic Problem
Let’s get one major myth out of the way.
We’d be foolish to ignore the impacts of COVID-19 on our older students, including the very real impact on their academic achievement. A 2024 review of more than 7.7 million kids revealed many are starting high school a full year behind in some cases. In terms of reading, it’s estimated that US 8th graders would need at least nine months to catch up to grade level.
But as easy as it would be to blame all of the problems with middle and high school reading achievement on COVID-19, doing so risks the real problem never being solved.
American kids have been behind in reading for decades.
Thanks to National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data, we can trace reading comprehension problems back more than three decades and see not much has changed:
- The average score for 8th grade readers in 1992: 260
- The average score for 8th grade readers in 2024: 258
This all begs the question … what’s been going on all these years? And how can school districts reverse the trend?
The Problem With Reading Comprehension in High School
When a student reaches high school still not able to comprehend what they’re reading, we know their reading problems didn’t just start in 8th or 9th grade.
To find that starting point, we have to follow the numbers back — often all the way to early elementary school.
The data from 3rd grade reading test scores in state after state and our 4th grade reading results on NAEP both show the majority of American kids in upper elementary school are not reading proficiently.
In 2024, as much as 69 percent of 4th graders scored below proficiency on the national test. Much like the scores on the 8th and 12th grade reading tests, these results followed a long-term trend. Historic NAEP data shows that not once in more than 30 years have we ever seen even 50 percent of our 4th graders reading at or above proficiency levels.
To understand why this has been going on, NAEP conducted an Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) study in 2018, administering a reading assessment to a nationally representative sample of more than 1,800 4th graders from across the US. While the 4th grade NAEP test traditionally assesses kids’ reading comprehension abilities, this particular assessment took a different approach.
Two-thirds of educators said their 3rd-8th grade students who struggle with reading comprehension do so because they lack the foundational skills necessary to decode the text.
Source: EdWeek survey, 2024
Instead, the assessment was designed to measure 4th grade students’ ability to read passages out loud with sufficient speed, accuracy, and expression, as well as foundational skills to gauge underlying sources of poor fluency.
The results of the 2018 study revealed that foundational reading skills were “underdeveloped” in the 4th graders performing below the NAEP Basic level of proficiency on the test. And yet, study after study has proven that students cannot become proficient at reading comprehension without first developing a strong mastery of foundational reading skills. These skills — the majority of which are taught in 1st grade — are like the bottom layer of a tiered wedding cake. If they’re not strongly developed, the entire structure will collapse.
How Do Students Get to High School Without Reading Skills?
The path from early reader grappling with reading difficulties to high school reader who’s still struggling to make sense of text is well-trodden.
Imagine you teach geometry, but your students don’t know how to multiply. Without this foundational skill, you can give your class a formula to find the area of a shape, but they won’t understand how to apply it, and they probably won’t get the right answer.
In this scenario, neither the students nor the teacher are doing anything wrong. There’s a gap in kids’ foundational skills that’s keeping everyone from moving forward.
This is the kind of problem many upper level ELA teachers deal with every day.
Studies have shown there’s a reading proficiency gap between students who learn to read quickly and easily vs. those who have difficulty reading at the start.
According to a theory known as the Matthew Effect in Reading, early success in reading leads kids to read more. This leads to greater skill development.
At the same time, however, early difficulties in reading lead students to read less. The result? There’s a widening gap in literacy skills over time, with kids who don’t form that strong foundation falling further and further behind.
Those same 4th graders who weren’t reading proficiently at age 9 or 10 go on to have difficulties with reading comprehension in high school.
Here is what happens:
- Early decoding struggles go unaddressed. Students don’t master foundational skills like phonics, phonemic awareness, and fluency. Instead, they learn to rely on dysfunctional strategies like using context clues or memorization.
- Coping strategies collapse as texts get more complex. Around grade 4, students move from learning to read to reading to learn. Comprehension, vocabulary, and background knowledge become central, but if decoding is shaky, these skills can’t develop.
- Middle school struggles widen skill gaps. Older students are uniquely aware of their own gaps, and often develop coping mechanisms in the form of disengagement or disruptive, off-task, or self-deprecating behavior. School frustration and failure affect attendance, which in turn impacts school performance, and they fall further behind.
- High school brings new challenges, and remediation isn’t enough. When texts demand analysis, synthesis, and inferencing, students without solid reading and vocabulary skills simply can’t keep up.
For these kids, high school level reading feels like trying to fly an airplane before they’ve built the wings. And for their teachers, ELA instruction becomes an impossible task of trying to keep dozens of partially built airplanes in the air.
The Matthew Effect
The Matthew Effect in reading is based on a sociological theory published in the 1960s. Sociologist Robert Merton — who also gave us terms like “self-fulfilling prophecy” and “role model” — first developed the theory as a means to describe a phenomenon he observed in the world of science. Well-known scientists, Merton found, typically received more credit and accolades than lesser-known peers. The advantages of recognition and opportunity afforded one group created an ever-widening gap between the two.
Neuroscientists and cognitive scientists have been telling us for years that kids need to fully develop foundational reading skills so they can become proficient readers who can comprehend the text they’re reading.
So, the burning question is not only how do we help struggling middle and high schoolers, but also how do we cut reading problems off at the root and stop this vicious cycle?
How To Address Reading Struggles At Every Level
If we’re serious about having better reading proficiency in our country, then we need to be laser-focused on making sure all kids learn to read by the end of 1st grade.
So here’s where to start:
1. Prioritize 1st Grade Reading Proficiency
The best time to address reading problems is before they become reading problems.
What does that look like?
Make 1st grade reading mastery the top priority in your district’s literacy strategy.
Although 3rd grade reading tends to get all the attention thanks to federally mandated testing, the studies show kids who are reading on benchmark at the end of 1st grade are also kids who are reading on benchmark in 3rd grade.
Unfortunately, the opposite is also true — if a child isn’t reading on benchmark by the end of 1st grade, there’s a nearly 90 percent chance they’ll still be experiencing reading difficulties in 3rd grade.
As the Matthew Effect — and the data — shows, these problems just continue to compound into middle school and high school.
Students who leave 1st grade without mastering these foundational skills enter a cycle that’s incredibly difficult to break. They start 2nd grade behind, struggle more in 3rd grade, and by the time they reach middle and high school, the gap has widened so significantly that catching up feels nearly impossible.
Your district should be asking questions like:
- How are we identifying students who need support in 1st grade?
- What high-quality interventions do we have in place?
- Are we allocating sufficient resources and time for these critical early interventions?
- Are we ensuring that every student leaves 1st grade with the foundational reading skills they need to succeed?
2. Avoid The “One Size Fits All” Approach
Every child has their own unique equation for success — reading success included. Some students will need explicit skills instruction to address decoding gaps.
Others will need targeted instruction to support higher order thinking skills, such as making connections and inferences, identifying themes, or synthesizing information from multiple sources.
Reading intervention should fit the child’s needs, not the other way around.
3. Seek (and Prioritize) Input From Teachers
If we could shout this one from the rooftops, we would!
Listen to your teachers.
They know their students best, and they’re likely to see all the early signs of reading problems:
- Low reading comprehension scores
- Difficulty with writing
- Hesitation to read aloud
- Coping mechanisms like using context and the first sound of a word to guess
Talk to teachers about what they’re seeing, and ask them what tools and support they think will be most beneficial. Prevention is the best solution, and teachers are your best allies in spotting red flags before they become full-blown cracks in the foundation.
One-third of middle and high school ELA teachers engage in foundational reading skills instruction because their students have yet to master these skills.
Source: 2023 American Instructional Resources Survey, RAND
3. Equip Educators With Skills and High-Quality Programs
A highly skilled teacher with a highly effective literacy curriculum will see the strongest results, so invest in your teachers and invest in programs that follow a research-based scope and sequence for introducing new skills.
What does this look like in practice?
- Invest in evidence-based early literacy instruction. Use high-quality Tier 1 instructional materials and invest in quality diagnostic assessments to identify students’ specific skill gaps early. The earlier you identify students who need support, the more effective the interventions will be.
- Build time into the schedule for reading intervention. Provide individualized learning pathways for students, and use high-dosage, targeted, and sequential instructional programs for Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions.
- Equip secondary teachers with the right training and resources. Provide ways to teach older students the building blocks of reading. Vocabulary, comprehension strategies, and background knowledge must be built systematically through middle and high school ELA coursework.
- Bridge gaps between school departments. Even middle and high school math and science teachers need training on how to scaffold reading within their subjects. Train paraprofessionals so that they can support reading skills, as well. A true MTSS means every adult in the building is aligned on the goal of getting kids reading.
4. Get Families Involved
Remember that families and caregivers are your greatest partners in this work. Parents and guardians want kids to become great readers, but they may not always know how to help. Offer families easy tools they can use at home, in the car, on the bus, or in the grocery store to support their child in becoming a stronger reader, such as:
- Books, especially if they align with kids’ reading levels
- Easy games to practice phonemic awareness
- Tips and tricks, like narrating their environment to develop language skills
5. Don’t Underestimate Your Learners
Just because a kid needs some support with reading doesn’t mean they should skip reading “The Scarlet Letter” with the class and stick to a copy of “Amelia Bedelia.”
Don’t wait to fill gaps in foundational skills before engaging students in higher-level work, and don’t assume that just because a student has a harder time reading a text independently, that they can’t understand it, think deeply about it, and respond meaningfully to it.
Provide targeted instruction that addresses foundational skills, such as decoding and fluency, while also giving kids access to age-appropriate, grade-level texts and content-rich materials so that they can develop their higher order thinking skills. Provide tools and resources that respect their maturity and keep it engaging. Think:
- Audiobooks
- Peer readers
- Voice-to-text tools
- In-class discussion groups
How Do You Know Your Literacy Investments Are Working?
The final piece of this puzzle is seeing results and knowing that your investments, effort, and shifting priorities are actually moving the needle. True results take time, but here are some of the early signs to look for:
- Students are engaging and participating more in class. Confidence will increase before kids are reading on grade level. Look for those hands being raised, kids volunteering to read aloud, and classes being more engaged as a whole.
- Teachers feel more confident in their ability to meet students’ needs. They have tools, they have support, and they are less stressed overall. When they spot a red flag, they know what to do and they have what they need to be able to take timely and meaningful action.
- The data is moving. Use progress monitoring to measure growth along the way. Don’t wait until the next end-of-year testing cycle to determine if students are making gains. Look for changes, make sure everyone understands how to use the data, and take action when something isn’t working.
Fixing high school reading problems starts long before high school. As daunting as that may be to admit, it’s also a good thing because when we know what the problems are, we have the ability to fix them.
We know how to do this.
The challenge now is just taking the first steps.
