A five-year research initiative to rethink upper grade literacy

Reading Reimagined represents five years of research focused on a persistent and urgent question: Why do so many students in grades 4–8 struggle to independently read complex, grade-level text?

The Problem

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Today, only one-third of U.S. students read at grade level.

The numbers are even more troubling for students who have historically been underserved by our education system. According to the 2021 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 1 in 5 Hispanic and Native American students and 1 in 7 Black students are considered proficient readers.

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Research shows that students who do not reach this threshold cannot access reading comprehension. Over time, this leads to declining proficiency, reduced motivation, and lower engagement with reading.

The problem is also systemic. In most U.S. schools, foundational literacy instruction is concentrated in kindergarten through third grade. After that, students are expected to “read to learn,” even if they have not yet mastered the decoding skills required to do so.

Rethinking when reading development ends

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Our initial research began with a central hypothesis: given what we know about the decoding threshold, foundational reading instruction should continue throughout grade 8.

In most schools, literacy instruction focuses on foundational skills in kindergarten through third grade. After that, students are expected to “read to learn”—even if their word-reading skills are still developing.

About the Research

Through a five-year research and development initiative supported by AERDF, Reading Reimagined brought together 13 research partners, including universities and assessment providers, to examine reading development in grades 3–8.

Reading Reimagined tested the relationship between decoding skills and reading comprehension; this relationship, known as the decoding threshold, describes the intersection between a text’s complexity and the skills of the reader. When a text is too demanding for a reader’s decoding skills, comprehension falters.

Across the initiative:

1,500

teachers were surveyed in grades 3–8

85,000

student reading assessments were analyzed

85

school district partners participated in pilot efforts

30,000

students engaged in pilot interventions

Define: Understanding the decoding threshold

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The first step in addressing older students literacy challenges was to better define the problem.

Our research revealed that many struggling readers in grades 3–8 have not yet crossed a critical decoding threshold—the level of word recognition and fluency required to read increasingly complex text.

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Measure: Assessing foundational literacy skills

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Once the decoding threshold was better defined, the next challenge became clear: How can educators accurately measure foundational literacy skills across grade levels?

Most traditional reading assessments require students to read passages aloud while an adult listens and scores their performance. These assessments can be time-consuming, difficult to administer at scale, and vulnerable to bias in scoring.

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To address these challenges, researchers developed ROAR (Rapid Online Assessment of Reading)—an automated assessment designed to measure decoding skills efficiently and reliably for students from kindergarten through high school.

Rather than requiring students to read aloud, ROAR uses a research-backed lexical decision task, asking students to identify whether letter combinations are real words, nonwords, or words that sound like real words.

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Intervene: Supporting decoding development in the Grades 4-8

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Research also revealed a major gap: very few interventions are designed to support foundational reading development beyond the early grades.

By grades 4–8, students must read increasingly complex texts and learn thousands of new words each year—most of them multisyllabic. Yet most literacy interventions focused on foundational skills are built for beginning readers and don’t address the decoding challenges that older students face.

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Over five years, the research surfaced three Key findings:

Decoding demands increase with text complexity. The skills that allow students to read in early elementary school are not sufficient for the multisyllabic, morphologically complex words common in grades 4–8.

Comprehension growth depends on decoding efficiency. Students below the decoding threshold for grade-level text struggle to independently access meaning—even with comprehension instruction.

Advanced foundational skills are not systematically measured or taught in the upper grades. Most policies, screeners, and instructional materials focus on early literacy, leaving a gap in grades 4–8.

Together, these findings reframed the literacy challenge in the older grades: Reading instruction for older students is not teaching the right skills. Explicit instruction on advanced foundational literacy skills is needed to ensure all students can read at grade-level.

Final Impact Report

Early signals from the field

Throughout the five years of this work we partnered with districts to pilot assessments and instructional routines designed to address advanced foundational skills. These efforts included collaborations with partners developing tools such as ROAR, Read STOP Write, and the BIG WORDS instructional program.

These pilots were structured tests of whether targeted adjustments could strengthen reading outcomes. Early results suggest they can.

In pilot settings:

Students who were below the 50th percentile in reading showed statistically significant gains when structured fluency routines were implemented.
Classrooms integrating morphology and multisyllabic decoding practice alongside grade-level texts demonstrated measurable improvements in word recognition and comprehension.
Districts using developmentally appropriate screening tools uncovered skill gaps that had previously gone undetected.

Beyond Reading Reimagined

Reading Reimagined was designed as a 5-year research and development initiative—but our work extends beyond the duration of the program.

The program leaves behind:

A clearer understanding of how decoding and comprehension develop together in the older grades
Large-scale data illuminating advanced foundational skill gaps in national samples of students in grades 3-8
Assessment tools capable of measuring decoding efficiency across K–12
Piloted instructional routines that districts can adapt and scale
A policy roadmap for aligning instructional standards and screening across K–8

Perhaps most importantly, the work shifts the framing of literacy development:

Reading proficiency is not a singular milestone reached in third grade. It is a continuous process that evolves as text complexity increases—especially as students encounter anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 words per year, many of them multisyllabic.

That understanding will inform ongoing research, tool development, and policy conversations nationwide.

The organizations advancing the research

While Reading Reimagined sunsets, its work continues through organizations building on its findings, including:

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Developed in partnership with Stanford University, ROAR provides adaptive, developmentally appropriate assessments of foundational literacy skills in grades K–12. It measures decoding and sentence-level reading efficiency, giving educators clearer insight into where students need support.

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