Decoding threshold is a key barrier to reading proficiency in older K-12 students.

Key points:

Despite expectations that students will master basic reading skills by third grade, many continue to struggle with reading in upper elementary school and beyond.

A new study commissioned by the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund (AERDF), a national nonprofit organization seeking breakthrough, evidence-based innovations to improve preschool through 12th grade education, found that 3rd through 8th grade teachers report that 44 percent of their students frequently have difficulty reading the educational materials used in their classrooms..

To gain deeper insight into why so many older students continue to face reading challenges, AERDF's Reading Reimagined program partnered with the ETS Research Institute to further study an intriguing relationship between older students' foundational literacy skills. and their reading comprehension, which ETS scientists first identified in a 2019 landmark study.

The new findings Develops a key factor that contributes to the challenges older students face: the decoding threshold. The new report, The decoding threshold: Measuring the roots of older students' reading difficulties: New evidenceshows that this threshold is a significant barrier for older students to achieve reading proficiency.

The “decoding threshold” refers to the point at which students can read text accurately and efficiently, allowing them to independently understand grade-level text. It represents a crucial benchmark for assessing students' reading ability as it uncovers a potential barrier to comprehension as the texts older students are expected to read become increasingly complex. The new analysis indicates that students whose decoding skills are below this threshold have difficulty with reading comprehension and often fail to show growth in comprehension, even with continued direct instruction.

“We know that many students across the country struggle to understand grade-level texts after third grade, and this study provides critical information about because some students are struggling and where they are plateauing,” said Rebecca Sutherland, associate director of research for AERDF’s Reading Reimagined program and co-author of the report. “If a student cannot decode a longer, more complicated text, all of their attention will be devoted to decoding the text and they will not be able to understand what they are trying to read. The findings give us a clearer understanding of the supports many older students need to read at grade level.”

Research Findings: The Impact of the Decoding Threshold

AERDF's Reading Reimagined programme, a research and development initiative focused on ending illiteracy by improving educational resources, collaborated with ETS to explore the importance of decoding skills in reading development. The report was co-authored by ETS research scientist Zuowei Wang, ETS senior research scientist Tenaha O'Reilly, and Rebecca Sutherland, associate director of research at Reading Reimagined, a program of the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund. . The research used ReadBasix®, a reading assessment developed by ETS, to assess students' decoding skills and the impact on their overall reading skills.

Why early identification is important

According to the report, identifying students early who need help with their decoding skills is essential to providing effective interventions. Without these foundational word recognition skills, students are unlikely to improve their reading comprehension, regardless of how much time they spend in the classroom.

“It really takes a village to solve the literacy crisis,” said Kadriye Ercikan, vice president of research at ETS. “This partnership demonstrates the immense impact we can achieve when research is combined with viable solutions. The report highlights the critical importance of identifying students who need help with their decoding skills. With this knowledge, teachers can better target interventions, bringing us one step closer to ensuring that all students can read proficiently.”

For students who struggle with decoding, targeted interventions that focus on foundational reading skills are critical. That's why foundational reading skills assessments designed and validated to measure older students' decoding skills are essential for identifying students who need support in this crucial domain. Students whose decoding skills are strong enough to exceed the threshold may need explicit instructional support in other aspects of reading, such as developing background knowledge, vocabulary, fostering metacognition, and developing critical thinking and digital literacy skills that help them. will allow you to understand. Texts of increasing complexity.

For more information on the decoding threshold, visit the AERDF website. website. For a detailed explanation of Reading Reimagined's research base that supports its efforts, read the concept paper. here.

This press release originally appeared online.

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