A foundational principle of education is that children’s ability to learn, thrive, and realize their potential is closely tied to their literacy achievement. Unfortunately, increasing numbers of U.S. students are falling short of reading proficiency. After years of steady decline in reading scores, students have recently fallen even further, according to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
Any attempt to counter this trend must include high-quality reading interventions, and success depends on careful consideration of each student’s learning needs. Educators can assign students to specialized groups and spend valuable time on interventions, but if those interventions are a poor fit for students’ needs or are delivered at the wrong time, the desired outcomes may fail to materialize—and both students and teachers will be frustrated.
Consider today’s eighth graders. We expect them to be farther along in their literacy journey than younger students, receiving interventions for skills like comprehension and vocabulary rather than foundational reading skills taught in the early grades. The pressure to cover grade-level content means that teachers must focus on keeping up and not losing ground. And yet, fully one-third of eighth graders currently score below NAEP’s “basic” benchmark.
How does this happen? If we take a retrospective view of students’ literacy journeys, a clear pattern emerges. Many striving eighth graders have not had the opportunity to build the foundational skills essential for successfully tackling grade-level literacy content. As a result, they advance through the grades weighed down by persistent challenges with fundamental skills like decoding. By the time they reach middle school, where interventions predominantly target comprehension, there is typically an assumption that they have already mastered early reading skills. Yet, for far too many students, this is simply not the case.
It is not only misaligned interventions that leave these students behind. Assessments, too, often fail to identify students’ learning gaps. As a result of limited screening for foundational gaps in middle school, critical foundational literacy deficits go undetected. When neither assessments nor interventions are well matched to an individual student’s literacy needs, the student’s learning gaps cannot be properly detected or addressed.
Despite the dire national statistics, there are encouraging examples of dramatic improvements in literacy that help reveal a potential path forward for districts and states.
Consider Mississippi: in 2013 the state ranked second-to-last in fourth-grade reading performance. Yet, just nine years later, it had risen to 21st place—a remarkable transformation known as the “Mississippi Miracle.” The state’s success can be attributed to sustained investments in science-of-reading-based teacher training and literacy coaching, coupled with a commitment to early intervention. Mississippi begins screening for learning gaps and disabilities, including dyslexia, as early as kindergarten, and the state’s teachers, armed with their training and expertise, act on what they learn.
Mississippi’s success underscores the notion that districts must implement effective intervention solutions that meet students at their points of need. If some eighth graders continue to struggle with decoding, it is unrealistic to expect them to demonstrate grade-level reading comprehension. We owe students meaningful assessments to pinpoint their learning gaps, evidence-based interventions to shore up their skills, and a chance to develop the reading proficiency that will propel them toward fulfilling their academic potential.