When a state assessment flags a student as not yet proficient in reading, it answers one question and raises several more. Teachers and leaders know a student needs support, but the assessment doesn’t reveal what kind of instruction will help most. Without greater clarity, matching students to the right instructional response becomes difficult.
A productive next step begins with understanding where a student is in their reading development. One critical milestone to consider is the decoding threshold—the point at which students can read words with enough accuracy and automaticity to support comprehension.
Students who have not yet crossed the decoding threshold often struggle to make meaning from text not because they lack thinking skills, but because their cognitive energy is consumed by decoding individual words. Research indicates that these students cannot fully benefit from comprehension-focused instruction until foundational decoding skills are more firmly established (Wang, et al., 2019).
This has clear implications for instructional decision-making. When students are below the decoding threshold, they need explicit, systematic instruction in foundational reading skills, including phonics and decoding. Once students have crossed the decoding threshold, they are ready to engage in deeper comprehension work.
So how can educators determine where to focus intervention efforts for their students?
A helpful starting point is the Decoding Threshold Quick Check, a practical tool designed to identify whether a student has developed the word recognition skills needed to support fluency and comprehension. In many cases, students performing in the lowest proficiency band on state assessments (often labeled ‘Below Basic,’ (though terminology varies by state) are still working toward this milestone. These students are typically in the Learning to Read stage and need targeted decoding support.
From there, intervention decisions can be more precisely matched to students' current needs:
These students need explicit, systematic Structured Literacy instruction with a strong focus on decoding.
For these students, advanced word study that strengthens multisyllabic decoding and morphology skills can help expand vocabulary and increase comprehension.
These students have entered the Reading to Learn stage, an ongoing phase where comprehension, vocabulary, and written expression continue to develop.
Ultimately, the goal is to align instruction with each student’s current stage of reading development. When educators take this approach, a not-yet-proficient assessment result becomes a starting point for purposeful action, guiding decisions that accelerate growth and support students on their paths toward confident, independent reading and learning.