Opinion: Cracking the Code Behind the Nation's Dismal 8th Grade Reading Scores
A version of this essay originally appeared on Robert Pondiscio's Substack.
The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results delivered a familiar gut punch: Just 30% of eighth graders read at or above the proficient level, a number that's barely budged in decades. Even in states like Mississippi and Louisiana, which have earned national attention thanks to literacy reforms that have smartly lifted fourth-grade scores in recent NAEP cycles, early gains tend to plateau or evaporate by eighth grade. A substantial number of U.S. students simply seem to run out of gas as readers as they move from upper elementary to middle school and beyond.
A compelling explanation may lie in something called the decoding threshold. Teachers often assume that once students master decoding in early elementary school, they're set to shift from learning to read to reading to learn. However, in 2019, researchers at the Educational Testing Service published a noteworthy study that measured foundational literacy skills — like decoding — in students from upper elementary through high school. Most reading tests in the older grades focus solely on comprehension; they don't offer much insight into whether students have mastered the basic skills necessary to read fluently. The findings showed evidence of a troubling phenomenon: Students with weak decoding skills consistently performed poorly on comprehension tasks, while those who surpassed a certain level of decoding ability tended to understand texts much more effectively. In other words, although decoding isn't the only skill older students need to succeed in reading, those who haven't yet mastered it are likely to struggle with understanding complex material.
A follow-up study three years later confirmed it: Those below the decoding threshold stagnated, while those above the line advanced — offering tantalizing evidence to explain why eighth-grade NAEP scores plateau even as fourth-grade numbers rise. A recent research brief put the matter succinctly and starkly: 'If children do not have adequate word-recognition skills, their reading comprehension often won't get better no matter how much direct support for comprehension they receive.'
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The tripwire that appears to be holding kids back is multisyllabic decoding. Students who can decode simple words like 'cat' and 'bed' with relative ease may still struggle to break down longer, more complex words into smaller, manageable parts to read them correctly. Imagine two eighth graders reading a science passage that includes the word 'photosynthesis.' The student above the decoding threshold effortlessly breaks it into 'photo' and 'synthesis,' adjusts the sounds in her head — like 'syn' to 'sin' — and reads it smoothly, quickly grasping it as a plant process she's studying. Meanwhile, the student below the threshold freezes at the unfamiliar term and mangles it as 'photo-sith-esis' or 'photo-sy-thee-sis.' Struggling to decode the big word, he loses the thread of the sentence, missing the whole idea of plants making energy.
It's another manifestation of cognitive load theory: Brainpower spent decoding multisyllabic words is not available to attend to the meaning of the text. Worse, the decoding threshold fuels a rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer phenomenon often referred to as the Matthew Effect: Students who are below the decoding threshold stop growing in vocabulary, reading comprehension and knowledge acquisition, while those who are above have what it takes to keep learning and growing, leaving the struggling readers in their wake.
Worse still, evidence of the decoding threshold reveals a blind spot in common approaches to teaching reading. 'We basically don't teach [multisyllabic decoding] anywhere in the system because it's too advanced for second graders. And after second grade, we stop decoding instruction and flip into comprehension and fluency,' observes Rebecca Kockler, a former Louisiana state education leader who now heads Reading Reimagined, a $40 million initiative of the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund. 'If I had a magic wand, I would pull decoding fluency work up almost into seventh or eighth grade,' she says, while pushing down to early elementary grades the building blocks of multisyllabic decoding, such as morphology and etymology. If you teach kids to break words into their smallest meaningful pieces, like 'un-' for 'not' or '-ness' for a state of being, they're more likely to be able to handle 'unhappiness' by spotting its parts, for example. And by showing them where words come from — like how 'photo' in 'photosynthesis' means 'light' from Greek — they will be better able to infer what words mean.
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As persuasive as the decoding threshold thesis might be, the wish for a magic wand to wave at curriculum and standards hints at a serious problem: There is no immediate or obvious solution at hand to address the issue. Nor is there simply a lack of appropriate curriculum or materials. A recent RAND survey of teachers in grades 3 to 8 found that 44% of their students 'always or nearly always experience difficulty' reading the content of their instructional materials. The report also found many of those same teachers hold misconceptions about how students develop word recognition skills.
A new nonprofit venture called Magpie Literacy, a collaborative effort with the fund led by Kockler, has been piloting a set of tech-enabled instructional tools aimed at addressing these issues directly. In a 12-week pilot in grades K-2 across 11 schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, early results were promising, with evidence of impact in only 8 to 12 weeks of use. Student growth was most pronounced, according to Kockler's colleagues, among students starting at the lowest levels of proficiency. K-2 may sound early to address a problem that shows up starkly in eighth grade, but it reflects a growing conviction: unless students start building sophisticated decoding skills young, and those skills are reinforced often, too many will continue to hit the wall in middle school and never get back up to speed. 'We've had this belief that we teach kids to read and then they read to learn,' Kockler explains, 'and we just fundamentally do not believe that's true anymore.'
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If you had asked her years ago, when she was assistant superintendent of academics with the Louisiana Department of Education, to estimate the percentage of middle schoolers who struggled with decoding to the point that it interfered with their reading comprehension, Kockler would have guessed 7% to 10%. 'We think that number is more like 30% to 40%,' she now says, 'which really mirrors this group of middle schoolers who never ever show growth on state tests or NAEP.'
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Los Angeles Times
3 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
Could phonics solve California's reading crisis? Inside the push for sweeping changes
To look inside Julie Celestial's kindergarten classroom in Long Beach is to peer into the future of reading in California. During a recent lesson, 25 kindergartners gazed at the whiteboard, trying to sound out the word 'bee.' They're learning the long 'e' sound, blending words such as 'Pete' and 'cheek' — words that they'll soon be able to read in this lesson's accompanying book. Celestial was teaching something new for Long Beach Unified: phonics. 'It's pretty cool to watch,' she said. 'I'm really anticipating that there's going to be a lot less reluctant readers and struggling readers now that the district has made this shift.' These phonics-based lessons are on the fast track to become law in California under a sweeping bill moving through the Legislature that will mandate how schools teach reading, a rare action in a state that generally emphasizes local school district control over dictating instruction. The bill is the capstone to decades of debate and controversy in California on how best to teach reading amid stubbornly low test scores. Gov. Gavin Newsom has pledged his support, setting aside $200 million to fund teacher training on the new approach in the May revise of his 2025-26 budget proposal. 'It's a big deal for kids, and it's a big step forward — a very big one,' said Marshall Tuck, chief executive of EdVoice, an education advocacy nonprofit that has championed the change. California has long struggled with reading scores below the national average. In 2024, only 29% of California's fourth-graders scored 'proficient' or better in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. The proposed law, which would take effect in phases beginning in 2026, would require districts to adopt instructional materials based on the 'science of reading,' a systemic approach to literacy instruction supported by decades of research about the way young children learn to read, from about transitional kindergarten through third grade. The science of reading consists of five pillars: phonemic awareness (the sounds that letters make), phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. 'It's finite. There's only 26 letters and 44 sounds,' said Leslie Zoroya, who leads an initiative at the Los Angeles County Office of Education that helps districts transition to a science-of-reading approach. 'Phonics isn't forever.' After a failed effort last year, the bill gained the support this year of the influential California teachers unions and at least one advocacy group for English-language learners. In a compromise, school districts would have more flexibility to select which instructional materials are best for their students and the option to decline teacher training paid for by the state. For decades, most school districts in California have been devoted to a different approach called 'whole language' or 'balanced literacy,' built on the belief that children naturally learn to read without being taught how to sound out words. Teachers focus on surrounding children with books intended to foster a love of reading and encourage them to look for clues that help them guess unknown words — such as predicting the next word based on the context of the story, or looking at the pictures — rather than sounding them out. 'The majority of students require a more intentional, explicit and systematic approach,' Zoroya said. 'Thousands of kids across California in 10th grade are struggling in content-area classes because they missed phonics.' California embraced the whole language approach to literacy, which took hold in the 1970s and 1980s, said Susan Neuman, a New York University professor who served as assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education under former President George W. Bush. The state became a national leader in what was considered a progressive and holistic approach to teaching literacy, with a focus on discovering the joy of reading, rather than learning specific skills, she said. Bush then incorporated a phonics-heavy approach in an initiative that was part of his 2002 launch of No Child Left Behind, which increased the federal role in holding schools accountable for academic progress and required standardized testing. States, including California, received grants to teach a science-of-reading approach in high-poverty schools. But many teachers in the state disliked the more regimented approach, and when the funding ended, districts largely transitioned back to the whole language approach. In the years since, science of reading continues to draw opposition from teachers unions and advocates for dual-language learners. Many California teachers are passionate about the methods they already use and have chafed at a state-mandated approach to literacy education. Some don't like what they describe as 'drill and kill' phonics lessons that teach letter sounds and decoding. Advocates for multiple-language learners, meanwhile, vociferously opposed adopting the most structured approach, worried that children who were still learning to speak English would not receive adequate support in language development and comprehension. A 2022 study of 300 school districts in California found that less than 2% of districts were using curricula viewed as following the science of reading. But the research has become clear: Looking at the pictures or context of a story to guess a word — as is encouraged in whole language or balanced literacy instruction, leads to struggles with reading. Children best learn to read by starting with foundational skills such as sounding out and decoding words. 'Anything that takes your eyes off the text when a kid is trying to figure out a word activates the wrong side of the brain,' Zoroya said. In the last few years, several larger districts in California have started to embrace more structured phonics learning, including Los Angeles Unified, Long Beach Unified and Oakland Unified. Recently, these districts have started to see improvement in their reading test scores. At Long Beach Unified, for example, the district's in-house assessment shows significant gains among kindergarten students. In 2023-24, 78% of them met reading standards, up 13 percentage points from the previous school year. Proficiency rates across first and second grade were above 70%, and transitional kindergarten was at 48%. The district's goal is to hit 85% proficiency across grades by the end of each school year. In 2019, LAUSD introduced a pilot science-of-reading based curriculum, and adopted it across all schools for the 2023-24 academic year. After the first year, LAUSD reading scores improved in every grade level and across every demographic, chief academic officer Frances Baez said. From the 2022-23 to the 2023-24 school years, LAUSD's English Language Arts scores improved by 1.9 percentage points — five times more than the state as a whole, which improved by 0.3, she said. Teresa Cole, a kindergarten instructor in the Lancaster School District, has been teaching for 25 years. So when Lancaster asked her to try out a new way of teaching her students to read three years ago, she wasn't thrilled. 'I was hesitant and apprehensive to try it,' she said, but decided to throw herself into a new method that promised results. Teaching kindergarten is a challenge, she said, because children come in at vastly different stages. Many are just learning to hold a pencil; others can already read. She was seeing many children under 'balanced literacy' lessons slip through the cracks — especially those with limited vocabularies. When she asked them to read words they didn't know, 'it almost felt like they were guessing.' But as she began to teach a phonics lesson each morning and have them read decodable books — which have children practice the new sound they've learned — she noticed that her students were putting together the information much faster and starting to sound out words. 'The results were immediate,' she said. 'We were blown away.' She was so impressed with the new curriculum that she started training other teachers in the district to use it as well. Looking back at her old method of teaching reading, 'I feel bad. I feel like maybe I wasn't the best teacher back then,' Cole said. Part of the change, she said, was learning about the science behind how children learn to read. 'I would never say to guess [a word] anymore,' she said. This kind of buy-in and enthusiasm from teachers has been key to making the new curriculum work, said Krista Thomsen, Lancaster's director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Department. In schools where the teachers are implementing the program well, scores have started to rise. 'But it's a steep learning curve,' she said, especially for teachers who have long taught a balanced literacy approach. 'We are stumbling through this process trying to get it right and making sure that every one of our kids has equitable access to learning how to read,'Thomsen said. 'But we have every faith and every intention, and the plan is in place to get it where it should be going.' A bill introduced by Assemblymember Blanca E. Rubio (D-Baldwin Park) last year requiring a science-of-reading approach in California public schools did not even get a first hearing. This year, Rubio introduced another version — Assembly Bill 1121 — that would have required teachers to be trained in a science-of-reading approach. Opponents included the California Teachers Assn. and English-language learner advocates, who said in a joint letter that the bill would put a 'disproportionate emphasis on phonics,' and would not focus on the skills needed by students learning English as a second language. The groups also voiced concern that the bill would cut teachers out of the curriculum-selection process and that mandated training 'undermines educators' professional expertise and autonomy to respond to the specific learning needs of their students.' Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, said the group opposed both bills because they were too narrow in their focus on skills such as phonics. 'They're essential. But English learners need more, right?' she said. 'They don't understand the language that they're learning to read.' Rubio said she was shocked by the pushback. 'I was thinking it was a no-brainer. It's about kids. This is evidence-based.' Rubio, a longtime teacher, was born in Mexico, and was herself an English-language learner in California public schools. In 2024, just 19% of Latino students and 7% of Black students scored at or above 'proficient' on the fourth-grade NAEP reading test. But with the support of Democratic Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister), the groups reached a compromise that not all teachers would be required to participate in the teacher training. Hernandez said she was pleased that the compromise included more of an emphasis on oral language development and comprehension, which is vital for multi-language learners to succeed. AB1454 requires the State Board of Education to come up with a new list of recommended materials that all follow science of reading principles. If a district chooses materials not on the list, they have to vouch that it also complies. The state will provide funds for professional development, though districts can choose whether to accept it. This article is part of The Times' early childhood education initiative, focusing on the learning and development of California children from birth to age 5. For more information about the initiative and its philanthropic funders, go to
Fast Company
6 days ago
- Fast Company
Maternal mental health needs more peer-reviewed research—not RFK's journal ban
This week, JAMA Internal Medicine published the results of a large new study that tracked mothers' health from 2016 to 2023. It found that maternal mental health declined significantly over the past seven years. The crisis we regularly write about in Two Truths, my best-selling Substack on women's and maternal health, is now being reported in one of the world's most respected medical journals. Which journals matter I read the story with interest—not just because I write about women's health for a living, but because I still pay a little bit more attention when I see 'JAMA' in a headline. When I started my career as a health journalist at Men's Health magazine in 2011, we were quickly taught which medical journals mattered most. The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). The Lancet. JAMA. These were the powerhouses. When research appeared in one of them, it carried weight. It still does. 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The sad truth is that they're still missing; we're actively fighting for them over at Chamber of Mothers. 'Corrupt vessels' But here's the thing that really caught my attention in all of this: Earlier this week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested potentially banning federal scientists from publishing in leading medical journals, calling The NEJM, The Lancet, and JAMA 'corrupt vessels' of Big Pharma. He proposed creating government-run journals—ones that would 'anoint' scientists with funding from the National Institutes of Health. It's true: Leading medical journals do accept advertising and publish industry-funded studies. There is also a long history of criticism surrounding the influence of pharmaceutical companies in academic publishing. Kennedy's concerns are not new. 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She shared a statistic that surprised me (sometimes hard to do when I've been reporting on health for 15 years): Up to one-half of women who have gestational diabetes in pregnancy go on to develop type 2 diabetes within 5 to 10 years of giving birth. The landmark study that laid the groundwork for understanding diabetes prevention in high-risk groups, including women with a history of gestational diabetes? It was called the Diabetes Prevention Program, and it was first published in The NEJM in 2002. Recently, under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s leadership—an administration that claims to be committed to 'ending chronic illness'—that program was terminated. Holding institutions accountable I'm not a doctor, scientist, or researcher. I'm trained as a health reporter. And I trust that training—just as I trust the countless physicians and researchers I've interviewed over the years, many of whom have spent their careers trying to get their work published in the most rigorous medical journals out there. As a journalist, I believe in holding institutions, including medical journals, accountable—especially when it comes to conflicts of interest. That's part of the job. But this administration has attempted to infuse a tremendous amount of chaos and confusion into a whole host of topics, health included. Health is nuanced. So is science. But let's be clear: Suggesting that medical research be limited, controlled, or replaced by 'in-house' publications is dangerous. Defunding evidence-based programs that serve high-risk groups, including mothers, is backward. Supporting high-quality, peer-reviewed research should be the bare minimum for anyone who cares about women's health. Canary in a coal mine In their report, the authors of the new JAMA Internal Medicine study wrote, 'Our findings are supportive of the claim made by some scholars that maternal mortality may be a canary in the coal mine for women's health more broadly.' It's a statement that places maternal health where it belongs: at the center of women's health. As Dr. Tamar Gur, director of the Soter Women's Health Research Program at Ohio State, told The New York Times, 'Now I have something I can point to when I'm seeing a patient and say, 'You're not alone in this.' This is happening nationally, and it's a real problem.' That's the power of credible, peer-reviewed research. That's where real change starts.
Newsweek
29-05-2025
- Newsweek
Teacher Gives 4th Graders Anonymous 'Question Box'—Results Raise Eyebrows
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A fourth grade teacher has gone viral for showcasing the questions she got from her students when she allowed them to ask "any question they like." The teacher, who did not give her name but who posts to Reddit under the username u/goatsnsheeps, took to the r/pics sub on May 27, where she explained: "I have a question box where my 4th grade students can put in any question they like. Here are some." She explained in the comment section that she usually takes 10 minutes at the end of each day to answer the questions, some of which require research on her end so she can study the subject herself and relay it to the students in a way they will understand. Some of those questions were illustrated in the post, as she shared handwritten notes from her students asking things like "why do feet sweat," "how were languages made," "when did people discover colors," and "how does our body work? How does it bend easily?" Other questions were more subjective, like "when did people discover beautiful art," while some were straightforward: "When was coffee invented?" and the elementary-school favorite: "Who invented homework?" Among these questions were some more bizarre ponderings: "Why was brain rot made," and "What grass made out of," being a favorite among commenters in the post, which racked up more than 24,000 upvotes. One commenter wrote under the post, racking up more than 14,000 upvoted of their own: "WHAT GRASS MADE OUT OF?" with one person replying simply: "Green," and another joking: "But what was it called before people discovered colors?" One commenter advised the teacher: "Keep an eye on the 'who invented homework' kid. He seeks vengeance." Another said: "When did people discover beautiful art' is such an endearing and innocent question that most likely has an equally beautiful answer." One user suggested that the questions asked was a "very interesting display of the students' academic levels. Some seem way more advanced than their peers," with another pointing out that the students would have started kindergarten in 2020, and "a year or two of learning at home during a pandemic might be why there's such a range in abilities." Pictured: Stock image of a group of schoolchildren and their teacher in an elementary school classroom. Pictured: Stock image of a group of schoolchildren and their teacher in an elementary school classroom. dolgachov/Getty Images Studies have shown there is some merit to this concern: in January 2025, a report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found that the reading and math skills of fourth and eighth-grade students have declined in multiple states to below the national average. Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, told reporters that they are "not seeing the progress we need to regain the ground our students lost during the pandemic," according to Education Week. The Reddit user wrote in a comment that all of her students ask "big questions," but they often reflect their "own personal interests." "For example, I have kids who ask a lot about cats and asked 'What is the world record for owning the most cats' and they have cats at home. Or I have students who play sports who submitted 'what was the first sport ever played?'" she said. She added: "Since starting this, the students and I both find it extremely rewarding," and she tries to "answer every single [question] as best I can." Newsweek has contacted u/goatsnsheeps via Reddit for comment on this story. Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures you want to share? Send them to life@ with some extra details, and they could appear on our website.
