Study Suggests Regression in Foundational Reading Skills across Primary Grades

Hello Friends!

I just read this very new and important study conducted by David Page and colleagues. It takes a look at the foundational reading skills of 250 students from 1st-3rd grades at relatively high-SES schools. Reading instruction in the schools was described in this way:

"There was also a strong sense of teacher autonomy across the district accompanied by the belief that both principals and teachers were knowledgeable in quality reading instruction and were doing a great job. This resulted in giving teachers a carte blanch approach to teaching reading. In lieu of explicit foundational skills instruction, there was an ongoing initiative focused on the inclusion of reading instruction that could help students hone their metacognitive thinking."

The research resulted in a number of findings, but I want to share three major ones. Now, before going further, it is important to stress that this was not a longitudinal study that followed the same group of students across three years of time. Instead, it was a cross-sectional study that measured the skills of students in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades at beginning, middle, and end of year. So, really we are looking at the growth of three grades of students across one school year and comparing the performance of similar (but not the same!) groups of students across 1st-3rd grades. This is important. Comparing where one group of students are at in first grade to where a different group is at in 3rd grade, even when the groups have similar composition in terms of variables like SES, is just not as conclusive as assessing the same students over a three-year period. So, to me, this makes the findings here "suggestive" rather than conclusive. 

That said, here are the three major findings, in, more-or-less, the authors' words:

1) "Our results find that in this high-SES district, an unexpected 30% of students struggle with reading acquisition."

2) "Our cross-sectional results show that the percentage of students who struggle
with reading remains remarkably consistent across first-, second-, and third-grade. The results suggest as Stanovich (1986) hypothesizes, the Matthew effect in reading where those who struggle stay consistently behind their proficient peers." 

3) "This study contributes to existing research by first revealing that it is possible for students entering first-grade with high-attaining reading skills likely due to SES advantages, to experience declining progress relative to national norms to the point where they have become average by third-grade."

The authors add a bit more detail to this third finding here:

"Figure 2 through 4 and the results to research question three clearly show declining first- to third-grade attainment for sight-word reading (77th to 37th), pseudo-word reading (70th to 37th), and accumaticity (52nd to 23rd). Secondly, Figure 5 reveals that the declines seen in Figure 2 through 4 were not solely attributable to the struggling reader group. For the proficient reading group, sight-word reading drops from the 81st to the 61st percentile, pseudo-word reading drops from the 70th to 58th percentile, and accumaticity declines from the 48th to the 28th percentile. Struggling readers experience large declines in sight- and pseudo-word reading that results in attainment between the 16th to 18th percentile on all three measures."

Again, I want to stress that these were not the same students who actually declined from, say, the 77% to the 37% in decoding from 1st to 3rd grade. However, they were similar first graders and third graders at the same schools. So, I still find this outcome very telling. This district eschewed a strong, consistent, scientifically-based program of reading instruction and instead gave teachers "carte blanche" freedom with regard to reading instruction and tended to de-emphasize instruction in foundational skills from 1st-3rd grades. Looks like a mistake to me. This cross-sectional look indicates that both higher- and lower-performing readers in second grade scored much lower with regard to a national norming sample than did their first-grade peers, and the same thing was true for third graders in comparison to second graders. In the end, the authors conclude,

"These results call into question the perceived notion that students with accomplished foundational reading skills in first-grade are destined to become fluent readers. Also in question is the extent to which scientifically-based research had informed the teaching of foundational skills in the district."

It seems clear to me that the research to guide the practice of reading instruction in primary grades is out there. But, will we chose to listen?


David D. Paige, Grant Smith, William Rupley & Will Wells (2020) Reducing High-Attaining Readers to Middling: The Consequences of Inadequate Foundational Skills Instruction in a High-SES District, Literacy Research and Instruction, DOI: 10.1080/19388071.2020.1780653