What Really Matters When Working With Struggling Readers

Abstract

We now have an evidence base that documents that we could teach every child by the end of first grade. However, most schools have almost none of the key aspects of instruction that have been available in the research to ensure we achieve this goal. In this paper I argue that this failure is not the result of inadequate funding but rather primarily results from an aged system of beliefs about the inevitability that some students will always fail to learn to read. That belief system along with a lack of familiarity with what researchers have demonstrated in the past decade perpetuate schooling where far too many children fail to thrive as readers. In the end, it is up to us, the adults in the school system, to alter our efforts such that every child becomes a reader.

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The Reading Teacher Vol. 66 Issue 7 pp. 520–530 DOI:10.1002/TRTR.1154 © 2013 International Reading Association
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WHAT REALLY
MATTERS WHEN
WORKING WITH
STRUGGLING
READERS
Richard L. Allington
There is good news and bad news on
working with struggling readers. The good
news is that we now have an essential
research base demonstrating that virtually
every child could be reading grade level by the end of
first grade. The bad news is that almost no schools in
the United States have anything in place that much
looks like what the research says young children need
to become engaged readers.
When I was a graduate student, one of my
professors told us that it took 50 years for research
findings to influence daily classroom practices!
Irecall that my peers and I were aghast at that
thought. “Surely he is wrong. Surely he is too
pessimistic,” we said to each other during our
classbreak. Now, 40 years later, I tell my graduate
students roughly the same thing.
In this article, I hope to convey what the research
has indicated about teaching beginning reading
in plain language. I open with an argument that
entrepreneurial enterprises continue to hold much
more sway on daily practice than do research
activities (Shannon & Edmondson, 2010). Then
Inote how too often “what the research says” has
been ignored and that ineffective instructional
practices continue unabated in U.S. classrooms.
I also list a few of things that we do as common
practice that research has suggested be eliminated
from the school day. I close by suggesting that
common aspects of the reading instruction currently
offered could and should be eliminated and that
we use those savings to invest in research-based
reading lessons.
Richard L. Allington is a professor at the University of Tennessee,
Knoxville, U SA; e-mail rallingt@utk.edu.

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Teaching Beginning
Reading Based on Evidence
We have just completed a decade in
which federal education policy typically
touted “scientifically based, reliable,
replicable research” as the basis for
instructional recommendations provided
teachers, schools, and state education
agencies. The cornerstone of that effort
was set out in a document entitled
Put Reading First (Armbruster, Lehr, &
Osborn, 2001), which was supposed to
be a “plain language” summary of what
the research said about effective reading
lessons. However, instead arguments
were presented in an entrepreneurial
spirit, a spirit that often conflicted with
what the research actually indicated.
Nonetheless, too many educators took
that document as “truth,” and reading
lessons were altered, as was reading
curriculum and assessment.
In the recent past, entrepreneurial
documents (as in “buy our stuff”)
proliferated, masquerading as research
summaries (see Allington, 1999;
Allington & Woodside-Jiron, 1999;
Krashen, 2004; Strauss, 2003; Taylor,
Anderson, Au, & Raphael, 2000).
This masquerading was unmasked
by the Inspector General’s reports
of federal mismanagement of the
Reading First program (Brownstein
& Hicks, 2005; 2006a; 2006b; Manzo,
2005; Schemo, 2007). After much
involvement with changing primary-
grade reading lessons, the Reading First
program was not only found to have
evidence of corruption primarily of
the entrepreneurial sort (Garan, 2005),
but also did no more to raise reading
achievement than control schools that
received no Reading First funds (Gamse,
Jacob, Horst, Boulay, & Unlu, 2009).
This combination of corruption and
ineffectiveness led Congress to defund
the Reading First program.
Misrepresenting What
the Research Says About
Developing Decoding
Proficiencies
What went wrong? First and perhaps
foremost, much emphasis was placed
on explicit and systematic phonics
instruction, although the National
Reading Panel (NRP; 2000) report
warned against such excesses
while at the same time making the
commonsense recommendation that
effective decoding instruction become
a small part of every kindergarten and
first-grade reading lesson. The NRP
report also noted that such an emphasis
produced a moderate positive effect
on later decoding performance but a
trivial positive effect on later reading
comprehension. The report noted
that no significant positive effects for
decoding emphasis lessons were found
for students, including struggling
readers, beyond first grade.
Linked to this systematic phonic
emphasis was the entrepreneurial
recommendation to include decodable
texts as an essential element of a
scientifically based reading instructional
plan. However, no research indicated
that decodable texts were necessary or
useful in beginning reading instruction
(Allington & Woodside-Jiron, 1998;
Hoffman, Sailors, & Patterson, 2002).
Research conducted later (Jenkins,
Peyton, Sanders, & Vadasy, 2004) found
that decodable texts and predictable
texts produced the same reading
outcomes for first graders in 11 urban
schools when the decoding lessons were
constant for both groups of children.
Still, many, many schools had already
purchased decodable texts and placed
them in students’ desks.
Another related curricular shift was
a focus on teaching young children
to pronounce decodable nonwords
(also known as nonsense syllables).
This was, supposedly, a true test of
decoding prowess, which was touted
as the solution that was needed. Along
with this focus came assessments
that measured how accurately and
quickly children could pronounce
nonsense words. It never occurred to
anyone that having children attempt
to pronounce nonsense words might
undermine their use of cross-checking
and other self-regulating strategies
when they finally moved on to actual
texts (Pressley, 2002; Walmsley, 1978).
Children can be taught to pronounce
nonsense words, but this should
not be confused with teaching them
“In the recent past, entrepreneurial documents
(as in ‘buy our stuff’) proliferated, masquerading
as research summaries.”
“Children can be taught to pronounce nonsense
words, but this should not be confused
withteaching them something useful as
developing readers.”

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something useful as developing
readers.
None of this is to suggest that
children don’t need to learn to decode.
Effective decoding proficiency is a
hallmark of good beginning readers, but
it is hardly the only hallmark. However,
as the NRP noted, there are many
ways to develop decoding proficiencies
in young children. That is, there is no
single method of teaching decoding that
has been shown to be the most effective
approach. Cunningham (2011) argued
that:
The key conclusion of this research is
that children do need systematic phonics
instruction, but there is no one best
way to teach phonics. This conclusion is
disturbing to those who would like for
there to be a specified best way so that
everyone could be mandated to do it that
way. (p. 221)
Every primary-grade teacher needs to
know how to teach several decoding
approaches effectively—several because
no single approach works for every
child, and effective teachers adapt
their teaching until they locate the
best method for developing decoding
proficiencies for each child.
There is more to do than simply
helping primar y-grade teachers
develop the expertise in providing
explicit decoding lessons. Fostering
phonemic awareness is a critical aspect
of emergent literacy development. It isn’t
clear why primary-grade teachers rarely
use inventive writing in kindergarten
and first grade, but we have good
evidence, as Adams (1990) noted almost
25 years ago:
The evidence that inventive spelling
activity simultaneously develops
phonemic awareness and promotes
understanding of the alphabetic principle
is extremely promising, especially in view
of the difficulty with which children are
found to acquire these insights though
other methods of teaching. (p. 387)
Inventive writing works, in large
part, because as Adams also noted,
instruction in letter–sound relationship
is of little value or utility unless the child
is interested in using those letter–sound
relationships to read or write (Adams,
1990). Inventive writing provides just
that motivation, and “sound stretching”
as a complimentary task focuses
attention on the individual phonemes
that compose English words (Clarke,
1988; Gough, 1998; Morris, Bloodgood,
Lomax, & Perney, 2003).
However, on my visits to primary-
grade classrooms, I have noticed almost
no inventive writing activity, while also
noting many decoding worksheets that
have been assigned and completed.
Unfortunately, those worksheets are
largely worthless and instead make
up what Adams (1990) called the
“inherently intractable, slow, inefficient”
(p. 292) basic phonics curriculum.
As I noted earlier, developing
effective early decoding proficiencies
is an essential task of primary-grade
teachers. Unfortunately, the emphasis
on decoding brought to U.S. classrooms
almost nothing of what we know about
how to accomplish this effectively and
efficiently.
Fidelity of Implementation
Replaced Developing Effective
Teachers as Our Goal
The past decade has seen a return of the
commercial core reading program as
the primary guide for delivering reading
lessons. This is another example of the
entrepreneurial influences on teaching
children to read—entrepreneurial
because not a single reliable study
supports the use of any of the
commercial core programs (What Works
Clearinghouse [WWC], 2007).
In fact, of the 153 different reading
programs reviewed by the WWC,
only one had “strong evidence” that it
improved reading achievement! One!
That program was Reading Recovery, a
first-grade reading intervention program
that features a yearlong intensive
professional development component in
which teachers learn how 6-year-olds
get confused and begin to struggle with
reading acquisition.
Beyond the research reviews
provided by the WWC, McGill-Franzen,
Zmach, Solic, and Zeig (2006) studied
third-grade reading achievement in
Florida and found that it didn’t matter
“However, on my visits to primary-grade
classrooms, I have noticed almost no
inventive writing activity.”
“Of the 153 different reading programs reviewed
by the WWC, only one had ‘strong evidence’
that it improved reading achievement! One!
Thatprogram was Reading Recovery.”

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which of the core reading programs
school districts adopted; a quarter of
the children still failed the state reading
test and were held back in third grade.
Almost half of the children held back
the first year were held back for a third
year in third grade in Florida schools,
thus providing them with three years
of reading lessons from the same core
reading programs that had led to their
initial failure. Their failure to acquire
reading proficiency seems related to the
fact that no research supports the use
of core reading programs in fostering
reading growth.
Dewitz, Jones, and Leahy (2009)
analyzed five core reading programs
and noted that if developing children’s
reading comprehension was a goal,
then core reading programs had little to
recommend them. They noted that these
core reading programs don’t provide
the same amount of guided practice
as is provided in the research, don’t
consistently follow the gradual release
of responsibility model researchers
have developed, and don’t consistently
follow the research on providing explicit
instruction, nor on having teachers
relate strategies to one another or
make their impact on reading clear. In
other words, commercial core reading
programs typically provide lessons
that bear little or no relationship to the
research on fostering the development
of reading comprehension. The authors
concluded that “Fidelity to a flawed
program is not a virtue” (p. 122).
Nonetheless, fidelity to flawed core
reading programs became a goal in too
many schools, especially schools serving
low-income children. The irony here
is that this was done in the name of
“scientifically based, reliable, replicable
research.” This is ironic because no
research existed then, or exists now,
to suggest that maintaining fidelity to
a core reading program will provide
effective reading lessons. Instead of
focusing on what research has identified
as the critical factor in the quality of
reading lessons offered, the expertise
of the teacher (Nye, Konstantopoulos,
& Hedges, 2004; Stuhlman & Pianta,
2009), in the past decade, federal, state,
and district policies have focused on
mandating the use of an approach that
has generated no support in the research
on teaching beginning readers.
Too Often We Don’t Have
Expert Teachers Working
WithStruggling Readers
Too often, struggling readers work
with paraprofessionals in their
reading intervention services. This is
unfortunate because paraprofessionals
are usually the least expert adults
working with children in schools. Over
a decade ago, the federal Title I program
evaluation noted:
Progress in using Title I to support
improved instructional practices at the
school-level remains limited by the
continued use of paraprofessionals who
provide instruction—particularly in
the highest-poverty Title I schools....
Phasing out their use in instruction and
promoting their use as parent liaisons
or in administrative functions should be
a priority. (United States Department of
Education, 1999)
However, if any change has occurred
in Title I programs over the decade
since that indictment was written, it
is that paraprofessionals continue to
provide an even greater proportion
of Title I reading interventions. The
aforementioned concern was driven
by a continuing series of research
reports noting that paraprofessional-led
reading interventions rarely produced
the accelerated reading growth
necessary if one ever hopes to turn
struggling readers into achieving readers
(Anderson & Pellicier, 1990; Boyd-
Zaharias & Pate-Bain, 1998; Croninger
& Valli, 2009; Puma et al., 1997; Rowan
& Guthrie, 1989; Slavin, Lake, Davis, &
Madden, 2011; Wasik & Slavin, 1993).
Nonetheless, paraprofessionals
working in schools now far outnumber
available reading specialists. Again,
National Center for Educational
Statistics (NCES; 2004) Schools and
Staffing Survey data indicated that
there were 29,000 individuals who were
working as reading specialists in U.S.
schools, but only one-third of those
individuals reported holding a graduate
degree with an emphasis on reading.
This federal agency concluded that
the typical reading specialist had less
educational preparation in their field
than did other specialists working in
U.S. schools. Most U.S. schools, then,
employ few teachers who know much
about reading development or how to
facilitate it. The NCES data suggest that
for every school that employs a reading
specialist with appropriate graduate
preparation, there will be 10 schools or
more that have no such person on their
staff.
I suggest that U.S. schools will
rarely deliver high-quality reading
lessons that struggling readers need
until every school employs multiple
reading specialists who have earned a
“This is ironic because no research existed
then, or exists now, to suggest that maintaining
fidelityto a core reading program will provide
effective reading lessons.”

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graduate degree with the appropriate
reading emphasis. U.S. schools will not
deliver high-quality lessons if there is a
continued reliance on paraprofessionals
to deliver reading lessons in intervention
programs, either through Title I or
special education programs. We have
too much evidence that expertise in
reading matters for any child who is
struggling while learning to be literate.
Stuhlman and Pianta (2009) reported
that less than a quarter (23%) of first-
grade teachers provided high-quality
reading lessons, lessons of the sort that
might enable every student to complete
first grade as a successful reader. They
also noted that almost as many teachers
offered low-quality reading lessons
that would enable few students to be
successful readers at the end of the
year. Scanlon, Gelzheiser, Vellutino,
Schatschneider, and Sweeney (2010)
and McGill-Franzen, Allington, Yokoi,
and Brooks (1999) demonstrated the
potential powerful effect that targeted
professional development can have on
the reading instruction provided by
kindergarten and first-grade teachers. In
both studies, emergent readers at risk for
becoming older struggling readers were
largely eliminated after their teachers
had participated in 30 or more hours of
targeted professional development, in
addition to having classroom coaching
available to support their efforts to
become truly effective reading teachers.
Vellutino and Scanlon (2002) noted
that some primary-grade children who
are struggling are easy to remediate
and turn into achieving readers. These
children who began kindergarten at
risk of reading failure became achieving
readers with just two weekly sessions of
one-on-one expert tutoring during their
kindergarten year. A second group is a
bit more difficult to bring up to grade
level; these children improved as a result
of the kindergarten tutorial but were still
at risk entering first grade. However,
after about 12–14 weeks of expert
tutoring in first grade, they had become
achieving readers.
A third group of children needed
more than 12–14 weeks of tutoring in
first grade to become achieving readers,
and some needed a full first-grade year
of expert tutoring to become achieving
readers. However, virtually every child
in these schools could be brought up to
grade-level reading performance when
they received sufficient expert tutoring.
Furthermore, most of these formerly
at-risk readers maintained their on-level
reading achievement at least through
the end of fourth grade.
Not at all children find learning to
read an easy accomplishment. Some
children need more expert instruction
and need more reading lessons than
others if they are to be expected to
succeed as readers. The work of Vellutino
et al. (1996), that of Mathes etal. (2005),
and that of Phillips and Smith (2010)
provide powerful testament to the
potential of expert reading lessons as
the solution to the problems U.S. schools
are experiencing with too many children
who find learning to read difficult.
Struggling Readers Are
OftenAsked to Read Texts
ThatAre Too Difficult
Struggling readers are often asked to
read text that is far more difficult for
them to read than the texts their better
reading peers are assigned (Allington,
2012). Since Betts (1946) first established
the criteria for optimum text difficulty,
there have been a number of studies
validating the potential power of
engaging children in reading where
their accuracy is high.
Ehri, Dreyer, Flugman, and Gross
(2007), for instance, noted that the
reading development of primary-grade
struggling readers who were tutored
“appeared to be explained primarily by
one aspect of their tutoring experience—
reading texts at a high level of accuracy,
between 98% and 100%” (p. 441).
Likewise, O’Connor and colleagues
(2002) found that sixth-grade struggling
readers benefitted more when tutors
used reading level–matched texts than
when they used grade-level materials.
Jorgenson, Klein, and Kumar (1977)
reported that struggling readers were
more likely to be engaged when the
texts they were reading better matched
their reading levels as compared with
engagement when texts were at grade
level. Gambrell, Wilson, and Gantt
(1981) reported the same results, as
did Fisher and Berliner (1985) and
Anderson, Evertson, and Brophy (1979).
In short, too many struggling readers
have desks full of grade-level texts that
they cannot read accurately, texts that
will foster neither engaged reading nor
reading development.
It is the better readers in U.S.
classrooms who daily engage in much
high-success reading activity (98%
accuracy or higher) and who develop
“U.S. schools will not deliver high-quality
lessons if there is a continued reliance on
paraprofessionals to deliver reading lessons
in intervention programs, either through
TitleIor special education programs.”

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into our good readers. In too many
classrooms, their struggling reader peers
engage in daily hard reading activities
and continue to flounder as readers. As
Adams (1990) noted decades ago, “The
most important activity for developing
literacy is that of inducing students to
read independently. Yet, when a text is
difficult for children, they comprehend
little, learn little, and tire quickly” (p.
295).
Reading with 98% accuracy, or
better, may seem to imply providing
texts that are too easy to foster reading
development. However, consider that if
adults typically read texts at this level
of difficulty, that would mean they
would encounter approximately six
words on every page of a paperback
novel they had not seen before
and would have to work out the
pronunciation. The problem here is
that most adults don’t encounter such
a word in almost any text they read!
In fact, most adults consider texts they
can read with only 98% accuracy as
hard texts. Most adults will work to
avoid reading any such difficult text.
They will look for alternative texts,
texts that are easier—texts they can
read accurately without actually using
their decoding abilities.
Struggling readers just participate
in too little high-success reading
activity every day. This is one reason
so few struggling readers ever
become achieving readers. We could
change that, but such change runs
counter to the dominant one-size-
fits-all entrepreneurial curriculum
framework that dominates schools
today and seems the dominant model
for the future (National Governors
Association Center for Best Practices &
Council of Chief State School Officers,
2010). It is our struggling readers who
willcontinue to pay the price forsuch
ill- begotten plans.
Minimizing the Time Spent
onIndependent Reading
Duringthe School Day
Although we have hundreds of
correlational studies reporting that
better readers spend more time
engaged in silent reading of self-
selected books (see Krashen, 2004, for
a review of these studies), the NRP
(2000) only examined experimental
studies in which the volume of reading
was manipulated. There are fewer of
these studies for reasons that should
be obvious. The NRP reported on the
dearth of experimental studies and
concluded that “based on the existing
evidence, the NRP can only indicate
that while encouraging students to read
might be beneficial, research has not
yet demonstrated this in a clear and
convincing manner” (p. 3–3).
Pearson (2007) noted that
the problem the NRP had with
independent reading was that there
was not a large number of randomized
field trials, so they concluded there
was no evidence to support the
efficacy of school-based programs
that promote independent reading.
However, there was evidence from
a few small-scale experiments, from
naturalistic epistemological studies,
from best-practice studies, from many
correlational studies, and from studies
for which the research was on foreign
populations that did not speak or
read English. He pointed out that the
situation was very different from saying
“no evidence” was available to support
school-based independent reading.
However, Armbruster and colleagues
(2001), in their widely distributed
booklet entitled Put Reading First, went
a step further and recommended that
“rather than allocating instructional
time for independent reading in the
classroom, encourage your students
to read more outside of school” (p.29).
This guidance effectively removed
independent reading during the school
day.
Cunningham and Stanovich (1997)
noted that “individual differences in
exposure to print can predict differences
in growth in reading comprehension
ability throughout the elementary
grades and thereafter” (p. 940). They
found that differences in early reading
proficiency predicted differences in how
much children read, which predicted
10years later who would be a good
reader and who wouldn’t.
Much of this debate centers on
the potential role of self-teaching,
or learning without lessons. Self-
teaching is one of those largely ignored
but potentially powerful aspects of
engaged reading. I think it is clear
“Struggling readers
justparticipate in
too little high-success
reading activity
everyday.”
“They found that differences in early reading
proficiency predicted differences in how much
children read, which predicted 10 years later who
would be a good reader and who wouldn’t.”

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that vocabulary knowledge is largely a
product of independent engaged reading
(Stahl & Nagy, 2006). However, there is
also evidence that almost everything,
from phonemic awareness, to phonics,
to comprehension, is developed through
independent reading and writing
(Allington, 2009a).
Our most recent study examining
the self-teaching hypothesis involved
providing 12 free self-selected books
every summer to children from low-
income families (Allington et al., 2010).
What this study found was that we could
eliminate the summer reading loss that
produces most of the reading achievement
differences found between the children of
low- and middle-income families in U.S.
schools. The poor children to whom we
provided free self-selected books gained
reading achievement during the summer
months, whereas the control group of
children who did not receive the books
lost ground, or experienced summer
reading loss.
Our intervention provided only the
free books; there was no corresponding
reading instruction attached to the book
distribution. Nonetheless, even without
summer reading lessons, just reading
during the summer months fostered
reading growth! The observed summer
reading development equaled the
achievement growth found in an earlier
meta-analysis of the effects of summer
school on reading achievement (Cooper,
Charleton, Valentine, & Muhlenbruck,
2000). The experimental evidence is
clearer today perhaps than a decade
ago that the actual volume of reading
activity is an important component in
the development of a myriad of reading
proficiencies. Still, however, schools
seem to largely ignore independent and
voluntary reading as important aspects of
their curricular and instructional plans.
Struggling Readers
AreAssigned Less Reading
ButDo More Worksheets
In addition to limiting the volume of
independent reading that children do
during the school day is the evidence
that we do not design lessons so
that those who are struggling read
more every day than their peers who
have successfully developed reading
proficiency. That is, we fill struggling
readers’ days with tasks that require
little reading. If we want to foster
reading development, then we must
design lessons that provide the
opportunities for struggling readers to
actually read. Torgesen (2004) made a
similar argument:
Schools must focus powerfully on
preventing the emergence of early
reading weaknesses—and the enormous
reading practice deficits that result from
prolonged reading failure—through
excellent core classroom instruction
and intensive, explicit interventions for
children who are identified through
reliable indicators as at risk of failure.
(p.365)
For any number of reasons, struggling
readers in U.S. schools do far less
reading than good readers. Some
of this, undoubtedly, has to do with
reading motivations. That is, children
who struggle with reading engage in
less voluntary reading than do good
readers. However, we have convincing
evidence that the design of reading
lessons differs for good and poor readers
in that poor readers get more work on
skills in isolation, whereas good readers
get assigned more reading activity
(Allington, 1980; 1983; 2002; Allington
& McGill-Franzen, 1989; Collins, 1986;
Cummins, 2007; Valli & Chambliss,
2007; Vaughn & Linan-Thompson, 2003).
Linked to engaging in less reading
during reading instruction is the fact
that struggling readers also do more
oral reading during their lessons than
do better readers. Much of this oral
reading is done in the round robin oral
reading style (Allington, 1983; Allington
& McGill-Franzen, 2010). This occurs
even though round robin reading has
been criticized as a lesson component
(Ash, Kuhn, & Walpole, 2008; Rasinski
& Hoffman, 2003) and shown to be a
less effective use of instructional time
than other alternatives (Taylor, Pearson,
Peterson, & Rodriguez, 2003).
A primary problem with the round
robin reading activity is that only a
single child is reading while others in
the instructional group are, at best,
following along as their classmate
reads aloud. In silent reading activity,
everyone is engaged in reading, so
“We have convincing evidence that the design of
reading lessons differs for good and poor readers
in that poor readers get more work on skills in
isolation, whereas good readers get assigned
more reading activity.”
“We fill struggling
readers’ days with
tasks that require
littlereading.”

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during the same period of time, children
engaged in silent reading read three
to five times as much text as during a
round robin reading event.
In addition to limiting reading volume,
round robin oral reading produces far
more teacher interruptions of the reading
activity. The most common point of a
teacher interruption is when a reader
makes an error while reading, although
even a hesitation can prompt a teacher
interruption (Allington, 1980; Collins,
1986; Eder, 1982). Members of struggling
reader instructional groups pick up the
interrupting behavior by their teacher
and in a short period of time begin to
mimic the teacher by interrupting other
struggling readers (Eder & Felmlee,
1984).
The end result is that round robin
reading fosters the interruptive
behavior, and under those conditions,
readers begin to read more slowly and
tentatively. Ultimately, I’ve argued
that the interruptive round robin oral
reading lesson fosters the dysfluency
that typically marks the oral reading
behaviors of struggling readers
(Allington, 2009b).
It Is Not a Lack of Money
ThatPrevents Us From
Teaching Every Child to Read
Before you throw up your hands and
shout, “I’d love to provide what research
says is necessary but we don’t have the
money to do that,” let me point out a
few money-saving opportunities that
could well provide the money you don’t
seem to have. The following is a list of
fairly common instructional options
that currently use the dollars (and
time) that could be spent to provide
the research-based instruction that all
children deserve.
■ Eliminate workbooks—No study has
ever identified completing workbook
pages as effective practice (Anderson,
Brubaker, Alleman-Brooks, & Duffy,
1985; Cunningham, 1982; Fisher
& Hiebert, 1990; James-Burdumy
et al., 2010; Lipson, Mosenthal,
Mekkelsen, &Russ, 2004; Turner,
1995). In additionto having no
evidence of producing positive effects
on reading achievement, workbooks
are consumable and thus an annual
expense( Jachym, Allington, & Broikou,
1989) that we could tap to fund
evidence-based practices.
■ Eliminate test prep—What test prep
is good at is generating profits for the
test publishers (Glovin & Evans, 2006).
However, no research has demonstrated
that test prep actually improves
performance on standardized tests of
reading development, much less fostered
improved reading behaviors (Guthrie,
2002; Popham, 2001). Again, test prep
produces annual expenditures that could
be instead invested in research-based
practices.
■ Eliminate paraprofessionals from
instructional roles—Following the
advice of the federal Title I program
noted earlier, reducing annual
expenditures for paraprofessionals also
provides funds that could be invested in
research-based practices.
■ Eliminate expenditures for computer-
based reading programs—Although
computer-based reading programs have
become this decade’s most popular
educational fad, no research supports
the expenditure of education dollars
on computers, computer software, or
computer-based reading curriculum
(Campuzano, Dynarski, Agodini, &
Rall, 2009; Slavin et al., 2011).
Eliminating money wasted on things
that don’t really matter seems the
most logical place to begin our effort
to teachall children to read. In
many schools, eliminating all of the
aforementioned items from our current
expenditures would provide between
$250,000 and $500,000 annually to
fund research-based instructional
efforts. In addition, eliminating things
that have never made a positive
difference in reading outcomes would
mean that we would also have time to
implement the many research-based
instructional improvements that all
readers need.
Summary
We can change the future for struggling
readers. However, to do so requires that
we rethink almost every aspect of the
instructional plans we currently have
in place. What benefits children who
struggle with learning to read the most
is a steady diet of high-quality reading
lessons, lessons in which they have texts
they can read with an appropriate level
of accuracy and in which they are also
engaged in the sort of work we expect
our better readers to do.
The instruction we currently provide
struggling readers too often focuses
on isolated lessons targeting specific
skill deficits. Too often these lessons
involve the least powerful instructional
options as we expect struggling readers
“No research has demonstrated that test prep
actually improves performance on standardized
tests of reading development, much less fostered
improved reading behaviors.”

WHAT REALLY MATTERS WHEN WORKING WITH STRUGGLING READERS
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to complete worksheet after worksheet,
skill lesson after skill lesson, and engage
them in round robin oral reading
activities. We’ve known for two decades
that when classroom reading lessons for
struggling readers are meaning focused,
struggling readers improve more than
when lessons are skills focused (Knapp,
1995). Nonetheless, skills-focused
instruction still dominates the lessons
we offer struggling readers.
One thing that every educator who
reads this article might do is to respond
to each of the following characteristics
of research-based reading lessons for
struggling readers:
■Do we expect our struggling
readers to read and write more
every day than our achieving
readers?
■Have we ensured that every
intervention for our struggling
readers is taught only by our most
effective and most expert teachers?
■Have we designed our reading
lessons such that struggling readers
spend at least two-thirds of every
lesson engaged in the actual
reading of texts?
■Do we ensure that the texts we
provide struggling readers across
the full school day are texts that
they can read with at least 98%
word recognition accuracy and 90%
comprehension?
■Does every struggling reader leave
the building each day with at least
one book they can read and that
they also want to read?
We can teach virtually every child to
read. Now the question that we face
is this: Will we use what we know to
solve the problems faced by the children
who struggle to become readers?
Unless you were able to respond
positively to each of the five questions
just posed, then there is work to be
done. However, the time has come to
recognize that struggling readers still
exist largely because of us. If every
school implemented the interventions
that researchers have verified and if
every teacher who is attempting to teach
children to read developed the needed
expertise, struggling readers would all
learn to read and become achieving
readers. However, it remains up to us,
the educators, to alter our schools and
our budgets so that every child becomes
a real reader. I hope we are up to the
challenge.
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