What Does “Below Basic” Mean on NAEP Reading?

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Reading aims to measure reading comprehension for students in the United States and to monitor progress in our education system. NAEP Reading is developed based on an assessment framework document that is periodically revised to reflect the latest understandings about reading comprehension and its assessment. A key goal of the Visioning Panel (VP) and the Development Panel (DP) charged with updating the NAEP Reading Assessment Framework for 2026 was to lay the foundation for an assessment that made progress toward greater fairness, equity, and validity. In this essay, we discuss how the Framework development process unfolded and its results. We document the unusual ways the National Assessment Governing Board (“the Board”) shaped the development process. We provide evidence that a small group of Board members aimed to preserve the status quo in reading assessment by downplaying reliance on expertise and authoritative sources of research on reading, learning, and assessment and by removing attention to equity in NAEP Reading. We also discuss both successful (i.e., approved by the Board) and unsuccessful (i.e., rejected by the Board) recommendations for changes to the 2026 Framework that initially were proposed by the DP. We end by considering how, despite the efforts of the small group of Board members, we as a literacy field can improve the nature and impact of our large-scale reading assessments, and NAEP in particular.

This article provides examples of how serious misconceptions can result when only “all student” scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are used for simplistic state-to-state comparisons. Suggestions for better treatment are presented. The article also compares Kentucky's eighth grade EXPLORE testing to NAEP results for the same cohorts, finding that NAEP math and reading proficiency rates are astonishingly close to the reported percentages of those same students scoring at or above the EXPLORE Benchmark scores, which indicate those students are on track for success in college.

WHEN EDUCATORS open their Fibber McGee's closets of past reforms, a pile of silver bullets will spill out onto the floor. For at least the past 20 years, the sense of public confidence in public education has been fed by an arsenal of such quick, often creative, but largely unsubstantiated remedies for turning schools and kids around. And the pile became much larger this fall. The highest-caliber bullet of all--the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act--landed on top of the pile. But it was not the only presumed salvation of the public schools to lose some of its luster recently. Collecting data about these failed silver bullets can often tell us more than we've known before. The first National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report on reading and math scores that fairly reflects changes under NCLB showed essentially that, so far, this silver bullet is pretty much of a dud. Reading scores were flat, and math scores were up only a bit. Despite statements by the Bush Administration that sought to put a happy face on the findings, the NAEP data showed that progress had been better before NCLB became law than it has been since it was enacted. The data also indicate something that few pundits seem willing to acknowledge. Since the passage of NCLB, about four years ago, changes in the demographics of the student population have accelerated, and schools all over the country are feeling the impact of more English-language learners than ever before. It is to the schools' credit that NAEP reading scores--in the early grades, at least --did not go down. Moreover, the very slight improvement in math scores could be attributed partially to the fact that math test items in the early grades, and even to some extent on the eighth-grade tests, do not require advanced reading skills. (Another possible explanatory factor is that the efforts of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics have given us some semblance of national math standards and that these standards have been in various stages of implementation for more than 15 years.) The NAEP data also underscore the accident-of-birth unfairness built into state accountability systems. The erratic performance of students on state measures of achievement, compared to their performance on NAEP, demonstrates that students in some states are being held accountable for much higher levels of performance than students in other states. And no state has made much progress, as revealed in the NAEP scores. Some 20 states claim to have made progress on their own eighth-grade reading assessments between 2003 and 2005, but only three showed any progress at even the basic level on NAEP. And, according to the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, only eight of 25 states that did announce progress on their own fourth-grade reading tests had more than one-third as much progress at the basic level on NAEP. As might be expected, proponents and opponents of charter schools took the very same data and came up with different analyses. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools found them to be making more progress than other schools; the American Federation of Teachers found them to be making less, even after accounting for student-level racial/economic variables. Another silver bullet to land atop the pile of spent ones is the grandiose array of promises made by Edison Schools, Inc. In the immortal tradition of Edward R. Murrow's series You Are There, I was there when Tennessee entrepreneur Chris Whittle announced that he would launch a network of at least 100 new schools that would rival public schools in terms of technology and student achievement. …

THE GAP is back. Actually, the differences between the achievement of white and Asian students and that of black, Hispanic, and other minority students never completely disappeared, but so much progress was made during the 1970s and 1980s that there seemed to be a tacit assumption that the gap would eventually close altogether. The standards and assessment efforts of the past decade were at least partly meant to speed up the process of closing the gap. If districts, schools, and parents are chafing under accountability measures (often hastily and thoughtlessly implemented), it is because state policy makers were under the gun to find ways to close the gap even further. Federal laws, especially Title I, said that all students were to be held to the same high standards, a mandate that rippled through state policies for all districts and schools. The requirement that assessment data be disaggregated by race and ethnicity also ensured that the problem of the gap would remain public. Indeed it did, especially in a rash of reports released as the new school year began, including the annual release of SAT scores from the College Board. One who believes, as I do, that the standards-based movement is essential to closing the gap, must conclude that not enough schools are using standards-based reforms to give low-performing students, especially minorities, access to the same curriculum as everyone else. The latest trend report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tells the story of the gap for the past 25-plus years. And it was a good story for a long time. Between 1970 and 1988, the gap between the NAEP reading scores of black students and those of white students was cut in half; the math score gap, cut by one-third. Obviously, schools were doing something right, and black students were showing they could indeed learn when given greater opportunities to do so. Then in the 1990s, the progress stopped. Actually, it stopped for everyone (at slightly higher levels than in the 1970s), but black and Hispanic NAEP scores climbed aboard a roller coaster. They fell back, began to improve in some subjects, then regressed again. By 1999, the scores of black and Hispanic students were far below the records set in 1988. Trying to put a good face on a disturbing picture, NAEP officials and Secretary of Education Richard Riley pointed to steady improvements overall in math scores and higher rates of enrollment in more advanced math classes. The same arguments were heard with the College Board's release of the 2000 SAT scores: last year's seniors posted the highest math scores since 1969; verbal scores were unchanged. The percentage of minorities taking the SAT has increased 47% since 1987 and would be expected to pull the average scores down, so this was good news. However, the gap remains very wide, with blacks scoring 104 points lower than whites on the math portion of the SAT and 94 points lower on the verbal portion. These score gaps on the SAT actually widened during the 1990s. So what happened? At a time when state statutes, a general consensus about content standards, improved professional development, greater knowledge from research on learning, and pressure for accountability have been working more or less in tandem, why have the academic gaps grown larger? Researchers are scratching their heads on this one. David Grissmer of RAND points to the unprecedented resources made available to low-income schools by the War on Poverty as one factor in narrowing the gap and to a rising black middle class as another. However, he couldn't explain why the progress ended. His most recent research, described in Improving Student Achievement (RAND, 2000), uses the improvement of fourth- and eighth-grade NAEP math scores as the context for making state comparisons. The rise in scores in some states, he says, is a result primar-ily of both higher per-pupil expenditures and how the money is spent. …

In this secondary analysis study, the authors explored the relations between reading comprehension and oral reading performance in fourth‐grade students, using a data set from the U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) special study of oral reading. The data set consisted of 1,713 students randomly selected from the 140,000 fourth graders who participated in the 2002 main NAEP reading assessment. Oral reading was measured by word‐reading accuracy, rate, and prosody. The authors investigated how these variables related to NAEP comprehension across the ability distribution, with a focus on students with low comprehension scores. The results add to the literature in several ways. First, indicators of oral reading fluency continue to explain variation in reading comprehension, even when students had been given multiple opportunities to familiarize themselves with the passage that they read aloud. Second, word‐reading accuracy and reading rate independently explained comprehension scores. Third, the authors observed qualitatively different profiles of fourth‐grade readers with low comprehension scores. Nearly all students with reading rates lower than one standard deviation below the mean also had problems with word recognition, as evidenced by the relatively higher number of word‐reading errors and low prosody ratings. The authors interpret these findings in light of the lexical quality hypothesis and the verbal efficiency theory, which emphasize the importance of word‐level accuracy and automaticity to reading comprehension.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) mandated that a highly qualified teacher be in all our nation's classrooms by academic year 2005-2006. To accomplish this laudable goal, each state must define what it means by a highly qualified teacher. States are permitted to use teacher licensure tests to demonstrate to the federal government that their teachers are highly qualified, that is, capable, competent, skilled, trained, practiced, and so forth. The theory of action behind the policy is that if America's teachers were of sufficiently high quality, then education would improve. But all this appears to be political spectacle (Smith, 2004); pure theater with no other purpose than to look like something positive is happening, whereas it is not. The way to recognize spectacle is through analysis of the slogans and policies promulgated by politicians. For example, although the call is to ensure highly qualified teachers, there is no evidence to suggest that teachers, as a group, are not now highly qualified. Perhaps this legislation is designed in part to scare ordinary citizens into thinking that millions of unqualified teachers are in charge of their children, although the 3 million teachers we now have in our schools appear to be overwhelmingly qualified to be teaching. How do we know that America's teachers as a group are competent, skilled, and qualified to teach? One way we know is from the evidence we collect on how well our children are learning, because the ability to promote learning in children must be part of the criteria applied when we designate a teacher as highly qualified. Evidence of learning is obtained from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), from which there is evidence of growth for all racial and ethnic groups among 9-, 13-, and 17-year-olds in all three of the subject areas regularly tested: reading, mathematics, and science. In fact, on the NAEP reading tests, scores for 9-year-old African Americans place them approximately 2 years ahead of where their parents scored when the tests were first introduced (Berliner, 2004) The quality of our teachers can also be inferred through the performance of American 9-year-old students in reading. On Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) tests, U.S. students performed remarkably well. Despite the Bush administration's criticism of reading instruction in the United States, PIRLS shows White American students performing better than those of the highest performing nation in the world; all U.S. students, combined, placed about third in the world statistically; and even America's minority public school students scored above the international average (Berliner, 2004). These results raise questions about the claim that we lack qualified teachers of reading (for more on how the premise of a failing school system cannot be supported, see Berliner, 2004). Certainly America's poor and minority students do not do well in most national and international assessments. In particular, it is these students who need access to more qualified teachers in their schools. However, it is hard to make the case that America's teachers in general are not qualified, as implied by the NCLB legislation. Additional examination of the federal requirement for highly qualified teachers reveals that no means are offered to accomplish the desired goal, suggesting that nothing is expected to happen. Moreover, the language used to rally the politically faithful is kept purposely ambiguous, with the term highly qualified providing no concrete referents for anyone to understand what is so ardently being promoted. Furthermore, demands for highly qualified teachers must take into account the relationship between teacher quality and the pay and status of teachers in our society. Attracting high-quality teachers--whatever that might turn out to be--may be more difficult than imagined by legislators, given the economic and social status of teachers in our society. …

About 5 million Emergent Bilingual (EB) students are enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools across the United States. Spanish-speaking EBs constituted 76 percent of the EB population in the U.S. educational system (Office of English Language Acquisition, 2019). Although not all EBs are at risk for falling behind grade level proficiency in literacy, examination of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reveals that EBs, on average, demonstrate significantly lower levels of literacy proficiency than their non-EB peers in Grades 4 and 8 (McFarland et al., 2018). Schools support the literacy development of Spanishspeaking EBs through multitiered systems of support (MTSS), which encourages early identification and intervention for those students needing support. A fundamental aspect of MTSS is Tier 1, which consists of high-quality core instruction and universal screening of all children in general education classrooms. Despite the school policies and practices to close or reduce the academic opportunity gap for EBs by implementing MTSS, it has not fulfilled its promise for Spanish-speaking EBs. One aspect is that few programs do not address EB's home language as well as English language development and provide culturally and linguistically responsive instruction. This dissertation aims to examine the effects of an abbreviated peer- mediated academic intervention on literacy and language performance among 64 Spanish-Speaking EB students in a rural school district and to further examine the extent to which home language exposure affects literacy outcomes. A randomized cluster design was used to examine the effects of an abbreviated peer-mediated literacy intervention. Hierarchical linear regression analysis was used to examine the effect of home language exposure on literacy measures. Results indicated the treatment condition outperformed students in the control condition in Spanish oral reading fluency, bilingual receptive vocabulary, and English reading comprehension measures. Home language exposure did not affect literacy measures. This study addresses an important gap in the literature on providing abbreviated peer-mediated academic interventions for emergent bilingual students.

The footprint of the COVID-19 pandemic in reading performance of students in the U.S. with and without disabilities

The low reading fluency skills among third-grade students in Indonesian language learning at SDN 20 Kalumbuk serve as the background of this study, given that strong reading ability is essential to support comprehension and overall academic success. This research aims to examine the effect of the Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) model assisted by animated video media on students’ reading fluency skills. A quasi-experimental design was employed using a non-equivalent posttest-only control group design. The population included all third-grade students, with Class IIIB as the experimental group using the ORF model assisted by animated videos, and Class IIIA as the control group receiving conventional instruction using similar media. The instrument used was a reading fluency skills test assessed through a rubric covering aspects of pausing, intonation, vocal expression, and reading comprehension. Data analysis was conducted using a t-test, which showed a significance value (2-tailed) of 0.021 < 0.05, indicating a significant difference between the two groups. The study concludes that the application of the ORF model assisted by animated video significantly improves students’ reading fluency. The findings imply that the ORF model can serve as a strategic alternative in Indonesian language instruction to enhance literacy skills at the elementary school level.

This study examined the roles of first-language (L1) Chinese and second-language (L2) English phonological skills in English and Chinese reading comprehension, respectively, and their association with reading comprehension difficulties among Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual children. We tested 258 second graders on nonverbal intelligence, working memory, phonological skills, word reading, and reading comprehension, in both Chinese and English. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that Chinese phonological skills contributed to English reading comprehension both directly and indirectly, through the mediation of English phonological skills and English word reading. In contrast, English phonological skills contributed only indirectly to Chinese reading comprehension through L1 Chinese phonological and word reading skills. Furthermore, poor Chinese readers, poor English readers, and poor readers in both Chinese and English exhibited lower levels of lexical tone awareness than average readers, even after controlling for nonverbal intelligence, word reading, and working memory. Poor Chinese readers outperformed poor English readers and poor readers in both Chinese and English on Chinese segmental phonological awareness, and their performance was comparable to average readers. These findings suggest that both suprasegmental and segmental phonological skills are critical to the development of reading comprehension across L1 Chinese and L2 English in Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual children.

.A theory-based approach was used to investigate the relations among Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) initial skill status in the fall of first grade, NWF growth across the school year, and end-of-year oral reading fluency and reading comprehension (RC) skill. Hypotheses were anchored to Perfetti’s verbal efficiency theory and the role of automaticity in beginning decoding skill development. The sample consisted of 3,506 first-grade students in 50 schools. Results indicated a moderating effect of initial skill performance status on the relation between NWF gains and end-of-year reading fluency and RC. Strong, positive relations were found between NWF gains and ORF and RC scores for students who began the year with low to moderate and relatively high decoding skills. For students at the highest end of the distribution (5% of the sample), NWF gains were not associated with ORF or RC scores. In addition, early gains on NWF more strongly predicted reading outcomes than later gains for students at the low end of the initial NWF distribution. Implications for theories of early reading development and for school psychologist practice are discussed.

This study investigates the longitudinal predictors of the development of Chinese word reading skills and potential bidirectional relationships between Chinese word reading and oral language skills. We examine, in a 2-year longitudinal study, a wide range of theoretically important predictors (phonological awareness, tone awareness, morphological awareness, visual skills, rapid automatized naming, Pinyin knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge) of reading in 143 primary-school children living in mainland China. Initial levels of reading were predicted by vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, and visual discrimination skills. Only initial reading levels predicted growth in reading. Initial reading also predicted growth in vocabulary knowledge and morphological construction. This pattern demonstrates that the early stages of learning to read in Chinese places demands on semantic (vocabulary) and visual skills in addition to phonological skills. Furthermore, early levels of word reading predict the growth of vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness suggesting that the development of these oral language skills is facilitated by learning to read.

The importance of reading skills to academic achievement, job acquisition and future success is well documented. Most of the research on reading interventions focuses on children in primary schools but many children start secondary school with very poor reading skills and schools require evidence-based interventions to support these children. The aims of this study were (i) to explore the efficacy of a phonics-based reading intervention programme, Toe By Toe, among secondary age students with severe reading difficulties and (ii) to examine perceived barriers to implementing this intervention programme. Results showed the intervention brought about a statistically significant improvement in the students’ decoding and word reading skills. Interviews with staff and students indicated a wide range of positive responses to the intervention and some key barriers to implementation. This study adds to the evidence base for the use of reading interventions in secondary schools to support students with severe reading difficulties.

ABSTRACTSchool bullying is associated with externalizing and internalizing problems, but little is known about whether reading difficulties also play a part. We asked how, in Grades 1 and 2, word reading skills and externalizing/internalizing problems predict the degree to which students are involved in bullying in Grade 3. Using a sample of 480 Finnish children (M age = 7 years 2 months at the beginning of the study), developmental profiles were identified using mixture modeling based on reading skills, as well as externalizing and internalizing problems. In Grade 3, one fifth of the students were involved in bullying as victims, bullies, or bully/victims. Poor readers with externalizing/internalizing problems were most involved as bullies and bully/victims but not as victims. Average readers with externalizing/internalizing problems were also involved in bullying, whereas students with only reading difficulties were not. Skilled readers displayed little externalizing/internalizing problems and were not involved in bullying.

This study explored first-, second-, and third-grade reading instruction and students' (n = 1,586) reading skill growth in Florida Reading First (RF) classrooms (n = 95). The goal of RF is to improve students' literacy outcomes through the use of research-based instruction, assessment, teacher training, and program evaluation. Whereas survey data have shown that schools are generally implementing the major components of RF, we found no studies that related observed classroom instruction and student reading outcomes, which was the purpose of this study. Students attended schools that were historically high poverty with generally weak student achievement. Standardized assessments of vocabulary and reading comprehension, as well as progress-monitoring oral reading fluency tests, were administered. Classrooms were observed in the spring of the school year for 1 hour during reading instruction. In general, first graders demonstrated expected reading comprehension skills by the end of the school year; however, second and third graders did not. Hierarchical linear models revealed that the effect of instruction on students' reading comprehension was highly complex, varying substantially across grades. Further, the effect of instruction depended on the grade observed as well as students' vocabulary and fall oral reading fluency skills.