State Reading Laws Focus on K-3. What About Older Students Who Struggle?

State lawmakers have passed a slate of comprehensive reading bills in recent years that aim to align schools’ teaching, curricula, and professional development with research on key foundational literacy skills. But most of that legislation has focused on elementary school students.

Now, advocates have set their sights on improving instruction for older students, who are often left out of the conversation.

The swell of attention for younger students is understandable. Students who can’t read by 3rd grade are more likely to struggle academically down the road, drop out of high school, and have poor adult outcomes. But when students don’t meet that goal, struggles with literacy compound as they older, leaving them further behind with fewer supports and teachers who are less equipped to address their fundamental gaps in understanding.

In a nationally representative poll administered by the EdWeek Research Center between Sept. 24 and Nov. 3 of nearly 700 educators, 58% of educators surveyed said that a quarter or more of their middle and high school students struggle with basic reading.

The causes of that pattern are likely multifaceted: Older students who weren’t taught how to read using evidence-based methods, pandemic-related damage, and declines in independent reading among youth.

“We know that literacy difficulties don’t end in 3rd grade,” said Emily Solari, an education professor at the University of Virginia and director of Virginia Literacy Partnerships, a partnership between the university and the state’s department of education that is helping implement Virginia’s literacy law. “In fact, they get much more complex to target as kids get older.”

For older students, literacy is a linchpin to other learning

As students shift into middle school, being able to glean knowledge from text serves as the linchpin to all other learning. Lessons in all subjects rely on increasingly complex texts, and reading struggles can have a domino effect, causing students to fall behind in math, science, and social studies as well.

But adapting a state’s reading law for older students isn’t as simple as changing existing language from “K-3″ to “K-8,” said Kymyona Burke, a senior policy fellow at ExcelinEd, who previously served as state literacy director at the Mississippi education department.

Older students who struggle with reading comprehension need developmentally appropriate books that are engaging for kids their age. It can be difficult for middle schools, which tend to have more structured schedules, to find time for reading interventions. Middle school English/language arts teachers often lack training in foundational literacy skills, and teachers of other subjects may not understand how literacy factors into their classes.

“What type of professional development, training, or awareness do they need around students who may not be able to access the content?” Burke said. “What if it’s not that a student hates math, it’s that they can’t read and interpret math content?”

ExcelinEd’s model state policy for advancing adolescent literacy calls for regularly administered reading assessments; individual reading plans for students who haven’t mastered certain literacy concepts; training for both educators and administrators in content-specific literacy skills; reading specialists in all schools; tiered systems that provide more intense interventions for students with more extensive deficits; and incorporating concepts like phonological awareness, morphology, and reading comprehension into secondary teacher-preparation programs.

Such big shifts will require a lot of hand-holding from states in the form of guidance, resources, and technical support, Burke said. But it’s a challenge middle school leaders are often willing to take on when they understand how students’ literacy deficits affect their whole academic experience, she said.

“There was always this notion [among middle school teachers] that students should have learned this already,” Burke recalled about her teaching days. “I think there’s this shift, which I really admire, in saying, ‘How do we all play a part in advancing literacy for our students?’ We can stop the blame game.”

Including older readers in state science of reading laws

At least 40 states have passed “flagship” literacy laws that aim to align teacher training, curricula, and student interventions with the science of reading, said Esther Quintero, a senior fellow at the Albert Shanker Institute, which tracks state reading legislation. But most of those laws target the bulk of their requirements and resources at students in 3rd grade and below.

“Older students have a whole different set of characteristics that would require a separate, more targeted approach,” Quintero said.

Virginia amended its literacy law in 2023, extending most of its provisions through 8th grade and adding the most comprehensive requirements for older readers of any state law to date. As it does for elementary students, the Virginia Literacy Act requires screening assessments to identify what concepts struggling readers need help with, individualized reading plans, in-school reading specialists, teacher training, and research-based curricula for students in grades 4-8. The law also requires districts to create literacy plans that outline how it will carry out its mandates.

Other states have passed or proposed legislation that is less comprehensive or more targeted in scope.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, signed a law in 2024 that requires personalized reading intervention plans for students in kindergarten through 6th grade who cannot read at grade level. An Indiana law, also enacted in 2024, requires the state’s department of education to develop a screener to identify students in 4th through 8th grade who need additional reading support. New Mexico requires ELA and special education teachers who teach students in grades 6-12 to take a 55-hour course on fundamental literacy concepts.

Mississippi lawmakers proposed a bill to extend the requirements of the state’s frequently lauded flagship reading law through 8th grade in the 2025 legislative session, but the House never voted on the measure.

It’s also important for state reading efforts to be preventative, aiming to nurture all students’ reading skills, rather than merely identifying those who need the most help, Burke said. That’s why some reading advocates are closely watching as Virginia implements its law, hoping it will inform other states’ future efforts to extend reading supports to older students.

As with elementary reading laws, success or failure often depends on quality of implementation and whether schools have the resources to meet new requirements, Burke said.

Virginia leads the way in targeting older readers

This year, Virginia rolled out a screener for 4th through 8th grade students who score at the basic or below-basic level on a section of the state reading test or are flagged by a teacher for additional assessment. The screener, which Solari helped develop and pilot with 8,500 students in a smaller group of schools, will help schools identify focus areas for individualized student reading intervention plans required under the new state law. It includes subtests on skills like spelling, oral fluency, sentence comprehension, and morphology; and optional subtests on subject like letter sounds and passage comprehension.

Last year, the state’s board of education approved a list of intervention materials for students in grades 4-8 to help districts comply with a requirement that their curricula align with the science of reading. The guide highlights strengths, like programs featuring age-appropriate texts from a variety of sources, including newspaper articles, poems, and novel excerpts; and computer-based platforms with engaging activities to help students practice concepts. It also highlights potential implementation challenges. For example, some programs may not be feasible in schools that don’t schedule a designated class period for reading interventions.

Virginia districts must also hire one reading specialist for every 550 students in kindergarten through grade 5 and one reading specialist for every 1,100 students in grades 6-8. Concerned that there might not be enough certified specialists to fill those positions, the state allows teachers to complete an online course and earn a “microcredential” valid for five years while they complete the full, formal program.

And schools have undergone a massive effort to ensure their middle-grades teachers receive training to comply with the law. For existing teachers, Virginia Literacy Partnerships helped develop training modules that target the specific needs associated with their various positions.

ELA teachers must complete an online course that takes 27-36 hours and explores issues like reading comprehension of complex texts, vocabulary development, and developmentally appropriate instructional strategies for middle grades students.

For math, science, and social studies teachers, the course takes 5-7 hours and focuses on more fundamental concepts and how they translate into their specialties.

A science teacher might intuitively focus on morphology, or breaking words apart and explaining the meaning of individual parts. If a student knows that “bio” means life and “ology” means the study of something, they can easily determine that biology means the study of living things.

As schools have piloted assessments and trainings, Solari has made tweaks along the way. When principals complained that some segments of the reading screener were too long, she determined that those subtests should only be administered to students who failed to master a few targeted reading standards.

And when enthusiastic principals asked for training materials for art, music, and physical education teachers, researchers developed an optional online course to walk them through the basics of literacy.

“Everyone in the building is responsible for literacy because it touches every content area,” Solari said.