School years often begin with a rush to assess students and place them into reading intervention programs. Educational software provider Read Naturally recently reminded educators that the early weeks of the semester are important for checking initial placements in their Read Live software. But changing these settings too quickly or relying on a single reading strategy can slow progress, especially for older students and those with dyslexia.
What Happened
In its latest guidelines, Read Naturally recommended that teachers assess student placement and adjust reading goals after students complete three to six stories. The company states that this initial window provides enough data on reading fluency and comprehension to determine if a student needs a harder level or a different target. To help teachers implement these practices, the organization is hosting a virtual training seminar to demonstrate how to adjust student settings and support vocabulary development.
This is particularly important for older readers who struggle. While many educators assume older students cannot make significant literacy gains, recent success stories, such as a sixth grader named Andrew who made large leaps in fluency, suggest otherwise. Literacy advocates write that secondary school students simply require different structural supports. The book Reading Isn't Optional: Fulfilling the Promise of Literacy for Secondary Students explores this concept.
The Bigger Picture
While adjusting software settings early is helpful, research suggests that educators must not rush baseline assessments. Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) works well for tracking weekly progress, as noted by Renaissance. But a study in ResearchGate warns that establishing a baseline with too few data points makes progress-monitoring results less valid. Another replication study published in ResearchGate found that rapid schedules of progress tracking are often less accurate than educators expect, meaning a few early assignments may not reflect a student's actual path.
For older students, the stakes of choosing the right intervention structure are high. According to a Penn State meta-analysis, roughly one-third of eighth and twelfth graders in the United States read below a basic level. The analysis of 34 studies found that while word-reading interventions successfully improved decoding and comprehension, they did not automatically boost reading fluency.
To build fluency alongside decoding, programs must combine multiple approaches. A study on the AMP-IT-UP reading intervention showed that modules balancing decoding and comprehension instruction produced larger reading gains for middle schoolers than standard intensive reading classes. Single-focus classes, which only drill phonics or only practice comprehension, offered no extra benefit over normal school instruction.
This need for integrated instruction relates directly to brain chemistry. A study published in Scientific Reports analyzed children with dyslexia using fMRI neuroimaging. The researchers found that dyslexia is not a sensory defect, but a disruption in how the brain connects spelling (orthography) and sound (phonology). Interestingly, children with dyslexia showed typical brain adaptation patterns when reading simple, high-frequency words. This shows that targeted interventions explicitly connecting letters and sounds can help retrain the brain.
What This Means for Families
For parents and educators, this research shows that struggling readers, including teenagers and those with dyslexia, can improve if they have the right tools. But instruction must address multiple skills. Relying on repetitive spelling drills or silent reading alone is rarely enough.
Families should also make sure schools do not change a student's learning goals or difficulty levels based on a handful of early assignments. A student might struggle with their first few stories simply because they are adapting to a new software interface or classroom routine, not because the reading level is incorrect.
What You Can Do
To support struggling readers, parents can advocate for programs that teach phonics, spelling, and comprehension together rather than focusing on a single skill. It is also helpful to ask educators to collect at least four to six consistent test scores over several weeks before changing a student's intervention level. For children with dyslexia, families can practice activities at home that connect letters directly to speech sounds, supporting the brain's natural learning pathways.