Why Older Students Struggle with Reading: Common Skill Deficits and How to Spot Them in the Classroom

Many states, districts, and individual schools have made significant strides in implementing evidence-aligned, high-quality literacy instruction in K-5 classrooms, but some educators in 6-12 classrooms are still asking the question: What about older students who struggle to read grade-level content?

Throughout middle school, many of these students face challenges as they encounter more complex academic texts. When elementary students move on to the higher grades without mastering essential reading skills, they often struggle with understanding grade-level content in subjects like science, history, and math.

This gap can persist beyond middle school and into high school, leading to significant barriers in academic achievement and college readiness. This is because students’ reading deficits — whether in decoding, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, or elsewhere — prevent them from engaging fully with the material. Without these necessary foundational literacy skills, students may fall behind and struggle to catch up.

As literacy challenges in the older grades become more visible, educators, parents, and policymakers are asking: What are the root causes of reading struggles for older readers? Are there specific areas that are most problematic?

And, crucially: How can we identify these gaps early in order to provide targeted interventions?

Answering these questions is the beginning step to ensuring all students, regardless of their grade or reading level, have access to the instruction they need to be successful.

In this blog we will discuss the most common causes of reading struggles for older students, signs to look for, and how to identify these gaps using a variety of tools in the classroom.

A Place to Start: Standardized Reading Assessments

Are students in your class scoring below grade-level expectation on standardized reading assessments? Are they continuing to struggle with reading grade-level texts in class?

Below grade-level scores on standardized reading assessments are often one of the first indicators of reading challenges in older students.

And while these particular test scores are helpful to bring awareness to a problem, they aren’t as useful in identifying exactly why students are struggling. It can be necessary to dig deeper into the problem using focused student observations and more targeted assessment tools.

Below we’ll look into the most common reading challenges and show you how to identify them in the classroom.

Reading Challenge: Oral Reading Fluency

One of the first areas to investigate if an older reader struggles to read grade-level text is oral reading fluency. Deficits in oral reading fluency can arise for a variety of reasons including, but not limited to, a lack of sufficient reading practice and/or gaps in their phonological, phonetic, or morphological knowledge.

It can be harder to observe a lack of reading fluency in older students if they rarely read aloud in the classroom. However, if oral reading can be observed informally, you can look for signs like:

• Frequent pauses, repetition, or awkward phrasing
• Slower pace of reading
• Difficulty with prosody (expression) and rhythm in reading
• Lack of attention paid to punctuation

Assessing Oral Reading Fluency in the Classroom

Formally assessing oral reading fluency can be the first step in determining the needs of an older student who is struggling to read grade level text fluently. Oral reading fluency assessments, commonly known as ORF, measure a student's ability to read a passage aloud smoothly and accurately, with appropriate speed and expression.

The assessment typically involves reading a short, grade-level text for a set period of time, while the assessor notes the number of correct words per minute (CWPM), errors, and the student's ability to convey meaning through phrasing and intonation.

A student who exhibits a high level of accuracy (meaning they made few decoding errors) but reads slowly, or a student who lacks expression, might need additional work in fluency. This can be achieved through activities like repeated reading or reader’s theater.

A low accuracy score, which reflects a student who is not able to decode words accurately, and is reading slowly could benefit from additional assessment to determine if they have a gap in phonological or phonics knowledge.

Reading Challenge: Word Decoding Skills

A lack of grade-level oral text reading fluency can sometimes be attributed to a student’s inability to decode unfamiliar words easily, especially multisyllabic words.

Weak word decoding skills can be due to a lack of exposure to explicit, high-quality phonics instruction with sufficient decoding practice at the word, sentence, and paragraph levels; however, there are other reasons why a student might struggle with this skill.

In order to help identify these needs in your student, you can watch for signs like:

• Guessing at words based on context
• Skipping over unknown words
• Reading slowly
• Word mispronunciation
• Frustration with multisyllabic words
• Avoiding reading aloud in class

While teacher observations can be helpful in identifying students who are struggling to decode grade-level text easily, it is important to utilize targeted assessment tools and data to inform accurate instructional decision-making.

Assessing Word Decoding Skills in the Classroom

When a word decoding deficit is suspected, a great place to start is with a diagnostic assessment that focuses on phonics skills. It can provide insight into whether a student has gaps in their knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondences, morphology, or even phonemic awareness, and can help narrow the path for additional assessment if necessary.

For example: if a student consistently misreads regular words that follow common phonetic patterns (e.g., cat, pen, hop), they could have a deficit in phoneme-grapheme correspondences. They may not understand how the sounds of individual letters or letter combinations map to letters in the word. If they pronounce the correct phonemes but fail to blend them together into the correct word, phonemic awareness might need to be assessed.

If a student repeatedly misreads words with specific graphemes (for example, struggling with the /sh/ in ship, the /ch/ in chat, or the long /ā/ sound in cake), this suggests they are not fully familiar with those letter-sound relationships.

If a student successfully reads words with regular phonemic patterns but fails to generalize these skills to multisyllabic words that contain prefixes or suffixes, they might need support in syllable types and morphology.

It is important to isolate where a student has gaps in their phonological, phonetic, and/or morphological knowledge in order to be able to intervene appropriately for word decoding and accelerate the learning of an older struggling reader.

Inability to Comprehend Text

An older student who struggles with grade-level text reading, not due to issues with fluency or decoding, but because of comprehension deficits, faces a unique set of challenges.

While these students can read words correctly and at an appropriate speed, their ability to make meaning from the text is lacking. Their difficulties can stem from difficulty understanding complex sentence structures and syntax, a lack of vocabulary and/or background knowledge, or a lack of adequate reading comprehension strategies.

Reading Challenge: Syntax

Syntax refers to the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language.

While students may be able to read grade-level text, teachers might observe that they have trouble comprehending the overall meaning of sentences that contain:

• Multiple parts in a sentence
• Extra phrases that add information
• Complicated sentence structures

These challenges with syntax can make it harder for students to follow the flow of ideas and connect the components of a sentence. For example, a student might struggle to connect a pronoun to the subject of the sentence or text.

Another way teachers can informally identify a student who is struggling with syntax is by paying attention to their subject-verb agreement, their grammatical knowledge (nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, etc.), and their use of compound/more complex sentences, etc., both orally and in their writing.

Assessing Syntax in the Classroom

Identifying a student who specifically struggles with syntax can be more challenging for the classroom teacher, as there are not as many formal, straightforward, and readily available assessments for this skill.

Observations can be a good place to start and if syntax deficits are suspected, explicit syntax instruction can be provided in the classroom to scaffold student comprehension of more complex texts.

Reading Challenge: Limited Vocabulary and Background Knowledge

Poor reading comprehension in older students can also be caused by limited vocabulary knowledge or insufficient subject matter background knowledge, which often go hand-in-hand.

Low scores on standardized reading assessments might be one indicator of a student struggling with limited vocabulary and background knowledge; however, classroom teachers might also notice the following behaviors:

• A tendency to rely on simple vocabulary orally and/or in writing
• Difficulty defining words included in grade-level text
• Frequent requests for clarification of text and word-meanings
• Misusing words both orally and in writing
• Poor writing quality
• Limited ability to explain concepts, or retell text
• Struggling to answer open-ended questions that require critical thinking
• Inability to make connections between texts or concepts
• Complex text avoidance
• Lack of participation and engagement in the classroom
• Overreliance on peers or teacher to interpret information (either oral or written)

It's important to remember that vocabulary and background knowledge are both multidimensional and context dependent. Students’ knowledge can fluctuate depending on the genre and content of the material.

It can be difficult to effectively assess deficits in overall vocabulary and background knowledge using singular measures. Therefore, one way to address this issue is to incorporate informal knowledge assessments as part of the everyday pre-teaching process.

Assessing Vocabulary and Background Knowledge in the Classroom

Before diving into a specific text or lesson, teachers can assess students' prior knowledge and vocabulary through brief activities like discussions, quick pre-tests, or brainstorming sessions related to the topic.

For example, asking students to share what they know about the topic or providing a list of key terms and asking them to define or explain them, can reveal gaps in both vocabulary and conceptual understanding.

These informal assessments give teachers immediate insight into which areas need further support. By identifying these gaps before starting a lesson, teachers can differentiate their instruction to build the necessary background knowledge and introduce critical vocabulary, ensuring students are better prepared to engage with the material.

Consistent pre-teaching of vocabulary (including morphology skills), activating prior knowledge, building content knowledge, and providing instruction on genre-specific features and vocabulary are all key strategies to support general reading comprehension.

Reading Challenge: Lack of Reading Comprehension Strategies

It can be possible that in addition to a lack of vocabulary and background knowledge, students can also lack internalized comprehension strategies for actively engaging with grade-level text

While these students may be able to read fluently, they might not have developed the cognitive tools necessary to make inferences, synthesize information from different parts of the text, or summarize the main ideas.

These strategies require more than just surface-level understanding — they demand a deeper, more reflective process where the reader draws connections, questions the material, and integrates new information with what they already know.

How to Assess for Reading Comprehension Strategies: Utilizing Standardized Reading Assessments to Inform Instruction

Teachers can use reading assessments that are aligned with educational standards to pinpoint specific areas where students are struggling with comprehension. By analyzing student performance on various types of comprehension questions — such as those requiring literal understanding versus those that demand inferential or analytical thinking — teachers can identify where the specific strategy gaps might lie.

For example, if a student answers most literal questions correctly but struggles with inferential or evaluative questions, it indicates a need for targeted instruction in higher-order thinking skills like making inferences, recognizing themes, or drawing conclusions.

These assessments allow educators to tailor their teaching strategies, providing more focused support in areas where students need the most help. Additionally, by regularly revisiting these assessments, teachers can track progress and adjust their approaches to ensure students are developing the comprehensive skill set needed for more complex reading tasks.

Recognizing Needs Can Lead to More Effective Instruction

These are some of the common struggles older students who are reading below proficiency may have, but this is not an exhaustive list. Some other challenges may include underdeveloped listening comprehension, weak executive functioning skills, or lack of motivation and engagement.

Addressing reading struggles in older students requires a multifaceted approach that considers a range of skill deficits, from fluency and word decoding to comprehension and vocabulary.

Identifying these gaps early through both formal assessments and classroom observations is crucial for providing targeted, effective interventions. By recognizing and responding to the specific needs of struggling readers, educators can empower all students to access and engage with grade-level content, ultimately paving the way for academic success and college readiness.

U.S. Department of Education (Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP]). (2022). Reading assessment.