To the Editor:
Rebecca Kockler of the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund is spot-on when she says that decoding skills must continue to develop and evolve as students move beyond 3rd grade. (“One Reading Skill Might Be Responsible for Many Older Students’ Struggles,” March 25, 2026.)
In my more than 40 years of teaching adolescents and training thousands of educators, I have frequently observed that older students struggle with reading because they have difficulty decoding multisyllabic words. When students can’t accurately read the words in front of them, they can’t fully access grade-level texts across subjects.
This is why advanced word study should be a core part of instruction for all students in grades 4–12—not just students with reading difficulty.
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