How well do U.S. students read? In this article, Sean Reardon, Rachel Valentino, and Kenneth
Shores rely on studies using data from national and international literacy assessments to answer
this question. In part, the answer depends on the specific literacy skills assessed. The authors
show that almost all U.S. students can “read” by third grade, if reading is defined as proficiency
in basic procedural word-reading skills. But reading for comprehension—integrating background
knowledge and contextual information to make sense of a text—requires a set of
knowledge-based competencies in addition to word-reading skills. By the standards used in
various large-scale literacy assessments, only about a third of U.S. students in middle school
possess the knowledge-based competencies to “read” in this more comprehensive sense.