Implications of the 2018 NAEP Oral Reading Fluency Study

The ORF study shows that a significant percentage of fourth-grade students who perform below NAEP Basic, especially Black and Hispanic students, do not have adequate fluency, word reading, and phonological decoding skills. These students read slowly and have difficulty reading words accurately, making it difficult for them to engage in the cognitive processes described in the 2017 NAEP Reading framework.

The study’s findings have four implications:

• The 2019 NAEP Reading Framework does not describe any specific reading behaviors that characterize fourth-grade students performing below NAEP Basic. The upcoming 2025 framework should incorporate a description of below NAEP Basic readers that acknowledges the fact that, compared to students performing at the NAEP Basic level or higher, they are more likely to have underdeveloped fluency and word reading skills.
• There should be additional testing of fourth-grade students’ oral reading fluency, word reading, and phonological decoding skills with a subsample of the students who take the main NAEP reading assessment. Such testing would provide, on an ongoing basis, much-needed information about the students who are performing below NAEP Basic.
• The problems of fourth-grade below NAEP Basic students highlighted by this report call for a solution-oriented discussion among education policymakers.
• Research is needed to determine the extent to which elementary schools teach fluency, word recognition, and phonological decoding in systematic and effective ways in grades 1-3.