© 2025 Vista Higher Learning Reading and Writing Growth with Vista’s Engage 3 (Estrada, 2014; Umansky, 2016a, 2018). This has contributed to lower academic achievement for MLs (Umansky, 2016b). UNDERSTANDING THE LEARNERS Early intervention is a research-proven e ective measure for reducing—and sometimes altogether preventing—reading disabilities for students at risk of reading failure (Connor et al., 2014; Gersten et al., 2008). However, early intervention is not always successful and as students move into sixth grade and beyond, they are faced with rising text complexity and heavier academic language demands, making literacy development especially challenging for MLs. Reading growth in middle and high school relies on decoding, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and disciplinary literacy. Foundational reading skills still matter in secondary school; many students struggle to decode multisyllabic words with automaticity (Wang, Sabatini, O’Reilly, & Weeks, 2019). When word reading is weak, comprehension growth stalls. In one study, word-reading skill accounted for roughly two-fifths of the variance in comprehension gains, with little progress seen below threshold levels (Daniel, Vaughn, Roberts, & Grills, 2022). These findings support targeted word-level work before expecting benefits from higher-order comprehension interventions in secondary grades. Beyond decoding, vocabulary breadth and morphological knowledge are critical to comprehension in adolescence. Reed, Petscher, and Foorman (2016) found that vocabulary accounted for as much as a third of comprehension variance after basic skills were met, though findings are correlational. Evidence for fluency is mixed: A meta-analysis found moderate e ects on oral reading rate (g=0.46), with small transfer to comprehension (Steinle, Stevens, & Vaughn, 2021). Content-embedded language instruction shows promise but uneven transfer; an academic vocabulary course for ML sixth graders produced sizeable gains in taught words (d=0.48) and small comprehension gains (d=0.14) (Lesaux, Kie er, Kelley, & Harris, 2014). Similarly, integrating comprehension with social studies instruction improved content knowledge (d=0.35) and content-specific comprehension (d=0.59), with negligible standardized comprehension growth (d=0.10) (Swanson et al., 2017). In grades 6–7, an extensive decoding fluency program yielded advantages in word accuracy (g=0.32), but not in standardized comprehension, with minimal benefit for students in the lowest vocabulary quartile—underscoring vocabulary as a gatekeeper for MLs (Capin et al., 2024).
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