Last Updated: 8/23/26
By Amy Schlueter
Sometimes the most important intervention decision isn’t which program to use. It’s knowing when to stop and ask whether the student still needs it.
There are certain things we don’t question in education. The schedule. The placement. The curriculum. And, yes, even…the sacred intervention program.
Once a student has been placed in an intervention, questioning whether they still need it can feel a little like questioning Grandma’s stuffing recipe at Thanksgiving. “But we’ve always had her stuffing.” Okay. But is Grandma’s stuffing actually good?
The student started the program in second grade. He continued in third. He remained in fourth. Now he’s in fifth. So naturally, he must continue…riiiiight?
But somewhere along the way, we have to stop and ask a rather inconvenient question: What does this student actually need now? That’s the taboo. Because sometimes the answer isn’t another year of the same intervention. Sometimes the answer is that the student has developed skills we haven’t stopped to notice. And sometimes, if we’re being completely honest, we’re not really looking at the student anymore.
We’re looking at the program.
The King Tut Test
So, it just happened again. And when I say again, I mean this isn’t an isolated incident. I’m in a feeder school, so each year we receive students from our elementary buildings who have already been placed in a particular reading intervention. The recommendation comes with them: “They need to continue Wilson.” Okay. I’m not opposed to Wilson. Obviously.
But I am opposed to making an instructional decision about a student I’ve never met based solely on the “this is what they were getting so this is what they’ll be receiving.” So I did what I always want to do when I meet a new student: I looked at what the student could actually do.
These two students were on Step 3 at the end of 4th grade. So, naturally, I did what any curious reading specialist would do. I handed them a magazine written for fourth- and fifth-graders and thought, Well…let’s see what happens. Because apparently I enjoy living dangerously.
The article they chose was about ancient Egypt, King Tut, and the discovery of his tomb. And here’s the crazy part- they killed it! Nearly 99% accurate WITH fluency and prosody. Mind you, all syllable types were there, a bunch of exceptions, words with difficult suffixes and silent letters, and we can never get away from English weirdness -words like burial, dynasty, tomb and treasure. Excuse me? I went into this thinking I was going to find a bunch of decoding weaknesses. Instead, King Tut showed up and complicated my entire afternoon.
Let that sink in. Students who were being recommended to continue an early decoding intervention were successfully reading challenging, grade-level content. Now, does that mean they have no reading needs?
Absolutely not. But it does mean I have to figure out what those needs actually are. That’s a very big question.
An Intervention Is a Tool. Not a Destination.
This is where I think we sometimes get ourselves into trouble. We fall in love with programs. We learn the scope and sequence. We know what Step 3 looks like. We know what comes next. And before long, we can practically run the intervention with our eyes closed. Which is convenient… unless the student in front of us has changed. Then we’re essentially driving while looking in the rearview mirror.
Instead of asking: What does this child need? We start asking: Where are they in the program? Those questions are not interchangeable. A student’s placement in an intervention is not a diagnosis. A program isn’t a permanent identity. And completing another step isn’t automatically the same thing as making meaningful progress. The intervention should serve the student.
The student should never serve the intervention.
But What About Decoding?
This is where I want to be especially careful. I’m not suggesting that authentic text replaces explicit, systematic decoding instruction. It doesn’t.
Students with genuine decoding weaknesses need explicit instruction in the skills they have not yet mastered. The What Works Clearinghouse’s guidance for grades 4–9 specifically recommends building students’ ability to decode complex multisyllabic words and providing purposeful fluency-building activities.
But here’s the part I don’t want us to miss: The same guidance also recommends giving students opportunities to make sense of stretch text—challenging text that exposes them to complex ideas and information. In other words… We need to know what students can do with real reading, too.
That’s why I don’t have my students read strictly decodable texts. I give them something real. And then, I’ll examine it, analyze it. I’ll listen for errors. I’ll look at accuracy, fluency, and decoding. Then I test how well they’re comprehending what they read. And test them on vocab. Because I want to know what happens when the student encounters words and ideas they haven’t been carefully prepared to read. That’s where things get interesting.
Authentic Text Is a Reality Check
Here’s my challenge to reading specialists: Don’t let intervention text be the only text you use to judge reading ability. Listen to your students read authentic text. Watch what they do. What kinds of words cause difficulty? Do they decode multisyllabic words? Do they recognize common morphemes? Do they self-correct? Do they maintain meaning? Do they slow down appropriately when the text becomes difficult? Can they explain what they just read? Can they handle vocabulary that wasn’t pre-taught? Can they read something they haven’t seen before? And most importantly: Where does the breakdown actually occur?
Because that’s where your instruction belongs. Not wherever the scope and sequence happens to tell you to go next.
Analyze the Error. Don’t Just Record the Score.
This may be one of my biggest pet peeves in reading intervention. We collect data. Oh, do we ever collect data. Words correct per minute. Accuracy percentages. Progress-monitoring graphs. Assessment scores.
At this point, I could probably wallpaper my office with data sheets. But a number without analysis is just fancy wallpaper. Pretty, but it doesn’t actually do anything. The real information is in the errors.
Did the student say “jumped” for “jumping”? Did they confuse vowel patterns? Did they struggle with multisyllabic words? Did they miss high frequency words? Did they substitute a word that made sense but didn’t match the print? Did they decode accurately but read so slowly that comprehension fell apart?
Those are all different problems. And they require different solutions. The Institute of Educational Sciences emphasizes using assessment and progress monitoring to inform intervention and adjusting instruction to students’ needs. That’s not complicated. But it requires us to stay curious about our students.
The Most Important Question Isn’t “What Program?”
It’s:“What does this student need next?” Those words—next and need—matter. Maybe the student needs more decoding. Great. Teach decoding.
Maybe the student can decode accurately but needs fluency. Then let’s work on fluency.
Maybe the student reads accurately and fluently but struggles with vocabulary and comprehension. Then why are we spending another year drilling foundational decoding skills that aren’t their greatest area of need?
Maybe the student needs grade-level text with explicit vocabulary and comprehension support. Maybe they need increasingly complex text. Maybe they need opportunities to apply the skills they’ve already learned.
The answer should come from the student.
Not from the program.
And This Is Where My Frustration Comes In
I’ll be honest. This has happened enough times that it frustrates me. Not because I think one particular intervention is bad. Not because I think the specialists who made the original decisions don’t care about their students. I believe they do. That’s precisely why I think we have to talk about this.
Because good people can get caught in systems. A student is placed. The intervention is documented. The next year, the placement continues. And the next year. And eventually, continuing feels safer than questioning.
But our students don’t need us to protect a system. They need us to protect their instructional time.
Every intervention block is precious. If a student is spending 45 minutes a day receiving intensive decoding instruction they don’t actually need, that’s 45 minutes they aren’t spending developing the skill that is holding them back. Multiply that by weeks. Months. A school year.
Now we’re not talking about a harmless scheduling decision. We’re talking about opportunity cost. And this year, my building felt that cost. We received a record number of students identified for intensive decoding intervention. The result was a scheduling problem that created an enormous amount of stress for my assistant principal and me. And once I started looking closely at some of those students…I began wondering how many truly needed the level of intervention they had been assigned.
That’s a much harder question. But it’s the question we need to ask.
Don’t Confuse Continuity With Progress
There’s a comforting logic to keeping a student in the same intervention. “It’s working. Keep going.” But how do we know it’s working? Because they’re still in the program? Because they completed another step? Because their intervention teacher says they’re doing better? Or because their current reading performance demonstrates that the instruction is addressing their greatest area of need?
Those are very different measures. A student’s intervention should evolve as the student evolves. If the student changes, the instruction should change.
That’s not abandoning an intervention. That’s responsive teaching.
Research Nerd Corner 🤓
The What Works Clearinghouse’s Providing Reading Interventions for Students in Grades 4–9 offers a particularly useful reminder for this conversation: evidence-based practices should be used selectively to meet students’ individual needs. Its recommendations include decoding, fluency, comprehension, and opportunities to work with challenging “stretch” text.
The National Reading Panel likewise found that skilled reading requires more than isolated word-level skills; fluency involves accurate, automatic reading with appropriate expression, and reading practice in meaningful context matters. The takeaway isn’t that authentic text should replace systematic intervention.
Finally, A Practitioner’s Guide to Improving Literacy Outcomes for Students helps state and local education agencies use evidence-based literacy practices in their classrooms. It follows a five-step continuous improvement process from the U.S. Department of Education and includes free, high-quality literacy resources from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) for each step.
The research is compelling- students need both targeted instruction and opportunities to demonstrate what they can do as readers.
☕ Amy’s Take
Here’s what this looks like in my setting: I don’t assume I know what a student needs because I know what program they’ve been in. I’ve never met these kiddos so I’m taking everything in. I like to start with a very engaging, grade-level, authentic text and see what they do with it. I always let them choose what they want to read. Then, I listen. I question. I analyze errors. And I ask myself: “What is the greatest barrier standing between this student and successful reading right now?”
That’s where I want my instruction to start. Because my job isn’t to move students through Wilson or any particular program for that matter. My job is to move them forward as readers.
And sometimes moving them forward means continuing exactly what they’re doing. Sometimes it means changing the intervention. Sometimes it means increasing the challenge. And sometimes…it means recognizing that the child sitting in front of you is capable of far more than the intervention placement suggests. Don’t ever forget this- our students don’t need us to protect a system. They need us to protect their instructional time.
AND Never let a program tell you what a child can do. Let the child show you. And if King Tut happens to help you figure that out along the way…Well, I’ll take that as a sign that you’re asking the right questions.
📖 Amy’s Bookshelf
My favorite section of What Works Clearinghouse’s Providing Reading Interventions for Students in Grades 4–9 is “Recommendation 4: Provide students with opportunities to practice making sense of stretch text (i.e., challenging text) that will expose them to complex ideas and information,” pps. 68-76. One of the professional habits I value most is staying curious about the kids sitting in front of me. Not “What does the program say comes next?” But: “What am I seeing in this child?”
The best reading specialists I know aren’t loyal to a program. They’re loyal to their students. They know their scope and sequence. They understand the research. They collect data. But they also notice when the data and the child in front of them don’t match the story they’ve been told.
That’s the kind of practitioner I want to keep becoming. And that’s the kind of practitioner I want to encourage—especially those newer reading specialists who are still wondering if they’re “doing it right.” You don’t have to know everything. You do have to stay curious.
Look at the student. Listen to the student. Study the errors. Change your instruction when the evidence tells you to.
Don’t teach the program. Teach the child.
Final Thoughts
Maybe the real taboo isn’t questioning a particular intervention. Maybe it’s admitting that sometimes we don’t know what a student needs until we stop, look closely, and reassess. That’s not failure. That’s expertise.
Because the longer I do this work, the less interested I am in asking, “Where did they leave off in their intervention program?” and the more interested I am in asking, “Is this student getting the right instruction?”
Those aren’t always the same thing. And our students deserve that we know the difference. What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts! Please feel free to leave a comment or email me at [email protected].
Up Next: Reading Taboos Part 3
Sometimes Motivation Isn’t the Problem.
We call students unmotivated all the time. But what if the student isn’t refusing to learn? What if the task is simply too difficult? What if they’ve learned that trying leads to failure? What if “I don’t care” is actually a very sophisticated way of saying, “I’m not sure I can do this.” That’s a conversation I can’t wait to have.