In 2022, thirty-one percent of eighth-grade students performed at or above the NAEP proficient level on the reading assessment, which was 3 percentage points lower compared to 2019, the previous assessment year (NAEP, 2022). If third and fourth graders are struggling to read on grade level, we now see the trend is not isolated to just elementary students. The NAEP conducted the study but may have forgotten that the COVID-19 pandemic triggered global school lockdowns, which began around March 2020 and lasted for many school districts until August 2021. These eighth graders were placed in a learning loss gap, which the researcher has eloquently coined the term “Learning Loss Gap” (LLG). Students exhibiting this LLG concept are popping up in research data by hiding in plain sight, lacking mastery in reading skills that secondary teachers are now reteaching foundational skills, including phonological awareness, phonics, word recognition, print concepts, and fluency taught in elementary schools (Heubeck, 2024). Bennetts (2024), a literacy consultant and former elementary school teacher, believes that many struggling older readers have been hiding in plain sight for quite some time.

“My hunch is that the problem has always been there, we just haven’t been looking for it in the older grades and not in the right ways,” he said. Many students who fail to learn the basics of reading become increasingly sophisticated about hiding their struggles, explains Bennett. They grow their sight vocabulary by memorizing “high frequency” words. They often avoid reading aloud in class. Some eventually opt out of class, and school, altogether. (Bennett, 2024)

    This leads to the researcher’s concept that many students’ struggling to read on grade level are like two different travelers, one takes the hike over rough hilly terrain, see Figure 1 on the researcher’s DDP website. The other found a tunnel to travel more easily. The same can be said for struggling students encountering a class with difficult academic material and receives extended help to climb the hill or strategy like memorizing content, once to the top he/she may accelerate to reach the next hill (assignment) and do the same over and over until they catch up, if possible, to the other students. The other student that comprehends the material, per se, is like taking the tunnel with no issues as they progress on their academic journey in class. The tunnel students have mastered the foundational skills for phonics and decoding vocabulary for reading while those that took the hill have not fully reached mastery but skirt by with remedial instruction in phonics, and decoding but never reaching mastery.