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The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Reading aims to measure reading comprehension for students in the United States and to monitor progress in our education system. NAEP Reading is developed based on an assessment framework document that is periodically revised to reflect the latest understandings about reading comprehension and its assessment. A key goal of the Visioning Panel (VP) and the Development Panel (DP) charged with updating the NAEP Reading Assessment Framework for 2026 was to lay the foundation for an assessment that made progress toward greater fairness, equity, and validity. In this essay, we discuss how the Framework development process unfolded and its results. We document the unusual ways the National Assessment Governing Board ("the Board") shaped the development process. We provide evidence that a small group of Board members aimed to preserve the status quo in reading assessment by downplaying reliance on expertise and authoritative sources of research on reading, learning, and assessment and by removing attention to equity in NAEP Reading. We also discuss both successful (i.e., approved by the Board) and unsuccessful (i.e., rejected by the Board) recommendations for changes to the 2026 Framework that initially were proposed by the DP. We end by considering how, despite the efforts of the small group of Board members, we as a literacy field can improve the nature and impact of our large-scale reading assessments, and NAEP in particular.

Motivation for reading is important to comprehension and has been studied extensively in offline reading contexts. However, little is known about the role of motivation in online reading, a new and increasingly important context for reading, largely because of a lack of valid and reliable instruments to estimate a student's motivation for online reading. The authors report on the development of the Motivations for Online Reading Questionnaire (MORQ) among 1,798 seventh-grade students in two states. Results from confirmatory factor analysis revealed a three-factor solution for the MORQ: curiosity/value, self-efficacy, and self-improvement beliefs. Additionally, measurement invariance across female and male students was established. Predictive validity of the MORQ was supported by the positive and significant contribution of the MORQ to the Online Research and Comprehension Assessment, an established measure of online reading comprehension. Results help establish the MORQ as a well-validated instrument for measuring online reading motivation. Results are discussed in relation to theory, research, and practice. [For the corresponding grantee submission, see ED607848.]

Interventions can enhance students' motivation for reading, but few researchers have assessed the effects of the specific motivation-enhancing practices that comprise these interventions. Even fewer have evaluated how students' perceptions of different intervention practices impact their later motivation and academic outcomes. In this study, we utilised data from a study of Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction, a programme designed to enhance seventh-grade students' reading comprehension and motivation. We examined the effects of students perceiving one practice from this intervention, emphasising the importance of reading, which was designed to enhance their task values for reading (Eccles-Parsons et al., 1983). Unexpectedly, structural equation modelling analyses showed that students' perceptions of importance support predicted their later competence-related beliefs, but not their task values. Students' competence-related beliefs predicted their reading comprehension and behavioural engagement, whereas students' task values predicted reading engagement. However, there were no significant indirect effects of perceiving importance support on students' reading outcomes.

Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) offers children the opportunity for endless challenges and discovery. Engaged literacy learners are motivated, have conceptual understanding, use cognitive strategies, and interact socially. CORI is a classroom context that promotes literacy engagement in terms of seven dimensions: observational, conceptual, self-directed, strategic, collaborative, self-expressive, and coherent. To teach CORI, teachers need lots of trade books, imagination, a plan, and at least one other teacher or a team of teachers to share ideas and give and receive feedback. Three of the most salient and important benefits of CORI are: (1) the development of long-term motivation; (2) development of long-term motivation coupled with higher-order thinking skills and strategy use; and (3) CORI helps students to think conceptually and cogently. (RS)

This longitudinal study examined the development of reading motivation, engagement, and achievement in early adolescence by comparing interrelations of these variables in struggling and advanced readers. Participants were 183 pairs of seventh grade students matched in gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and school attended. They completed measures of reading motivations, engagement and comprehension for information text as well as measures of general reading comprehension and reading fluency twice during the school year. Advanced readers showed stronger relations of motivation and engagement with achievement than struggling readers. However, motivation predicted concurrent engagement and growth in engagement similarly for struggling and advanced readers. These results are interpreted as support for the hypothesis that cognitive challenges limit the relations of motivation and engagement to achievement for struggling readers. The discussion also considers the impact of the focus on the information text genre on the relations observed and implications of the findings for achievement motivation theories.

The authors outline results of 3 studies conducted to examine the structure of disciplinary knowledge from reading measured through proximity data. In Study 1, 168 third-grade students were asked to read a science text and rate the relationships of keywords from the passage. From these ratings, comprehension scores were calculated that related well to a free-recall measure of science reading comprehension and differentiated poor and proficient readers. In Study 2, 176 third-grade students were given the proximity data measure on science text along with measures of prior knowledge, questioning, and text searching. In Study 3, 160 ninth-grade students were given the proximity data measure after reading a social studies text that varied on the presence of text signals and familiarity. The findings of this study extend the literature on the cognitive processing that contributes to higher order comprehension of information text among elementary and secondary students.

We investigated the roles of classroom supports for multiple motivations and engagement in students' informational text comprehension, motivation, and engagement. A composite of classroom contextual variables consisting of instructional support for choice, importance, collaboration, and competence, accompanied by cognitive scaffolding for informational text comprehension, was provided in four-week instructional units for 615 grade 7 students. These classroom motivational-engagement supports were implemented within integrated literacy/history instruction in the Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) framework. CORI increased informational text comprehension compared with traditional instruction (TI) in a switching replications experimental design. Students' perceptions of the motivational-engagement supports were associated with increases in students' intrinsic motivation, value, perceived competence, and increased positive engagement (dedication) more markedly in CORI than in TI, according to multiple regression analyses. Results extended the evidence for the effectiveness of CORI to literacy/history subject matter and informational text comprehension among middle school students. The experimental effects in classroom contexts confirmed effects from task-specific, situated experimental studies in the literature.

The present study investigated the multivariate relationships between several aspects of motivation and achievement in reading. Canonical correlation analysis was used to examine patterns of associations for reading information texts in Phase I and for reading literary texts in Phase II. The samples were 923 and 225 seventh graders, respectively. Results revealed three multivariate patterns for information text, whereas one pattern was observed for literary text. An explanation for the difference between reading motivation for information text and literary text is provided based on distinctions between these genres. Additionally, findings showed that undermining motivations predicted students' reading achievement more strongly than affirming motivations. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed. (Contains 6 tables and 4 figures.)

This study modeled the interrelationships of reading instruction, motivation, engagement, and achievement in two contexts, employing data from 1,159 seventh graders. In the traditional reading/language arts (R/LA) context, all students participated in traditional R/LA instruction. In the intervention R/LA context, 854 students from the full sample received Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) while the remainder continued to receive traditional R/LA. CORI emphasizes support for reading motivation, reading engagement, and cognitive strategies for reading informational text. Seven motivation constructs were included: four motivations that are usually positively associated with achievement (intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, valuing, and prosocial goals) and three motivations that are usually negatively associated with achievement (perceived difficulty, devaluing, and antisocial goals). Reading engagement was also represented by positive and negative constructs, namely dedication to and avoidance of reading. Gender, ethnicity, and income were statistically controlled in all analyses. In the traditional R/LA context, a total network model prevailed, in which motivation was associated with achievement both directly and indirectly through engagement. In contrast, in the intervention R/LA context, a dual-effects model prevailed, in which engagement and achievement were separate outcomes of instruction and motivation. The intervention R/LA context analyses revealed that CORI was associated with positive changes in motivation, engagement, and achievement relative to traditional R/LA instruction. The discussion explains why there were different relations in the two instructional contexts and demonstrates the importance of simultaneously examining both positive (affirming) and negative (undermining) forms of motivation and engagement. (Contains 2 tables, 3 figures, and 1 note.)

When students enter middle school, they are confronted with the necessity of learning from complex content-area textbooks. Many students find these texts boring, and they may lack the higher-order reading comprehension skills they need to tackle complex text. Yet the ability to read informational text is essential to success in middle school and beyond. The authors of this article build on their work with the University of Maryland's Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction project to identify five crucial practices that teachers can use to motivate adolescents to read informational texts: expanding reading volume to help students develop dedication; building students' self-efficacy; showing students the value of informational texts; engaging students through social interaction; and providing choice to spark student interest.

Low-achieving readers in Grade 5 often lack comprehension strategies, domain knowledge, word recognition skills, fluency, and motivation to read. Students with such multiple reading needs seem likely to benefit from instruction that supports each of these reading processes. The authors tested this expectation experimentally by comparing the effects of "Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction" (CORI) with traditional instruction (TI) on several outcomes in a 12-week intervention for low achievers and high achievers. Low achievers in the CORI group were afforded explicit instruction, leveled texts, and motivation support. Compared with TI students, CORI students scored higher on posttest measures of word recognition speed, reading comprehension on the "Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test," and ecological knowledge. CORI was equally effective for lower achievers and higher achievers. Explicitly supporting multiple aspects of reading simultaneously appeared to benefit diverse learners on a range of reading outcomes. (Contains 6 tables.)

The purpose of this study was to compare teacher and student perceptions of motivation for reading. Motivational constructs were theoretically derived from previous work on efficacy and task orientation. First-grade students and teachers were asked to complete parallel reading motivation questionnaires. Results suggest both first-grade teachers and students perceive distinctions among students' efficacy, reading orientation, and perceived difficulty for reading. Teachers' perceptions were more consistent and had higher associations with word identification outcomes than students' perceptions. (Contains 6 tables and 1 figure.)

Previous research has investigated motivations for reading by examining positive or affirming motivations, including intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy. Related to them, we examined two negative, or undermining, motivations consisting of avoidance and perceived difficulty. We proposed that the motivations of intrinsic motivation and avoidance are relatively independent and thus can be combined to form meaningful profiles consisting of avid, ambivalent, apathetic, and averse readers. With Grade 5 students we found that these motivations were relatively independent for both Caucasian and African American students. The two motivations uniquely explained a significant proportion of variance in reading comprehension and other cognitive reading variables. Although intrinsic motivation correlated higher with achievement than avoidance for Caucasians, avoidance correlated higher with achievement than intrinsic motivation for African Americans. For both groups, the profile of avid readers showed higher reading achievement than the other profiles. (Contains 5 tables and 1 figure.)

This study examined the relationships of 3 levels of reading fluency--the individual word, the syntactic unit, and the whole passage--to reading comprehension among 278 5th graders heterogeneous in reading ability. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that reading fluency at each level related uniquely to performance on a standardized reading comprehension test in a model including inferencing skill and background knowledge. The study supports an automaticity effect for word recognition speed and an automaticity-like effect related to syntactic processing skill. In addition, hierarchical regressions using longitudinal data suggest that fluency and reading comprehension have a bidirectional relationship. The discussion emphasizes the theoretical expansion of reading fluency to 3 levels of cognitive processes and the relations of these processes to reading comprehension. (Contains 7 tables.)

The engagement model of reading development suggests that instruction improves students' reading comprehension to the extent that it increases students' engagement processes in reading. We compared how Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) (support for cognitive and motivational processes in reading), strategy instruction (support for cognitive strategies in reading), and traditional instruction in fourth-grade classrooms differentially influenced students' reading comprehension, strategy use, and engagement in reading. Students experiencing CORI were significantly higher than both comparison groups on reading comprehension, reading strategies, and reading engagement. When students' level of reading engagement was statistically controlled, the differences between the treatment groups were not significant. We infer that the level of students' reading engagement during classroom work mediated the instructional effects on reading outcomes. (Contains 6 tables.)

We present a theoretical and empirical explication of the intervention of Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) that is designed to increase students' reading comprehension and motivation for reading. The framework specifies a set of five motivational constructs that represent goals for the instructional intervention. Necessary cognitive goals in reading are also presented. For this intervention, the five instructional practices of relevance, choice, success, collaboration, and thematic unit that are prominent in CORI are portrayed as components that are aligned with motivational constructs. The impact of CORI on some of the motivational processes, cognitive competencies, and reading comprehension are presented in the form of a meta-analysis of 11 CORI studies with 75 effect sizes on 20 outcome variables. The CORI motivational intervention is compared to laboratory treatments and other field studies. (Contains 2 tables. Numbers for References in Meta-analysis of Table 2 is appended.)

Reading motivation has been viewed as a multifaceted construct with multiple constituents. Our investigation of motivational multiplicity expanded on previous literature by including motivation constructs (interest, perceived control, collaboration, involvement, and efficacy), text genres, specific versus general contexts, and the self-versus other evidence sources about motivation. We expected that this multiplicity would influence the identification of reading comprehension growth predictors. We obtained pre- and post-interview data, teacher ratings, motivation self-reports, and reading comprehension scores. Interviews showed motivation constructs to be semi-independent. Students' reading motivations for narrative and information texts were not highly associated; and self-reports and other motivation reports were not highly associated, but situated and general reading motivations were correlated. Interview-based coding of motivation predicted reading comprehension growth, but reading comprehension did not predict motivation growth. Situated motivation for information books predicted general motivation growth according to multiple regression analyses. Implications for an engagement model of reading development were discussed.

The authors used a new multidimensional coding scheme to assess student learning engagement during 3 Grade 4 reading lessons. Students in 3 classes--2 in which students received integrated reading-science instruction and 1 in which they received traditional instruction--demonstrated moderate to high engagement in learning. However, students in the integrated instruction classes gained more in reading comprehension and reading strategy use during the 12 weeks of the study than did students in the traditional instruction class. Analyses of task complexity and practices that teachers used to scaffold students' cognitive processes and motivation suggested that measuring student engagement in conjunction with these variables may be critical for developing a deeper understanding of how academic gains are made. (Contains 6 tables and 5 figures.)

This study investigated the relationship of student-generated questions and prior knowledge with reading comprehension. A questioning hierarchy was developed to describe the extent to which student-generated questions seek different levels of conceptual understanding. Third- and fourth-grade students (N = 360) posed questions that were related to their prior knowledge and reading comprehension, measured as conceptual knowledge built from text. The results indicated that student questioning accounted for a significant amount of variance in students' reading comprehension, after accounting for the contribution of prior knowledge. Furthermore, low- and high-level questions were differentially associated with low and high levels of conceptual knowledge gained from text, showing a clear alignment between questioning levels and reading comprehension levels.

The processes of change in children's reading motivation have not been widely studied. We investigated whether situated interest for a specific book may lead to longer-term intrinsic motivation for general reading. Two schools with 120 grade 3 students filled out reading logs identifying their reasons for reading their favorite books twice. In addition, students completed general motivation and comprehension measures as a pre-assessment and as a post-assessment. Students who increased in their level of situated interest in an information book over time increased in their general reading motivation from September to December. Also, students who decreased in their level of situated extrinsic motivation for reading a narrative book decreased in general extrinsic motivation. It appeared that children's changes in situated motivation predicted their changes in general reading motivation, within an instructional context that supports engagement and motivation in reading. (Contains 5 tables and 2 figures.)

One theoretical approach for increasing intrinsic motivation for reading consists of teachers using situational interest to encourage the development of long-term individual interest in reading. The authors investigated that possibility by using stimulating tasks, such as hands-on science observations and experiments, to increase situational interest. Concurrently, the authors provided books on the topics of the stimulating tasks and teacher guidance for reading to satisfy curiosities aroused from the tasks. Students with a high number of stimulating tasks increased their reading comprehension after controlling for initial comprehension more than did students in comparable intervention classrooms with fewer stimulating tasks. Students' motivation predicted their level of reading comprehension after controlling for initial comprehension. The number of stimulating tasks did not increase reading comprehension on a standardized test when motivation was controlled, suggesting that motivation mediated the effect of stimulating tasks on reading comprehension. Apparently, stimulating tasks in reading increased situational interest, which increased longer term intrinsic motivation and reading comprehension. (Contains 4 tables and 1 figure.)

The authors examined the impact of elaborative interrogation on knowledge construction during expository text reading, specifically, the interactions among elaborative interrogation, knowledge, and interest. Three measures of learning were taken: recall, inference, and coherence. Elaborative interrogation affected all aspects of learning measured, with a significant interaction between elaborative interrogation and interest with regard to inference. The experimental effect on the measure of inference was larger for the students who had less interest than for the students who had more interest. There was also an interaction effect between knowledge and elaborative interrogation for coherence. The experimental effect on coherence was higher for students who had less knowledge than students who had more knowledge.

Based on an engagement perspective of reading development, we investigated the extent to which an instructional framework of combining motivation support and strategy instruction (Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction--CORI) influenced reading outcomes for third-grade children. In CORI, five motivational practices were integrated with six cognitive strategies for reading comprehension. In the first study, we compared this framework to an instructional framework emphasizing Strategy Instruction (SI), but not including motivation support. In the second study, we compared CORI to SI and to a traditional instruction group (TI), and used additional measures of major constructs. In both studies, class-level analyses showed that students in CORI classrooms were higher than SI and/or TI students on measures of reading comprehension, reading motivation, and reading strategies.

The authors discuss the nature and domain specificity of reading motivation and present initial results that examined how 2 reading instructional programs, Concept Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) and multiple Strategy Instruction (SI), influenced 3rd-grade children's intrinsic motivation to read and reading self-efficacy. Each reading program occurred during the fall of the school year and lasted 12 weeks. Approximately 150 3rd-grade children participated in CORI; 200 3rd-grade children participated in SI. Results of pre- and posttest analyses of children's responses to a reading motivation questionnaire showed that children's intrinsic motivation to read and reading self-efficacy increased only in the CORI group.Key words: Concept Oriented Reading Instruction, multiple Strategy Instruction, reading motivation, third-grade children

This study examined the extent that motivational processes facilitate the comprehension of texts and the extent of culture's role in children's motivational processes of text comprehension. Relationships between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, the amount of reading, past reading achievement, and text comprehension were examined by utilizing structural equation modeling. Fourth-grade students (187 U.S. and 197 Chinese) were administered a reading test and two questionnaires regarding reading motivation and reading amount. A final model fit the data well, showing that intrinsic motivation predicted text comprehension for both student groups after controlling for all other variables. Extrinsic motivation negatively predicted text comprehension except when associated with intrinsic motivation. Reading amount did not predict text comprehension after controlling for motivational variables. The structural relationships were statistically equivalent across the U.S. and Chinese groups. Cultural influences on reading motivation, reading amount, and comprehension were discussed.

In our theoretical framework, reading engagement entails multiple perspectives on reading that consist of motivational dispositions, cognitive strategies, conceptual understanding, and social discourse. Possessing these attributes, engaged readers are typically higher achievers than less engaged readers, who show fewer of these qualities or less integration among them. Because engaged readers spend 500% more time reading than disengaged students, educators should attempt to increase engaged reading time by 200% -500%. This may require substantial reconfigurations of curriculum. However, engaged reading is unique because it is both an effective means to achievement (engaged students improve in reading more than disengaged students) and a valued end or educational outcome. A research gap today is the lack of refined, empirical understanding about classroom practices that promote engagement. We designed Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) to foster engagement through conceptual themes, hands- on experiences, self-directed learning, interesting texts, classroom discourse, and time for extended reading. For professional development, we attempt to convey the experiences, theory, beliefs, performances, and texts that will enable teachers to implement and generate instruction for engaged reading and learning.