In secondary schools, literacy is not just the English department’s job. A better department meeting can help every teacher support reading without pretending they have extra hours, smaller classes, or magic tools.
There is a moment in many secondary schools when the same concern rises in different voices.
The science teacher says students cannot make sense of the lab directions. The history teacher says they struggle to pull meaning from primary sources. The math teacher says word problems fall apart before the numbers even begin. The English teacher, already carrying a full load of reading and writing instruction, looks around the room with a familiar expression: yes, and now what?
That is the department meeting where a school can either repeat an old story—"kids just do not read anymore," or "someone else should fix this"—or start building a practical literacy plan that belongs to everyone.
In grades 6-12, reading is no longer only about learning to decode. It becomes the tool students need in order to learn everything else. When that tool is weak, the effects show up everywhere: missed instructions, shallow comprehension, incomplete assignments, low confidence, and behavior that may have more to do with frustration than defiance.
The hard truth is that secondary schools are being asked to raise literacy rates while managing large class sizes, uneven staffing, attendance challenges, limited intervention time, and the lasting effects of disrupted learning. Naming those constraints is not making excuses. It is the starting point for designing support that teachers can actually sustain.
Why this matters right now
The national picture is sobering. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the Nation’s Report Card, the average reading score for 8th graders in 2024 was lower than in 2019, and only about 30% of 8th graders performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level in reading. NAEP also shows long-running gaps by income, race, disability status, and English learner status. Those numbers do not tell us everything about individual students or schools, but they do tell us this: literacy challenges in middle and high school are broad, persistent, and urgent.
International results point in the same direction. On the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, reading performance declined across many systems after the pandemic years. At the same time, higher-performing places such as Singapore, Estonia, and Canada continue to show that strong literacy outcomes are possible when reading is treated as a shared academic priority, not a single-subject concern.
That does not mean American schools should copy another country’s system whole cloth. Context matters. But it does mean we can learn from a common principle: students get better at reading complex text when schools consistently teach them how to do it across subjects.
The myth that blocks progress
One of the most unhelpful myths in secondary education is that asking every teacher to support literacy means asking every teacher to become an English teacher.
It does not.
A chemistry teacher does not need to teach a novel unit. A social studies teacher does not need to run a phonics intervention. A geometry teacher does not need to grade essays the way an ELA teacher would. But each teacher can help students read the kinds of texts that matter in that discipline.
That is a crucial distinction.
Reading in secondary school is not one generic skill. Historians source and contextualize. Scientists track procedures, claims, and evidence. Mathematicians parse dense language and symbolic relationships. Career and technical teachers teach students to read manuals, diagrams, and safety protocols. When adolescents are taught these moves explicitly, literacy becomes more useful and more visible.
What a good department meeting sounds like
A productive literacy-focused department meeting does not begin with blame, panic, or a stack of mandates. It begins with a few grounded questions.
What reading demands are built into our subject?
Where do students predictably get stuck?
Which of those sticking points can we address through instruction, not just remediation?
What is one routine we can all use consistently?
This matters because teachers are more likely to adopt literacy practices when those practices solve real classroom problems. If a strategy helps students read a lab report more accurately, annotate a Supreme Court decision more thoughtfully, or unpack a multistep word problem with less confusion, it feels like support rather than one more initiative.
The best meetings also keep the goal narrow. Schools often lose momentum when they introduce ten strategies at once. It is more effective to choose one or two routines, define them clearly, model them, and revisit them over time.
What secondary teachers are up against
Any honest conversation about literacy improvement has to recognize the pressure points.
Many secondary teachers were not trained in reading development beyond early literacy basics. Some teach 150 students a day. Some share classes with a rotating group of substitutes or paraprofessionals because staffing is thin. Some are expected to cover extensive content standards and prepare students for high-stakes tests, all while addressing wide reading gaps in the same room.
There is also the reality that older students often protect themselves with disengagement. A sixth grader who reads below grade level may still be willing to try. A tenth grader who has spent years feeling behind may be far more likely to opt out, joke, avoid, or shut down. That is not laziness. Often, it is self-protection.
So schools need approaches that respect adolescent dignity. Public round-robin reading, for example, may expose struggle without improving skill. Overloading students with independent reading they cannot access does not build stamina; it builds avoidance. If we want students to read more, they need text they can enter, support while they are in it, and reasons to believe effort will pay off.
What schools can do that is realistic
The most effective literacy improvement plans in secondary schools are usually not flashy. They are coherent.
First, create a short list of schoolwide reading routines. For example: preteach a small set of essential vocabulary, chunk longer texts, and use text-dependent questions that require evidence. If every department uses the same handful of moves, students get repetition without confusion.
Second, teach disciplinary reading explicitly. In history, that may mean sourcing documents before reading. In science, it may mean identifying claim, evidence, and reasoning. In math, it may mean underlining the question, naming relationships, and translating words into representations. These are not add-ons. They are part of learning the subject.
Third, protect intervention for students who need more than classroom supports. Some adolescents need systematic help with decoding, fluency, and foundational language skills. Secondary schools sometimes hesitate here because it feels "too elementary." But older students benefit from explicit intervention too, especially when it is delivered respectfully and without stigma.
Fourth, use data carefully. Universal screeners, course performance, and state assessments can help identify patterns, but teachers do not need another spreadsheet that goes nowhere. The useful question is not simply "Who is low?" It is "What specific reading demand is holding this student back, and what support matches that need?"
Fifth, invest in professional learning that is practical. Teachers need time to see what a strategy looks like in algebra, biology, civics, and ninth-grade English—not just hear general advice. A short demo, a common planning protocol, or peer observation often goes further than a long presentation.
A realistic agenda for the next meeting
If a school wants to turn concern into action, the next department meeting can be simple.
Bring one common text from the department.
Identify three places students are likely to struggle.
Choose one support to use before reading, one during reading, and one after reading.
Agree on what student work will show whether it helped.
Then try it for two weeks and come back with examples.
That kind of cycle respects teacher expertise. It treats literacy as part of instruction, not a side project. It also makes improvement visible and manageable.
The bigger shift
The goal is not to make every secondary teacher responsible for everything. The goal is to make sure no teacher feels literacy is somebody else’s problem.
When schools make that shift, the burden on the English department becomes more humane, and the support students receive becomes more consistent. Students stop getting the message that reading difficulty only counts in one class. They start seeing that literacy is how school works—and that adults across the building are prepared to help.
That will not solve every challenge. It will not erase poverty, absenteeism, staffing shortages, or the complexity of adolescent learning. But it is one of the most realistic ways a secondary school can improve outcomes with the people and minutes it already has.
And sometimes that change begins with a better department meeting: less blame, more clarity, and one shared commitment to help students read the work in front of them.
