If your child sounded out words beautifully in the early grades and then seemed to stall a few years later, Colorado’s new test scores will look familiar. The state released its 2026 results on August 19, from tests given last spring, and the reading picture splits by grade: real gains where children are still learning to decode, and declines once the work turns toward understanding what they read. The state’s own explanation points at how middle-school teachers are trained in phonics. What we would argue the numbers also show is something a phonics-only fix was never built to reach: reading and understanding are two different jobs, and only one of them is finished when a child sounds out the words.
Colorado’s 2026 reading scores rose in the early grades and slipped by middle school, and the debate has fixed on phonics. Here are the questions parents are actually asking.
Common questions
My child reads out loud fine but doesn’t seem to understand it. What’s going on?
Colorado’s scores rose in elementary and fell in middle school. Should I worry about my younger child?
How do I tell if my child’s reading struggle is more than phonics?
Is more phonics training for teachers a bad idea, then?
Colorado's 2026 reading scores rose in grades 4-5, slipped by middle school. Everyone's fix: more phonics. But phonics was never the finish line: decoding and understanding are different jobs.
What Colorado’s 2026 scores actually show
The Colorado Department of Education released its 2026 CMAS results on August 19, from tests administered last spring. In English language arts, the share of students meeting or exceeding expectations climbed in the grades where children are still cementing how to read: fourth grade rose to 47 percent from 42, and fifth grade to 49.9 percent from 48. Tracking the same students over time, CDE reported that children moving from third grade in 2025 to fourth grade in 2026 gained five points, and those moving from fourth to fifth gained nearly eight.
Then the line bends the other way. Sixth-grade ELA fell to 41.6 percent from 44.2, seventh to 46.6 from 48.8, and eighth to 42.2 from 43.9. Statewide ELA landed at 44.7 percent, all but flat against last year’s 44.8. And the tidy “elementary up” story has a crack in it worth naming: third-grade reading also slipped, to 40.8 percent from 42. The gains sit specifically in fourth and fifth grade, not across the whole of elementary.
Commissioner Susana Córdova framed the bright spots plainly: “Early literacy has been a major focus in Colorado, and we are encouraged by the progress we are seeing.” On the middle-school slide, she pointed at how teachers are prepared: “Most of your coursework to become a teacher is about teaching literature, teaching nonfiction, and less about teaching phonics.” CDE named middle-school English language arts, along with science, as the two areas needing continued attention.
Most of your coursework to become a teacher is about teaching literature, teaching nonfiction, and less about teaching phonics.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
Where the finish-line framing goes wrong
Here is the reading everyone reaches for first, and it is the state’s own: middle-school teachers are less trained in phonics, so train them more. Córdova is not wrong that this matters, and more phonics knowledge in a middle-school classroom is a defensible thing to want. The trap is a quieter idea sitting underneath it, the belief that phonics is the finish line, that once a child decodes fluently, reading is handled. That idea is what lets a gap this shaped grow unwatched.
Start with what the science does say, narrowly and firmly. Phonics is necessary and it is never the whole job. In one study of 641 children in England, whole-word spelling measures predicted how accurately children spelled better than sound-based measures did, at every age tested (Niolaki and colleagues, 2023). That work is about spelling, not comprehension, and it is correlational rather than an experiment. What it establishes is modest and real: the sound route alone does not deliver even correct spelling, because “their” and “there” sound identical and no amount of sounding out reaches the right one. A reader needs more than one route from the very start.
Now the part we would argue, and label as ours rather than the science’s. Reading is a built skill, not a natural one the way talking is, so it comes together in pieces that have to be assembled. When early gains stall right as the work shifts from decoding to understanding, the pattern is what you would expect if the systems that carry comprehension were never the ones a phonics push was reaching. Reading difficulty is rooted in phonological processing for most children who struggle, and reading also leans on language, attention, working memory and processing speed. A program aimed only at decoding does not surface a difficulty living in one of those other systems. That is our read of a grade-banded gap like Colorado’s, resting on the International Dyslexia Association’s 2025 acknowledgment that reading differences run across several systems at once. It is a lens, not a verdict on these particular numbers. If you want the fuller picture of what reading actually draws on, that is the multi-system view we work from.
Key takeaways
- Phonics is necessary, not the finish line: Colorado's reading gains stalled exactly where decoding gives way to understanding.
- Not simply elementary up: Third-grade reading slipped too; the 2026 gains sat in grades four and five.
- What the settled science shows: Sound-based skills alone don't produce correct spelling, let alone full comprehension (Niolaki et al., 2023).
What this means for your child
If your child is in the early grades and decoding is clicking, that is real and worth celebrating. It is also the moment to widen your attention, because the Colorado pattern is a reminder that a strong start on sounding out words is a foundation, not a guarantee. The years when reading turns into reading to learn are exactly where a hidden gap in vocabulary, language, attention or memory starts to show.
So watch for the child who reads a passage aloud smoothly and then struggles to tell you what it said. CDE’s assessment chief, Christina Wirth-Hawkins, described children at the “approaching expectations” level as students who “can read grade-level texts” but “may struggle to consistently demonstrate their understanding.” That is not a decoding problem, and more phonics will not close it on its own. Ask your child’s school what happens after phonics: how comprehension, vocabulary and background knowledge are taught directly, rather than assumed to arrive on their own.
And hold the state’s fix the way you would hold any well-meaning mandate. More phonics training for teachers is a good thing that helps children who never got a solid decoding foundation. Sold as the answer to a comprehension slide years later, it sets an expectation it was not built to meet. The useful question for a parent is not whether phonics matters, it always does, but whether the reading a child is being handed is the whole assembled skill or only its first piece.
Colorado is No. 1 in education because we focus on the fundamentals.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
You are the one who sees whether your child reads a page and actually understands it, and that puts real power in your hands, earlier than any test result reaches you. Your child is not a score that dipped in sixth grade; they are a reader still assembling a genuinely complex skill. The obstacle here was never phonics, and it was never a teacher or a commissioner. It is the finish-line framing, the belief that once a child decodes, reading is done, that lets a comprehension gap grow unwatched. Our All-Access membership opens an assessment that asks about every system reading draws on, and a roadmap that names what to build first. It is a starting point, not a diagnosis, and it does not replace a professional evaluation when formal accommodations are needed.
See what All Access gives your child
See MTSS for schools
Is your child struggling in school?
Get your free personalized learning roadmap
You describe what you see at home. We turn it into a plan you start this week.
- Answer 5 short questionnaires about what you already notice, 30–45 minutes at your own kitchen table
- Your child sits no test and gets no score: nothing to schedule, nothing for them to dread
- You do the answering, the AI does the writing, and a person reviews it before it reaches you
- Access all 40+ courses instantly: reading, math, focus, processing and more, with new ones added regularly
Why we use AI, plainly: it writes from a knowledge base our team maintains and audits. We work through it line by line and pull anything the evidence stops supporting. The roadmap you get on Tuesday reflects what we corrected on Monday, and a human still reads it before you do.
Your school district must evaluate your child free of charge if you ask in writing, whatever your income and whatever the outcome (US, 34 CFR 300.111 and 300.301(b)). That route takes time and answers a different question than you do. This one starts today, from what you already know.
Your answers stay yours. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not hand identifiable assessment data to outside AI companies to train their models.
A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis. If your child might need formal accommodations (an IEP or 504 plan), or you suspect a vision, hearing or medical cause, pursue a professional evaluation too. That is the only route to those supports.
References
- Colorado Department of Education — State-level results: CMAS, PSAT and SAT, 2026
- Chalkbeat Colorado — 2026 CMAS scores: see how your school did in literacy and math
- CBS Colorado — Colorado celebrates student math and literacy under rigorous standards
- KRDO — Colorado education results show mixed progress in student achievement and growth for 2026
