Expert: Tier 2 reading supports often fail without coherent instruction and trained staff

Representative Moira Raider invited Rachel Bridal, director of the Reading Language Arts Center at UConn, to brief the Education Subcommittee on recent research and lessons for tier 2 reading interventions.

"Most of the schools are actually generating a negative impact with tier 2 and tier 3," Bridal said, summarizing results from a 2015 national RTI impact study and more recent state-level work. She told lawmakers that tier 2 should mean intensified, personalized instruction but that many implementations fail because they are incoherent with classroom curricula or are delivered by underqualified staff.

Bridal said intensified instruction requires at least one of three features — more time, more personalization and more expert instruction — and that technology alone cannot substitute for human diagnosis and tailored feedback. "AI and a computer can tell you what you did wrong, but they don't know why you did it wrong," she said, arguing the pattern-detection and responsive teaching needed for acceleration remain human tasks.

The committee discussed whether interventions in the studies were delivered in Connecticut or nationally; Bridal said the major federal evaluation was published in 2015 and was nationwide, while a more recent Tennessee study reached similar concerns about incoherence between tiered interventions and classroom instruction.

Members pressed on workforce capacity and coaching. Bridal described UConn's graduate-level training for remedial reading specialists as time- and resource-intensive (about 30 graduate credits with supervised clinical work) and said the program currently enrolls 11 students, underscoring a state shortage of certified interventionists. She recommended investing in local networks of coaches and ongoing professional development rather than solely adopting prescriptive, state-mandated curricula.

On the Mississippi model, Bridal credited its gains to a large, coordinated investment in local coaching, stable leadership and infrastructure stabilization, often funded through private foundations. She warned that results are context-dependent and that the same package of policies and vendors may not translate directly to Connecticut.

Lawmakers and the union leader in the meeting urged caution about rapidly switching programs and stressed the practical limits of school schedules, staffing and teacher burnout. Several members said the evidence reinforced that investments should prioritize building educator expertise and coherent instruction across tiers.

Representative Moira Raider closed the session by saying the subcommittee would circulate Bridal's slides and links to the studies, coordinate follow-up meetings between legislators and the researcher, and consider how the findings should inform the committee's ongoing work on recently passed literacy legislation.