Season 9, Special Episode

Leveled reading, leveled lives, with Tim Shanahan, Ph.D.

In this episode of Science of Reading: The Podcast, top literacy scholar Tim Shanahan, Ph.D., returns to discuss his new book, Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives: How Students’ Reading Achievement Has Been Held Back and What We Can Do About It. During his conversation with Susan Lambert, he outlines what existing research says about leveled reading—and why it’s not effective. He also shares how the misuse of theory can lead to ineffectual conclusions, makes a case for the efficacy of more explicit instruction, and provides a few simple tweaks teachers can make to classroom instruction that can make a big difference for their students.

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Meet Our Guest(s):

Tim Shanahan, Ph.D.

Tim Shanahan, Ph.D.

Timothy Shanahan, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chi­cago. Prior to this work, he served as Director of Reading for Chicago Public Schools and was a visiting research professor at Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has written and edited more than 300 publications, including his new book, Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives: How Students’ Reading Achievement Has Been Held Back and What We Can Do About It (Harvard Education Press, 2025). He was also a former president of the International Literacy Association and served on the National Institute for Literacy Advisory Board under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He was inducted to the Reading Hall of Fame in 2007 and is a former first-grade teacher.

Meet our host: Susan Lambert

Susan Lambert is Chief Academic Officer of Literacy at Amplify and host of Science of Reading: The Podcast. Throughout her career, she has focused on creating high-quality learning environments using evidence-based practices. Lambert is a mom of four, a grandma of four, a world traveler, and a collector of stories.

As the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Lambert explores the increasing body of scientific research around how reading is best taught. A former classroom teacher, administrator, and curriculum developer, she’s dedicated to turning theory into best practices that educators can put right to use in the classroom, and to showcasing national models of reading instruction excellence.

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Transcripts and additional resources:

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Book: Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives: How Students’ Reading Achievement Has Been Held Back and What We Can Do About It
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Connect with Susan Lambert
Transcript

Quotes

“This notion of trying to match kids to books and get everybody to their right level is, at the very least, wasteful. It's not benefiting kids.”

—Tim Shanahan, Ph.D.

“We're spending an awful lot of time doing a lot of work that is not only not paying off, but it's probably holding a lot of kids back.”

—Tim Shanahan, Ph.D.

“When we try to ease the path so much so that the kids will hardly even know that they're learning anything, they're probably hardly ever gonna learn anything.”

—Tim Shanahan, Ph.D.

“Maybe we should be having kids read some of these texts more than once. Maybe we should be doing some of our fluency work, not after we did the comprehension work, but ahead of time.”

—Tim Shanahan, Ph.D.