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Focused on improving classroom instruction for all adolescent learners as well as providing intervention instruction for students struggling with reading proficiency, this guidance document includes recommendations for improving adolescent student outcomes in academic literacy at the state-, district-, and school-levels. The document is organized into sections highlighting instruction and intervention, insights from reading experts and examples of various state efforts in improving adolescent literacy. It also identifies three goals critical to strengthening those skills: increasing overall levels of reading proficiency for adolescent students; supporting students in maintaining that proficiency in response to increasing demands as they move through the grade-levels and encounter more demanding text; and accelerating instruction to “close the gap” for those students who are below grade-level in reading proficiency. An additional section targets strategies for adolescent English language learners and includes information about the importance of oral language instruction, content-area approaches and explicit comprehension instruction.