The science of reading gave us a necessary corrective, but teaching kids to decode is only half the battle. Once students read with fluency, the next challenge is helping them truly understand what they read. That means moving beyond isolated standards and toward text-led analysis: using the text itself to diagnose comprehension and plan instruction. Every text is complex in its own way, and every text demands different knowledge and strategies. As one remarkable Boston teacher proved, when instruction responds to the specific demands of the specific texts kids read, growth follows. It’s time to ground every choice in the complexity of the text itself, and help students make meaning from the rich, worthy texts they’ll encounter in school and life.