With the publication of the report of the National Reading Panel (National Institute for Child Health and Human Development [NICHD], 2000), reading fluency has become more recognized as a key element in successful reading programs in the primary grades. This article describes a study that assessed the decoding accuracy and fluency levels of a large group of ninth-grade students from a moderate-sized urban district in the U.S. Midwest. In this study, fluency was defined as students' reading rate. The findings suggest that lack of reading fluency, an instructional goal of the reading curriculum that has not traditionally been given importance in secondary schools, may be one important cause for reading comprehension difficulties among secondary school students. Some attention to fluency for those students who are not fluent readers offers promise of significant improvements in reading comprehension and overall academic performance across the content areas.