This study examined the impact of independent practice of multiple-criteria text that targeted high-frequency words, decodability, and meaningfulness. Second-grade students, including at-risk students, were randomly assigned within classroom to a treatment group that read multiple-criteria text ("n" = 34), or contrast group that read authentic literature (i.e., children's books without intentionally imbedded scaffolds; "n" = 28) during daily 30-min independent reading sessions for 10 weeks. Pre-post data analysis indicated no statistically significant group differences, though a moderate effect size of 0.67 was found for the word reading of developing decoders in the treatment group. HLM analyses also provided preliminary evidence that practice with multiple-criteria text may be more effective than practice with authentic literature for developing decoders but not advanced decoders.