There is a large number of scientifically evaluated reading trainings recommended by literature, that have shown to be effective on the process level. However, field studies indicate that teachers rarely adopt those but use reading animation methods and self-invented methods instead. Yet, scientific evidence for those teacher-constructed methods is still missing. We therefore asked 87 teachers about their reading lessons and assessed the reading ability development of their 1469 students with a standardized reading test. The results show that teachers hardly use any evidence-based methods, but mainly rely on reading animation. Further, the methods reported by the teachers did not show a measurable impact on the development of the students’ reading competence. On the contrary, teacher constructed methods seemingly lead to a growth of heterogeneity of competence.