For the last several years, as more than 40 states have invested in evidence-based literacy instruction, national attention has understandably focused on the K–12 implementation efforts that have the most direct impacts on students, including widely discussed change efforts like that in Mississippi.
Yet as these efforts have gained steam, a gap has become increasingly noticeable: Beginning teachers who are entering classrooms for the first time are often unprepared for the literacy practices that districts and schools are trying to roll out.
As a result, districts that have made the shift to structured literacy continue to devote time and energy year after year to retraining incoming teachers. In the many communities where this is happening, teacher preparation (with the exception of state licensure and standards) has not been a primary lever in early change efforts, and as a result, districts, new teachers, and their K–12 students are carrying that burden.
As states and districts have moved to improve literacy outcomes at scale, many are recognizing the importance of ensuring educator-preparation programs (EPPs) are supported to be in stronger alignment with broader efforts. Without that alignment, instructional improvement is difficult and costly to sustain.
The Fordham Institute’s recent survey of K–3 teachers (and a forthcoming Teacher Prep Review from the National Council on Teacher Quality) provide valuable insight into the variability of implementation. These data understandably raise questions about whether EPPs are changing quickly enough. We invite consideration of a different angle: What do these data reveal about how effectively states and systems are investing in preparation?
Improving preservice reading instruction is not like pressing a button. EPPs sit at the intersection of coursework, field experiences, faculty expertise, district partnerships, funding, and workforce needs. Preparation changes when all these elements move in alignment together. And because reading instruction is inherently complex, changing one or two courses isn’t enough. Candidates need repeated, scaffolded opportunities to practice with the materials, routines, and structures they’ll experience in classrooms with feedback. Faculty need time and support to deepen their own understanding of evidence-based reading instruction. And district partners need to help ensure that clinical experiences reinforce what candidates learn in coursework.
For many outside of educator preparation, the complexity of this work is easy to underestimate. But increasingly, systems are taking note and carving out the time to learn what’s needed. From our work on the ground with 300 teacher-preparation programs, we’ve seen strong examples of meaningful EPP shifts. Below, we highlight three different examples of how state and local systems are bringing preparation more intentionally into literacy change efforts.
Tennessee: Local initiative within state policy change efforts
In Tennessee, the state’s Literacy Success Act (2021) and related legislation ushered in large-scale changes that set clearer expectations for reading instruction. Carson-Newman University, which serves a largely rural community and has built strong, long-standing relationships with local school districts, made the connection to implications for preparing candidates. As these districts gained access to new high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) and literacy training through broader state policy investments, Carson-Newman faculty saw the mismatch between what the new expectations were in classrooms and how candidates were being prepared.
Like many EPPs, its faculty did not automatically have access to the same materials districts were using, even though research continues to show how important curriculum alignment is for teacher learning and implementation. But with support from Deans for Impact (DFI), they worked closely with district partners to source the same HQIM that schools were using and redesign literacy coursework to better connect preparation with clinical experiences. They also asked candidates in clinical experiences to identify opportunities to better align their preparation with the realities of classrooms.
Carson-Newman’s efforts show what’s possible when EPPs take initiative, even without dedicated policy support. The charge for policymakers is to make that alignment happen by design and at scale, and not leave it to chance.
Texas: Statewide infrastructure bridging K–12 and teacher preparation
In Texas, Reading Academies have served as an emerging pillar of the state’s approach to ground reading instruction in evidence-based practices—first in K–12 and now increasingly in educator preparation. This large, state-wide effort, bolstered by a historic $8.5 billion investment in public education through last year’s passage of HB2, has helped establish clear expectations for both K–12 districts and EPPs.
But even with state infrastructure, implementation looks different from one community to another. In Houston, a large and complex teacher-labor market includes many different school districts and EPPs working to align expectations across different partnerships, processes, and pathways into teaching. In El Paso, on the other side of the state, where one EPP prepares approximately 70 percent of the teacher workforce, changes can roll out in more coordinated ways—though, even there, leaders have described implementation as a significant lift across capacity, buy-in, and content integration.
The Texas Education Agency has created opportunities for EPPs across the state to provide feedback on the content and rollout of the academies. The scale of this effort highlights that while state policy can guide direction, implementation support still needs to be adaptive and responsive to local contexts for change to be successful.
New York City: Cross-sector partnership from design to implementation
We’re seeing a more ground-up approach in New York City. While the state of New York has not mandated shifts in teacher preparation, the Literacy Academy Collective has mobilized change through fostering cross-sector coordination and collaboration. Through the New York Path Forward initiative supported by the New York State Department of Education, districts, EPPs, and technical assistance providers, including DFI, are working together on implementation and alignment.
EPPs like those across the CUNY system and Touro University have engaged early in the process to build coherence, problem-solve, and share learnings from their pilots to redesign courses with their K–12 counterparts. Importantly, these efforts are being treated as continuous learning and improvement efforts, not one-time implementation changes. As New York considers how to strengthen literacy preparation statewide, this local initiative is a strong proof point for the type of infrastructure and support that can effectively support EPPs to integrate evidence-based reading instruction into preparation.
These EPPs, and many others that DFI has supported to embed evidence-based literacy instruction in preparation, challenge the common misconception that EPPs are resistant or slow to change. The reality is much more nuanced: Meaningful instructional change requires coordination across many interrelated parts of the system—particular teacher preparation and K–12—that have historically not been designed to work cohesively together. The depth, scale, pace, and long-term success of that change depend significantly on leadership, policy, and implementation support. Different investments result in wide variability from state to state, EPP to EPP, and as a result, classroom to classroom.
We are grateful for reports like Fordham’s that continue to raise important questions about the role of preparation. And if we want to see lasting improvement, the conversation must move beyond “How quickly can we get EPPs to change?” to “How can states and systems help EPPs to change successfully?”
