Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2025 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “What needs to happen next—at the state, district, and school levels—for the science of reading revolution to fulfill its promise and ensure that far more children learn to read well?” Learn more.
“He volunteered to read for the class today! It was like a lightbulb went off—you could see his confidence grow word by word.” The student’s teacher flagged me down in the hallway to share the good news and ask more about what we were doing in reading intervention. This sophomore had struggled throughout his school career, both academically and behaviorally, and many educators had lost faith in their ability to adequately support him. This part of his story is painfully like many American adolescent students growing in their reading skills. Secondary reading interventions often leave students with too little, too late.
Policy for teaching reading to younger students, primarily in grades K–3, has seen a shift in the last decades. Across the nation, state policies have looked toward the body of reading research, now known as the science of reading, for a light in the dimness of reading achievement data. According to a 2022 EdWeek analysis, forty States and the District of Columbia passed laws requiring their reading instruction and systems to align to these evidence-based practices. Many looked to a surprising source of inspiration, dubbed the “Mississippi Miracle,” as the state saw significant NAEP Score gains after implementing similar practices in 2013. However promising these gains were in states like Mississippi, reading results for older students continues to decline nationwide and now demands policy attention.
“The lightbulb was the kind of innovation that comes together over decades, in pieces. There was no lightbulb moment in the story of the lightbulb.” —Stephen Johnson, Author of the book and PBS series, How We Got to Now
Johnson’s reflection on the invention of the lightbulb illuminates the gradual progress of adjustments in policy and practice that have led to reading growth—it took decades to see the growth now being attributed to the shift in policy. Now that a lightbulb is lit, we need to keep the light shining toward all of our readers and reflect on the multifaceted components of policies that were found to be significant. Several states in the South have recently been highlighted for their “surge” in reading and math improvements that were decades in the making. Targeted investments were made in those states in teacher reading training, screening and selection of high quality instructional materials, instructional coaching, and summer reading tutoring. Additionally, Natalie Wexler, author of The Knowledge Gap, notes that it would be a misrepresentation of these policies to oversimplify them as a focus on phonics. Instead, she points to those states’ selection of and teacher training in knowledge-building curriculum as a critical component of those states’ success over time. After all, the Reading Rope is a common framework in the science of reading community and serves as an important reminder that reading policies will require a multifaceted approach.
As an educator working directly with teachers and students alongside their school leaders, I reflect on the momentum I have seen over the last fifteen years starting to shift practice. Students and staff in our secondary schools are navigating the higher expectations of rigorous and expansive curriculum - at various levels of confidence and support. Educators often struggle to implement new materials with fidelity while differentiating for the various needs of their students, using strategies aligned to the research. Educators also value the support of parents and the public who are generally left out of the action planning, beyond promoting phonics. As states, districts, and schools continue to develop their science of reading initiatives, they need to bring two essential stakeholders to the front of their strategic planning: secondary teachers and the public (especially parents and guardians).
Secondary Teachers: Provide more guidance and support for teachers in secondary education to bridge the gap between students’ current reading skills and more rigorous secondary curricular materials.
Teachers are often given new curricular materials with little to no intensive training or practice with the materials beforehand. And districts or schools facing staffing and funding shortages have the hardest time supporting teachers in this area. Therefore, the teacher-facing materials of a new curriculum are critically important and must be simplified, clearly structured, and contain multiple models of what internalization best looks like for teaching all students—especially those that are still developing reading skills. The starting point to ensure teachers are able to easily translate those materials into practice is to require curriculum companies to include scaffolded thinking questions and reading strategies that help students build on all components of the Reading Rope.
Currently, teachers have to build in those layers of scaffolding on their own to draw out concepts in rigorous text for all learners—often without effective training on how to take students through close reading strategies and often lacking the personal experience of applying the science of reading research. Additionally, the most frequent barrier secondary teachers face with their older struggling readers is the students’ lack of self confidence in reading that is masked with a lack of engagement and motivation. A teacher’s long-term relationship building can inspire courage and effort in a student, but the quickest way to build a student’s confidence is feeling curious and successful with that text. Curricular annotations that include engagement and motivation strategies for challenging areas of each text should be embedded in all lessons.
Having pre-annotated materials with these scaffolds, at least as a starting model for all teachers, would be a massive support for schools and districts who are already struggling to allocate resources and whose administrators are also learning the research and shifts that need to be made to instruction. In the short term, states can require curriculum companies to include scaffolds in their curriculum to make them easier to internalize and implement well. And to see growth over time, states should apply what has worked to the secondary grades by providing training and coaching to build teacher capacity. Let’s continue to apply what has worked in supporting elementary teachers to the secondary grades.
The Public (especially parents and guardians): Bring the public more actively into the process and understanding of the research and how to support our students.
Competing priorities and the all-encompassing job of teaching our students can feel like an already full plate with no room to engage the public. However, educators and policymakers alike know the support of the public in education is necessary for communities.
Recent positive press coverage of the growth being made in states like Mississippi certainly inspires hope. However, we have to be sure that this does not also disguise the need for continuing resources and support of those in the long-term work. If educators and supporters of education like ourselves continue to share positive and balanced information, we can spread accurate and action-oriented information about ways to support students and encourage more involvement in our schools. Community engagement is a full-time job in many successful organizations, yet it is one of many demands that administrators manage at schools. State leadership teams could support districts and schools by setting targets and integrated support for community events like literacy nights and social media engagement around reading strategies that families can use.
Additionally, state agencies compile and create incredibly helpful resources that are sometimes not publicly shared or often used in practice. Public access and use of these resources, like all forms of information sharing, is more complicated than it seems. But the opportunities to track traffic to those sites and raise awareness of family and educator resources through social media campaigns is certainly possible and standard practice at successful organizations. Let’s raise the bar in the way education operates in the public realm - to shine a bright light on what’s working and what still needs to be done to ensure that far more children learn to read well.
