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.
Summary:
Mandates have advanced the science of reading, but without schoolwide systems that connect what we teach to how children actually learn, we end up checking boxes instead of changing outcomes. When those systems are in place, the clearest evidence of literacy success is found in how children build knowledge, connect ideas, and use language to make and share meaning.
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The science of reading movement is transforming what schools teach. It’s a critical shift many of us have spent our careers advocating for and working toward. But knowing what to teach is not the same as ensuring it happens for every child, in every classroom, every day. That requires an intentional system that integrates evidence into daily practice, and prevents barriers that get in the way of learning.
Lists, state rubrics, and reviews of curricular materials have brought much-needed clarity to the science of reading movement. They’ve raised expectations and made adoption decisions more transparent. But relying on those tools alone—in decision-making or implementation—misses what ultimately drives and sustains results: changes in teacher practice and student engagement.
As colleagues Kelly Stuart, Linda Diamond, and Dale Webster recently emphasized, sustaining the science of reading’s momentum depends on lasting systems of preparation, professional learning, and leadership. We wholeheartedly agree, and add that those systems must extend into every classroom, where evidence becomes practice and results become visible.
When you enter a school that’s truly getting reading right, you won’t know it from their materials. You’ll know if from their students. We tell visitors to Success for All schools, “You’ll want to look at the materials but we want you to look at the children.” Are they reading with accuracy and confidence? Explaining their thinking in complete sentences? Using strategies when they encounter an unfamiliar word? Working cooperatively with clear roles so every student practices and participates? Writing to make sense of what they’ve learned? When the answer is yes—consistently, across classrooms and grades—you’re not seeing the implementation of a list. You’re seeing a system that turns decades of reading and learning research into daily practice for every teacher and every child.
What lists tell us, and what they miss
Lists evaluate curricula largely in isolation: phonics scope and sequence, knowledge building, text complexity, teacher support. On those measures, Success for All’s materials align strongly, but lists miss the elements that make achievement in our partner schools last—a whole-school system that connects curriculum with daily routines, cooperative learning, data use, regrouping, tutoring, embedded coaching, and leadership. Adopting evidence without a system to use it is like buying blueprints and never building the house.
This distinction matters. Lists can certify ingredients but they can’t verify the build: schedules that protect reading time, protocols that make formative data actionable, coaching that turns knowledge into craft, leadership habits that outlast personnel changes. If we want this movement to succeed and last, we have to evaluate the conditions that make its implementation predictable.
Turning research into daily practice
Three bodies of evidence must be integrated into a system for the science of reading movement to get results and stick:
- The science of reading clarifies what students must learn—decoding, language, knowledge, and writing.
- Cognitive science explains how the brain acquires, practices, and retains those skills.
- Implementation science shows how schools organize adults (time, roles, routines, feedback) so research becomes daily practice.
When those sciences are integrated and applied, you see it in children’s behavior. Students decode unfamiliar words and immediately connect sound to meaning. They monitor comprehension, ask questions, and adjust when they struggle. They work in structured teams so every student has a voice; they reason from evidence; they write to make thinking visible. What looks effortless is actually a system doing quiet, heavy lifting—aligning classroom instruction, tutoring, and leadership so learning is practiced and reinforced everywhere.
Why this matters for states, districts, and schools
The science of reading has helped states define what strong reading instruction includes. The next step is to protect how it’s implemented.
- States should supplement materials lists with a systems readiness lens: does the plan guarantee protected reading blocks? Common routines? Data cycles that drive regrouping and tutoring? On-site coaching capacity? Leadership teams with defined roles? Evaluate for these conditions alongside program alignment.
- Districts should organize for continuity: shared language across schools, schedules and staffing patterns that make regrouping and tutoring feasible, and coaching that is embedded—not itinerant or episodic.
- Schools should make coherence visible: through predictable routines, cooperative learning structures that ensure full and consistent participation, frequent checks for understanding tied to flexible regrouping, team structures that address challenges before they deepen, and ongoing coaching so every teacher is equipped to help every child.
Look at the children
If we orient only to what adults can adopt and audit, we communicate that value lies in compliance. The real evidence of success lies in what every child can do. In Success for All classrooms, visitors see students who aren’t just on task, but in the work: reading accurately and with purpose, explaining their thinking, citing evidence, listening to peers, and building knowledge. And they don’t see it in one or two classrooms; they see it in every classroom, because the system makes excellence repeatable.
That is the promise of the science of reading movement. Not a new layer of programs, but a coherent design that turns research into daily practice for every child, every teacher, every day.
