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.
To address the issue of sustainability and successful next steps for sustained implementation of new reading laws, one must first identify why waves of previous reading reforms, many aligned to evidence, have not endured. Three factors have contributed to this failure.
- Educator preparation programs (EPPs) have not aligned their coursework and standards to the evidence on effective reading instruction but have still received accreditation, and new educators receive licensure often not based on evidence.
- Educator professional learning has been limited to knowledge training but not always aligned to the evidence, nor is it sufficiently inclusive of ongoing training and support in the effective use evidence-aligned materials.
- Leadership change at all levels has led to constant reform rather than sustained implementation of effective reading instruction, often because leaders themselves have little to no training in effective reading instruction to successfully lead it.
First, educator preparation programs (EPPs) must align with the evidence not only on what is necessary to develop proficient reading, but also on how reading should be taught—drawing on insights from both cognitive science about how humans learn and instructional science about the most effective teaching practices. While many universities are already revising their courses to better align to reading science, they are not also aligning to learning science. New educators may be learning about what reading content to teach but are not necessarily learning how best to teach that content. Internationally, because of rigorous preparation and ongoing professional learning, the U.K. has moved up to ninth in reading. The U.S. lags behind. The only way to ensure EPPs are preparing educators is to require changes that align evidence to licensure, licensure tests, license renewal, and accreditation. EPPs must be judged for accreditation based on course work and clinical practice that provides all educators with the knowledge necessary to ensure all students become proficient readers and writers. Currently, too many EPPs are not adequately equipping preservice educators with the necessary skills and practices to teach reading effectively but nonetheless are still receiving accreditation.
Licensure tests should require preservice educators to demonstrate that they possess the evidence-aligned knowledge and skills to teach reading effectively. Similarly, the two main accreditation organizations, the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) and the Association for Advancing Quality in Educator Preparation (AAQEP), must embed into their standards and their reviews the requisite knowledge for teaching reading so that EPPs are evaluated against evidence-aligned standards in both course work and clinical practice. Short of those changes, higher education will likely continue business as usual that too often relies on ideology and philosophy rather than evidence.
Second, both pre-service and in-service professional learning must go beyond knowledge training about the essential components of reading and include training on understanding how people learn (cognitive science) and therefore how best to teach. In addition, professional learning must include training on the use of actual evidence-aligned, high-quality instructional materials that build word level skills, language, writing, and deep knowledge, similar to what has been done in the successful southern states such as Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Professional learning should also include ongoing coaching and implementation support. Just as doctors go through internships and pilots go through simulations and co-pilot training where they learn to apply their knowledge and make expert use of their equipment, all educators must be equipped with both research-aligned knowledge and practical skills and receive ongoing coaching to mastery. Such professional learning must extend to principals who evaluate their teachers and lead systemic school efforts to improve literacy outcomes. Principals must know reading content to monitor and support implementation. To do this, they need clear systems in place for managing instruction, scheduling instructional time, delivering interventions, and collecting and analyzing class and school-wide assessment data.
Finally, a significant cause for continued reading failure, despite abundant research and despite legislation, is leadership turnover at all levels—state superintendents and policymakers, district superintendents and district line staff, and principals. Too often, new leaders bring their own ideas and beliefs about what should be the focus, despite evidence that previous leaders’ programs and policies led to strong achievement gains. However, having a common body of evidence-aligned knowledge that includes effective implementation practices that all leaders draw from would reduce and eventually eliminate this problem. Therefore, we also propose a radical change just as is done in many businesses—the use of successor plans for which state departments of education, state boards, and local school boards are accountable for developing. Successor plans can ensure that effective reading policies and practices are sustained. A successor plan facilitates smooth transitions, includes timelines and milestones to ensure continuity of effective services, operations, and expectations. Such successor plans allow a period of mentoring and support for new leaders. To achieve such a radical shift, state and district governing boards must build sustainability into their hiring plans, into their interviews, and into the evaluation of new leaders.
This idea of sustainability has been demonstrated so clearly in the Steubenville story reported by Emily Hanford; 25 years of sustained evidence-aligned programs, quality materials, ongoing professional learning, and practices produced decades of strong student results. In most school districts, reading programs change with each new superintendent or principal. Funding may dry up and priorities shift, and strong programs are replaced before they even take root. But in Steubenville, Ohio, one program—Success for All—has endured for more than twenty-five years. Why? Stability. The superintendent has led the district for over a decade and is a former principal and teacher in the district. Many teachers have attended Steubenville schools themselves. Such continuity fosters trust between teachers and administrators. Although Steubenville might not have referred to it as succession planning, the district developed this sustained succession organically. Teachers became principals; principals became district leaders. Steubenville cultivated an internal leadership pipeline that preserved values, coherence, and instructional quality. Sustainable change depends not on new mandates but on steady leadership, intentional succession, and a commitment to evidence over trends. (This vignette draws in part on reporting from “Sold a Story: Episode 13 – The List,” APM Reports (2025).)
To sustain significant progress on reading, we must ensure improvements in educator preparation, ongoing professional learning, sustained implementation support, and ultimately guard against leadership changes that disrupt or reverse gains.
