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.
We know a lot about how children learn to read. But to fulfill the promise of the science of reading revolution, we have to admit there is a lot we do not yet know about what schools need to do to help every student read proficiently.
My team and I recently searched for schools where 80 percent of fifth graders were meeting reading proficiently on their state tests, with no gaps by student demographic groups. We found four schools serving diverse student populations that are reaching this target. Four.
These four schools all use different curricula; they have different approaches to intervention; they engage parents in different ways. They seem to share an obsessive focus on tracking the needs of every student, but interviews did not reveal a straightforward recipe for achieving these currently uncommon outcomes.
The enthusiasm of the science of reading movement and its “know better, do better” ethos has sparked real change. I have seen more change in teacher’s instructional practice over the last five years in early grades reading than I have ever seen with any other initiative.
However, I worry that the policies that have been made in its name lack the long-game, goal-oriented learning approach that is required to really impact outcomes—and are set up to disappoint expectations.
The recent energy in the science of reading movement was sold with the story that we know a lot about how students learn to read, but common teaching practices don’t put that knowledge into practice. That disconnect is real—but improving practice at scale is far from simple.
There are a set of core policy plays that have come to define state-level science of reading legislation, including requiring training for teachers, changing curriculum, changing teacher preparation training, adding reading screeners, and in places, student retention policies. I worry that policymakers’ enthusiasm about these (important, foundational) moves have unintentionally created expectations for student outcome gains that are going to be disappointed.
Reading proficiency is extremely hard to move. As I have written about in detail elsewhere and many others in this Wonkathon will no doubt stress, foundational skills—the crux of the science of reading movement—are necessary, but not sufficient, to proficiently read a complex text. The translation of the science of reading into a set of implementation moves vastly overindexes on the outcomes those moves will make. If these moves do not produce gains on state tests (which they are unlikely to do in an obvious and immediate way), then some policy makers may be inclined to dismiss the science rather than look for the more complete solution set needed to match the problem.
More significantly, focusing on a few key strategies misses the opportunity to put us all the more productive, goal-oriented learning posture we need to really achieve these outcomes.
The win for the science of reading movement isn’t high-quality curriculum in every classroom or every teacher trained, important as all of those progress markers may be on the path to victory. The win is every student reading proficiently. And when only four schools in the country are getting the outcomes we should be able to reasonably expect across the nation, we have no choice but to all be humble learners about how to get to better outcomes.
Reductively, for many more schools to reach reading proficiency, state, district, and school leaders need to set big goals for improvement and keep at the work until they get there. They can and should have a hypothesis on what will work but then they need to follow the data. And they need to stick with the mission even when the results are not fast or straightforward.
We have tried big goals and accountability as the core strategy for improvement before. No Child Left Behind produced some improvement in math but less in reading. I am not suggesting that “set a big goal and work to get there” will lead to scaled improvement for every student. But I know sending teachers to a science of reading training won’t get us all the way there either.
At Instruction Partners, we’ve set a big goal of helping 50 schools reach 80 percent of fifth graders reading proficiently, with no gaps by student demographic groups, with a project we’re calling the Elementary Reading Initiative. We’re designing a service to support teachers and leaders in implementing strong core instruction, intervention, tutoring, and out-of-school time around specific bundles of products. We’re focusing on building leaders’ capacity in particular to support the work. We have a research-based hypothesis about what schools need to do to reach these outcomes, but we’re holding it loosely and have formative research partners who will help us obsessively understand for whom the service is working and follow the data. We’re finding partners deeply committed to the goals and the mission. Together, we are giving ourselves five years to meet our ambitious goals, and we’re expecting slow progress in the first couple of years as the practices take hold. We are half a year in with our first cohort and we are learning a lot.
We’ve never taken on a bigger goal or longer project, but we think that is what this moment in the science of reading movement needs. Clear goals, the best the science can offer, a learning orientation—and a lot of stamina to keep at the mission.
