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.
For nearly two centuries, since the Yale Report of 1828, America’s colleges and universities have used the same models, same approaches, and similar expectations, despite what their students might need. By refusing to adapt how we deliver higher education, particularly in teacher preparation programs, we shouldn’t be surprised only a third of fourth graders today are reading proficient.
We expect novice teachers to lead in a global, digital, information economy, but we aren’t equipping them with the knowledge and skills needed to reach the most diverse student population in the history of our nation. Two decades ago, one of my mentors, Reid Lyon, stated that education schools were guilty of “educational malpractice” for failing to adequately prepare aspiring educators in literacy instruction. We should be horrified that most education schools ignored those admonishments and still rely on teacher education and preparation programs built almost exclusively on a failed philosophy, producing ill-equipped elementary school teachers.
Put simply, teacher preparation is broken. After far too many decades, education schools continue to resist the research on proven effective instruction, particularly when it comes to the “science of reading.” While educators, policymakers, parents, and communities have battled fiercely over how best to teach reading, our education schools continue to use the failed approaches once known as whole language and currently known as balanced literacy. No matter the label, though, it is a failed approach ensuring that we continue to fail those young learners in need of literacy skills.
Today, the vast majority of states are charting courses to make “science of reading” the required approach in elementary school classrooms. But few are calling for the changes necessary to ensure that science of reading is actually taught with fidelity, or even taught at all. Almost none are requiring their colleges and universities to ensure that science of reading is the foundational component of any and all pre-service teacher preparation in their states. And test scores are still reflecting this deficiency.
We do not have to accept the statistics of the past as destiny. Despite our past struggles in getting all students proficient in reading, we know what steps need to be taken. Those bold states and educators are now taking those steps, doing what is necessary to improve the learning process in our schools, close the achievement gap, and transform every child into a strong, effective reader. Despite years and years of hearing that such actions were either too hard, too controversial, or too much of a change from what has always been done, we are finally starting to do it. But the hardest challenge lays before us—changing higher education.
Twenty-five years after the release of the National Reading Panel report, its findings still stand. Despite multiple efforts to disprove scientifically based reading, it is what is proven effective with virtually all learners. While children may enter the reading continuum at different points, a strong and confident reader requires measurable skills in all five components. In building upon each other, these components provide a strong foundation on which ongoing reading proficiency is based.
The challenge many states have faced since the NRP’s completion has been to create policy that will infuse the NRP’s five proven principles into classroom instruction. It is not enough to simply identify what components of the literacy acquisition process can and should be included. We also must focus on what is being done to prepare the teachers necessary to implement such policies. That focus requires states to lead when it comes to teacher education, enacting policy that demands:
- Ensuring that undergraduate and graduate courses in the science of reading are part of any pre-service education program and are required of all new public elementary school teachers of record.
- Improving the pre-service and in-service training so that all teachers (in all subjects and grades), not just reading educators, at least learn the basics of evidence-based reading instruction (right now, most of our schools of education severely lack pre-service education in evidence-based reading).
- Focusing on the instructional materials necessary to help virtually all students acquire those five skills, be it through statewide adoption processes or funding priorities, and providing educators specific pre- and in-service training in how to use them.
- Ensuring all novice teachers are empowered with the necessary data systems and professional development supports to tailor classroom instructional practice to meet the individual needs of each student.
The data is clear that science of reading–based instructional approaches can equip nearly all learners with the skills and knowledge they need to be proficient fourth-grade readers. Those approaches, though, require classroom teachers steeped in pre-service and in-service science of reading pedagogy. To get there, we need to radically transform our teacher preparation programs, ensuring all are based on a strong foundation of SOR.
Yes, higher education is one of the hardest sectors to change, reform, and improve. It resists change like no other. But such change it is necessary if we want to break decades of failures and shortcomings and equip all learners with needed literacy skills. The future of our students, our communities, and our nation requires us to finally say no to teacher educators who continue to indoctrinate their classes with the failed instructional experiments and philosophies that they themselves learned decades ago.
Improved student reading proficiency requires the science of reading. Successful implementation of the science of reading requires committed and successful educators. And the preparation of those educators requires education schools and teacher preparation programs built on the science, the data, and proven-effective instructional approaches.
Knowing all this is not enough, though. If we are serious about closing achievement gaps and giving all children—regardless of race, family income, or zip code—the opportunity to truly succeed in school, we must translate this knowledge into action by building a commitment for a solution, mobilizing stakeholders and enacting change. And such improvement begins in our teacher preparation programs.
For science of reading to succeed in elementary school classrooms, we need to prepare aspiring teachers in what it is, how to use it, how to measure it, and how to target it to meet the needs of individual learners. If our colleges and universities aren’t up to the challenge, or refuse to accept it, we cannot make the improvements our classrooms need and deserve. No teacher education student should accept a preparation program that doesn’t actually prepare them to change lives and teach kids to read. And no school district should hire an educator not prepared in the science of reading.
