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.
If power is shifting away from the federal government, what should we demand of our state leaders in return? So much national attention is being paid, rightfully, to the “Southern Surge,” which is, in turn, fueling a renaissance of interest in state education policy. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Education is encouraging states to apply for waivers from federal education law, especially around assessments and accountability under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). While this is fraught with peril, it also forces a long-overdue conversation about solving our national reading crisis—a crisis the current federal approach to accountability has largely failed to address.
First, we must distinguish between the parts of the federal law that work and those that don’t. The ESSA guardrails around assessment are essential. Federal requirements for annual testing in reading and math in grades 3–8, with data broken down for students from disadvantaged groups, is the bedrock of educational equity. It provides parents with objective information on their child’s reading progress and allows states to identify which districts and schools are falling behind and for which populations of students. Waiving these provisions, as proposed but now withdrawn by Oklahoma, would be a monumental mistake, plunging us back into an era of ignorance where struggling readers would become invisible.
When it comes to ESSA accountability, however, the story is starkly different. Hardly anyone believes the law’s provisions are meaningfully improving literacy instruction. A scathing 2024 Government Accountability Office report revealed a system failing at every level. The federal department isn't conducting proper oversight. States are out of compliance on things like needs assessments and targeting of resources, and one study even found that schools identified for improvement got fewer resources. And, of special importance to the science of reading, local school leaders are often unaware of evidence-based practices, turning instead, for example, to self-interested curriculum vendors.
Aside from the faulty way in which it is being implemented, the law itself is fundamentally flawed. For one, it focuses intensive intervention only on the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools. Research shows that less than half of the schools with the lowest student achievement are actually identified for support because each state uses an algorithm by which achievement is only one of several factors taken into account.
Second, those schools that are identified for support and improvement are not compelled to make much progress in order to be deemed successful. Under this system, schools with abysmal reading outcomes cycle in and out of improvement status without ever adopting proven instructional methods or establishing a significant trajectory of forward progress.
Herein lies the opportunity. Instead of defending this broken model, we should craft a better one based on the science of reading, applying something analogous to a “multi-tiered system of support” (MTSS) or “response to intervention” (RTI) approach to our entire education system.
MTSS is typically thought of mainly in terms of what is needed at a particular school or district. But what if, as successful systems have effectively done, we were to extend it to an entire state? What if we made evidence-based policies and practices, such as access to high-quality instructional materials, a top priority statewide instead of trying to improve, one by one, a rotating subset of the lowest achieving schools?
Right now, federal accountability is exclusively a Tier 3 intervention for school improvement, i.e., a last-ditch effort to turn around the most extremely low-performing schools. That approach is necessary but not sufficient. What we need, in addition, are robust Tier 1 and Tier 2 efforts, where states make evidence-based literacy instruction a priority for every school.
This is how real progress happens. States with the most impressive reading gains on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress—like Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee—got there in part by mounting Tier 1–like statewide reforms. They, for example, incentivized high-quality instructional materials aligned with the science of reading, retrained teachers in foundational skills, and provided coaches to ensure effective implementation.
Under this model, Tier 2 would provide targeted, supplemental interventions for schools that need more than is provided in the universal Tier 1. In Mississippi, for instance, this meant sending literacy coaches and data coaches to low-performing schools. States should also compel districts to use data to intervene early when children struggle with decoding or fluency. These data can be used to target small-group interventions centered on structured literacy and to customize instruction based on each school’s and student’s unique needs.
Tier 3 would still exist, ensuring the lowest-performing schools and students receive the most intensive services. This could involve high-dosage tutoring using evidence-based programs, intensive training for—or even replacement of—ineffective principals, and clear exit criteria for school improvement status that require demonstrable, sustained gains in reading proficiency.
This tiered strategy represents a fundamental shift in philosophy, moving from what some see as a punitive model under ESSA to a more supportive one. For the past ten years, federal accountability has been a reactive, “wait-to-fail” system that intervenes in schools after their students have already fallen very far behind. It stigmatizes educators and students and fails to provide the high-quality resources and training, either before or after identification, that they actually need to improve.
A tiered, science of reading–based approach is proactive, drawing from lessons over the past decade of education reform. It focuses on building capacity from the ground up. By making evidence-based curriculum and evidence-driven pre-service preparation and professional development the Tier 1 standard for all schools, states invest in their educators and school leaders at the outset. This system doesn’t wait for failure; it provides the tools for success upfront, offering more intensive coaching and support (Tiers 2 and 3) as a logical extension of that initial investment, not as a punishment for its absence.
The Trump administration wants to give states more authority. Simply doing so without a redefinition of the state role would be a wasted opportunity of epic proportions. As experts and advocates, our focus must shift. We should defend the federal rules on assessment that make reading deficiencies and gaps visible. But on accountability, we must turn to our state leaders and demand they fundamentally augment the failed school-by-school approach, as several successful states have already done. It’s time to use this period of changing roles at various levels of government to convince state leaders to embrace a tiered, science of reading–based strategy that can finally solve our nation’s literacy crisis.
