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.
I am not a reading expert, but I have extensive and successful school experience in public, private, international, university, and government settings. And two telling episodes during that experience provide confidence that there are several productive ways to “play it smarter” to fortify the reading revolution.
At the school level, the single most important activity is constant school year testing and evaluation of the students’ progress in reading. By constant, I don’t mean just the quarterly report card. I mean after each unit or during each week.
One telling episode from which I learned was at the time a delegation of educators came to my school from Singapore to learn about our character program. I took that opportunity to ask the delegation what made Singapore a consistent top world-wide education system. Their response was that they constantly tested and assessed student progress. Teams of teachers in each school would make the assessments short-term to find out if there were any student shortcomings as the school year progressed and what was going well in student learning. If there were shortcomings, teacher teams immediately discussed the teaching, the curriculum, the strategies, and the content philosophies and attempted the needed corrections for each student or for each batch of students in need. If there were strong signs of success, the teams attempted to identify why and how and then shared all this with other teacher teams.
What I got out of this explanation was that, by constant evaluation, few if any students fell behind in any subject during each school year. I figured that this meant that, by the middle school grades, fewer students in U.S. schools would have “given up” because they were so far behind (in reading) and begin missing school, acting out, and giving up on their education. Constant assessment of each student’s progress in reading at each grade each year and doing something about it at each grade during the year is essential.
Also important at the school level is the avoidance of program disintegration. So-called model programs often fail when key teachers get sick, leave, or retire. Then the once-successful reading teams must hire new people or train new people. The key is to train as many teachers as possible, even if they are not the official reading teachers. Because the reading program should begin as early as possible, the reading teachers should be training all the elementary teachers with the teaching method, and several of those teachers might become the backup reading teachers for the school.
Also substitute teachers untrained in the reading program being instituted in the school can cause student confusion and waste precious learning time. Although I only instituted the idea in mathematics in one of my schools, I am convinced that offering in-service for substitute teachers who are supposed to teach reading would be beneficial.
Clearly, training of school administrators is a must. This will enable those leaders to know the rudiments of the reading program, to hire more appropriate teaching replacements, and to evaluated reading teachers more precisely and fairly.
At the district level, I am reminded of a second telling episode that was an eye-opener for me. When Boston University took over the Chelsea Public Schools in Massachusetts, it was pointed out to me that grandparents and other family members often were the caregivers for the young children who were not yet in school, or the family members were responsible during school down-time and in the summers. A secured grant from IBM trained family members in reading in conjunction with reading professors from Boston University. This was done via media from Boston University to the homes. This proved to be a far better use of time than family members propping up the youngsters in front of the television to keep them quiet. I would also encourage schools or districts to attempt similar programs for willing parents. About 185 school days should be supplemented at home where possible. Similar grants (or grants for other creative programs) should be pursued at both the district and state levels (corporate and state funds).
Districts should also set up relationships with local college education departments that already teach potential teachers effective (or not) reading methods, or that are open to learning more successful reading methods from the district itself to enhance the college programs and to make sure future teachers of reading are not being taught unsuccessful teaching methods by professors. Chelsea teachers and Boston University education professors had a strong relationship, and teachers could also take Boston University reading and other courses at a reduced rate. The district should also be aggressive in encouraging teachers of reading to share successes and issues during each school year. Model programs don’t often take off, but in this case, the single issue of better teaching of reading might make teachers more interested in what others are doing in the district. Districts should also provide teacher and administrative in-service training in assessment and follow up with all teachers. Districts would be wise to identify college sources teaching reading effectively in order to use those sites for future hiring of teachers.
At the state level, there should be timely (not at the beginning of the reading revolution in a state) regular “reading report cards” during each school year for each district in terms of teacher and student reading progress, and other criteria such as in-service training of personnel. The “report cards” should not be punitive, though they will probably be seen as such by many, but will be an important “encouragement factor” to keep the reading revolution fresh and alive.
“Playing it smarter” to advance the reading revolution means frequent testing of student results and then immediately making corrections and piling on successes; consistent training of teachers, administrators, substitute teachers, and family members; identifying sources of new teachers of reading from good college education department matches; revealing successes from state level gathering of information and reading report cards; and district- and state-encouraged sharing of successful and unsuccessful teaching practices, with follow up.
