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.
Only a third of America’s fourth graders read proficiently—the lowest number since 2005. As states embrace the science of reading (SoR) to strengthen literacy outcomes, their success will depend on more than reshaping curriculum or retraining teachers. Together, we must also ensure that families are valued and engaged to partner with teachers. Without this, SoR policies risk falling short of their promise.
As a parent in a “balanced literacy” district, this topic is personal. My oldest daughter, now a sixth grader, has always been a strong reader. But my youngest has struggled in her reading journey—affected, I believe, by the lack of explicit and systematic literacy instruction. While she is now on the path to being on grade level (and loves to read), we are still playing catch up. I am grateful to her third grade teacher who has embraced me as a partner—having honest conversations and checking in regularly on our plan to help fill foundational gaps.
Parents are the experts of our kids but we can’t fix a problem we don’t know we have. At Learning Heroes, we’ve spent a decade understanding parent and educator mindsets about the home-school connection. We know that parents need—and want—an accurate and actionable understanding of how their kids are progressing.
For literacy reform to truly take hold, we need stronger school–home partnerships focused on student learning. This requires intentional action from states, districts, and schools, each playing a distinct but connected role.
What states can do: Build a vision and infrastructure for partnership
State education leaders have the unique responsibility to establish the vision, expectations, and structures that make school–home partnership part of literacy reform—not an afterthought.
- Prioritize family engagement in policy and funding. Educators can’t make this shift alone—they need a team to maximize learning in and outside of the classroom. Literacy laws can require schools to share student data with families and create individualized at-home reading plans. This kind of meaningful change in schools and classrooms is what will lead to student gains.
- Translate the science. SoR is filled with jargon—phonemic awareness, orthographic mapping, and decodable texts can leave families in the dark. State education agencies can create family-friendly guides and videos that show what’s expected of students and how parents can support them at home. Learning Heroes partners with states like Virginia, Texas, and Arkansas to provide families with clear and accessible information about their child’s grade-level achievement and communicate new literacy legislation.
- Promote family feedback loops at all levels. States can encourage districts to collect and report data on how effectively they engage families as partners in literacy reform, and can incorporate those indicators into accountability and continuous improvement frameworks. Importantly, measuring engagement can be more than a compliance exercise—it can be a policy lever to improve student outcomes.
What this looks like in action: Mississippi has garnered national headlines for its meteoric rise in reading achievement, climbing from 49th to 7th on the National Assessment for Educational Progress in 4th grade scores. But what some may not know about the “Mississippi Miracle” is that family engagement was a key driver of their success. The state literacy plan required that parents receive clear updates on their child’s reading progress and access to activities that mirror classroom practices. When a child struggled, families were notified, and schools had access to model letters, K–3 guides, and communications toolkits so that every family knew why it mattered and how to help.
What districts can do: Bridge state vision and local practice
Districts serve as the crucial middle layer between state mandates and school-level action. They can play a pivotal role in helping families experience SoR shifts as coherent, accessible, and meaningful.
- Build educator capacity. Principals need support to create the infrastructure (e.g. time, budget, training) that enables teachers and families to partner around student learning. Teachers need support to communicate student data effectively, navigate hard conversations, and share evidence-based reading strategies. Districts can invest in training that is embedded as part of SoR professional learning.
- Leverage community partners as trusted messengers. Libraries, early learning providers, and after-school programs can help amplify SoR efforts. Districts can align messaging and provide shared materials so families see consistent practices across settings. Districts can encourage schools to partner with organizations to host family literacy sessions in community spaces to meet families where they are.
- Communicate clearly with families. Parents deserve to understand why reading instruction is changing and how it benefits their children. Districts can develop simple and actionable messages to share through FAQs, social media posts, and translated materials that let families know what’s expected of their child, how to support at home, and what resources are available.
What this looks like in action: In rural southern Illinois at Unity Point Consolidated School District 140, students and their families participate in tailored planning meetings with their educator at the start of the school year to set academic and personal growth goals and assess academic needs, including reading proficiency. The meeting serves as an early touchpoint to build trust and guide collaboration throughout the year.
What schools can do: Build daily, trust-based partnerships
Teachers, principals, and staff are the ones who can turn policy into partnership—or to reinforce the status quo of educational change happening without families’ voices.
- Treat family engagement as an instructional strategy. Many teachers were trained without strong preparation in either the science of reading or family engagement. Schools can integrate family engagement training into SoR professional learning communities, helping teachers share strategies for partnering with families around literacy development. They can redesign school events to include more 1:1 with families—showing and practicing SoR-based activities. Events should also be culturally responsive—featuring bilingual materials, diverse books, and families sharing their own literacy traditions.
- Build trust and transparency. Principals, teachers, and parents agree that building trust between school and home is an essential ingredient for real partnership to take hold. With trust in place, teachers and parents can have more candid conversations about progress and move toward co-creating learning plans based on student data, teacher observations, as well as parent and student input.
- Celebrate progress in big and little ways. Finally, schools can celebrate literacy progress as a shared point of pride—helping to sustain the work over time. Highlighting student reading growth, family perspectives and experiences, or sharing “family literacy champions” stories reinforces the message that reading success is a community effort.
What this looks like in action: Prodeo Academy, a charter network in Minneapolis, is taking steps to build trust and transparency—prioritizing candid conversations, improving data-sharing practices, and redesigning family conferences so that teachers and parents can co-create action plans.
Conclusion: A shared responsibility for literacy
Families are children’s first and most important teachers, and their role is indispensable in any effort to improve reading outcomes. As decades of research has shown and new research is further validating, children thrive when educators and families team up on learning. The science of reading can fulfill its promise when we match research with relationships—uniting educators, families, and communities around every child’s reading success.
