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.
When I was nine, my fourth-grade teacher told my parents I would “fall through the cracks.” My family found me extra help, and with consistent, structured support, everything changed. That early experience stayed with me through the years as a teacher, policy advocate, and now nonprofit leader. I’ve seen the literacy crisis from the inside of classrooms and the outside of statehouses—and I know that fixing it will take more than good intentions or new laws.
Across the country, the “science of reading” movement has ushered in the most significant literacy reforms in decades. More than 40 states have passed legislation requiring evidence-based instruction, new teacher training, and curriculum overhauls. It’s a promising start. But laws alone can’t ensure implementation with fidelity or build the trust needed to sustain change. If we’ve learned anything from past waves of reform, it’s that policy can create compliance but not competence.
The problem: Policy momentum without practice alignment
America’s literacy problem isn’t new. Only one in three fourth graders reads proficiently, and rates for Black, Latino, and low-income students are far lower. The pandemic deepened those gaps. States have responded with energy, but implementation is uneven. Teachers trained under older instructional models face steep learning curves; teacher-prep programs often add a short phonics module and call it reform; and district leaders, pressed by shifting mandates, are struggling to manage professional development, curriculum adoption, and staffing at once.
The result is a familiar pattern: new laws, new materials, and the same classroom practices. In too many schools, “science of reading” has become a label rather than a transformation. As a former teacher and someone who now supports schools implementing structured literacy, I’ve seen how easy it is to mistake activity for progress. What’s missing is coherence—between policy, preparation, and daily instruction.
Reading reform is not a policy problem; it’s a practice problem. Policy sets the stage, but people deliver the story.
The opportunity: Build a literacy ecosystem
To make the science of reading real, we need a shared architecture that connects every level of the system. That means three things: shared understanding, shared responsibility, and shared accountability.
Shared understanding
Everyone—from state officials to classroom volunteers—needs a baseline grasp of how children learn to read. The science of reading is not a curriculum or a fad; it’s a body of evidence about the cognitive processes that make reading possible. Policymakers must fund training that moves beyond compliance modules and creates lasting professional communities of practice. Families, too, need accessible information about what effective reading instruction looks like so they can advocate for it and embrace it with their students.
Shared responsibility
Literacy outcomes belong to everyone. State leaders create policy conditions, districts manage schedules and staffing, unions advocate for professional learning and manageable workloads, and community partners extend literacy beyond school walls. The most successful systems I’ve seen treat this as collective work. Principals, reading specialists, and nonprofits share data and adjust strategy together so students experience consistency, not contradiction.
Shared accountability
Accountability should drive improvement, not fear. Instead of tracking only proficiency rates, states and districts should monitor the conditions of instruction: Are students receiving daily, structured literacy time? Are teachers getting coaching? Are interventions frequent and targeted? Data that illuminate these questions are more actionable—and more honest—than test scores alone.
What needs to happen next
The science of reading movement will falter if it remains a top-down mandate. Here’s how each level of the system can anchor reform in lasting practice.
State level: Fund capacity, not just compliance
- Strengthen standards through fifth grade: Early literacy policies often stop at third grade. States should publish a K–5 continuum for decoding, fluency, and comprehension to prevent students from aging out of support before they master foundational skills.
- Invest in implementation infrastructure: Fund substitutes, coaching, and instructional materials—real costs that determine fidelity. Require districts to show how those dollars build sustainable capacity.
- Reform teacher preparation: Mandate supervised clinical practice in evidence-based classrooms and tie program approval to graduates’ demonstrated readiness.
- Define intervention quality: Set parameters for group size, frequency, and staffing so “intervention” doesn’t become a catch-all.
- Publish growth data families can understand: Transparent, visual dashboards tracking reading progress by grade and subgroup help communities focus on learning, not politics.
States like Mississippi and Tennessee show what’s possible when structured literacy is paired with strong coaching and stable funding. The lesson: Coherence drives results.
District level: Align time, training, and trust
- Protect instructional time. Reading blocks and intervention periods must be sacred. Leadership teams should audit schedules to eliminate fragmentation.
- Choose coherence over patchwork: Adopt one aligned suite of curriculum and screeners; train every educator to use it with fidelity.
- Invest in coaching: Continuous feedback—not one-off workshops—transforms practice.
- Empower teachers through labor-management collaboration: Joint literacy task forces can solve problems faster and build buy-in.
- Partner with communities: Align after-school tutoring, libraries, and family workshops with school-day instruction so students experience reinforcement.
When districts treat teachers as learners and partners, implementation stops feeling like compliance and starts feeling like growth.
Federal level: Incentivize consistency and accountability
- Expand Title II funding for structured-literacy professional learning.
- Require teacher-prep programs to report graduates’ impact on reading outcomes.
- Reward cross-sector partnerships—districts, unions, and nonprofits working together to build literacy ecosystems rather than standalone programs.
From policy to practice
The science of reading will not succeed through mandates alone. It will succeed when every level of the system—state, district, and school—shares a clear vision of what excellent reading instruction looks like and the capacity to deliver it. The next phase of reform must be about durability: stable funding, coherent training, and leadership that outlasts election cycles and pedagogical trends.
The real test will be whether this movement reaches the students who have been least served by past reforms. Achieving that will take coherence, courage, and time. State leaders must keep the work funded and focused. Districts must protect the conditions that make quality instruction possible. And schools must stay centered on students—on the confidence that comes when reading becomes a source of strength and possibility.
When those commitments hold, the promise of the science of reading becomes something deeper than policy. It becomes a culture of practice: steady, evidence-driven, and shared across every classroom, where literacy is not a privilege or a reform goal but a given.
