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.
In 2017, we at the Winston Group had the opportunity to conduct several focus groups on the topic of education reform. With Common Core in the rearview mirror and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) the law of the land, we wanted to know what voters thought about reform and how receptive were they to reform efforts. Did they think ESSA would result in real, positive change?
While what we heard was disheartening, in hindsight, it was not surprising. The voters we spoke to were tired of reform and unenthused about ESSA as a vehicle for meaningful change. “Everyone rolls their eyes,” said one woman as we discussed how much faith they had in reform efforts. “You're personally tired of hearing it. It’s like, what's new? What are they going to do this year that’s just going to fail in 10 years and then we're going to change it again?”
I’m reminded of these groups as science of reading laws start to take full effect. These reforms are promising new ways to think about and teach reading. And they could not have come sooner. With barely a third of our fourth graders considered proficient or better on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and another 40 percent considered below basic, we are facing a clear crisis in literacy. The effects of this crisis will reverberate for decades to come if we do not address it head-on. Aligning instruction with the science of reading offers a promising way to ensure that young readers have the foundation they need for later success.
As we have seen with past reform efforts however, a good idea does not guarantee success on the ground. Reforms—grounded in cognitive science as they may be—are only half of the equation. What is needed in equal measure is robust accountability to ensure that these reforms are actually having their intended effect. States and districts need, in the words of one of our focus group participants, “actual metrics,” or definitions of what we are measuring—student performance on state reading tests? Student performance on NAEP?—and how they will measure it.
An essential element of this robust accountability is that states and districts also need to define a goal for where they want student reading levels to be. As another participant put it, “If we don’t get the output of putting dollars into [a reform effort], what is the value? So we’ve got to decide how we determine success. And I don’t think we’re there yet.” Without a definition of success, we have no way to know if and when we achieve our goals. It’s a little like setting out on a journey without a destination. How will we know when we’ve arrived? As the Cheshire Cat famously told Alice, which way you should go “depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” In retrospect, it is no wonder our focus group participants were expressing reform fatigue. Not knowing what success was meant to look like, they saw only an endless parade of reforms—changes for change’s sake rather than actually improving student outcomes. We must ensure this is not the case for the science of reading.
Whatever goal a state sets, it must be more robust than simply getting more students to read proficiently. This is laudable, but it’s not enough. How many more? Does this look like increasing rates of proficiency in a given state by ten points? By twenty? In what timeframe? And what does such a goal at the state level look like for individual districts and schools? These are all questions that states, in conversation with their districts, will need to answer. The goals that states set for themselves need to be achievable while at the same time reflecting actual, significantly improved student performance.
Trying to define success in this way may be challenging, but ultimately, it will be fruitful, engaging state and district leaders to think through specific reforms and strategies that will need to be implemented in order to achieve their specific aim. Whether the intent is increasing proficiency by 10 or 15 points (or more) in the next five years, we need to hold ourselves accountable to a specific goal, frequently checking in on our progress to assess whether we should stay the course or need to make any adjustments to ensure we achieve what we want to achieve.
My focus on accountability is not meant to detract from the other, very real challenges around putting science of reading reforms into practice. Implementation—which has a major impact on the efficacy of reforms—is a major undertaking in and of itself, requiring that educators, teacher preparation and development programs, unions, and parents all be on the same page. Schools and districts will have other challenges they will need to manage, such as ensuring students can make the jump from mastering the mechanics of reading to the even more complex task of reading comprehension. They will also need to manage student disengagement, as rates of chronic absenteeism remain elevated and cellphones offer distractions that are particularly detrimental to student reading and learning. Only 39 percent of 9-year-olds reported reading on their own for fun in 2022, down from 53 percent a decade earlier, according to the NAEP Long-Term Trend Assessment. Sixteen percent in 2022 said they hardly or never read on their own for fun. Among 13-year-olds assessed the following year, the share that said they never or hardly ever read on their own for fun crossed the 30 percent threshold (31 percent) for the first time going back to 1984. These are worrying trends for literacy skills especially given that a broad, well-rounded base of background knowledge and vocabulary are essential for understanding increasingly complex texts.
It is a complicated environment for reform efforts to say the least, and all of these dynamics will need to be managed effectively in order for science of reading initiatives to have their full effect. But in managing them, we cannot lose sight of the importance of accountability, including accountability to a specific goal. Schools, states, and districts should commit to a clear, measurable goal for student outcomes. Doing so will help ensure that these reforms do not end up being yet another effort that is “just going to fail in 10 years,” but instead are practices that will produce real, lasting positive outcomes for our students.
