I started my career as a teacher working with students with dyslexia. That experience shaped how I think about literacy instruction and what students truly need to become skilled readers.
Today, my work focuses on supporting states, districts, and educators in aligning literacy policy and practice with what we know from research about how students learn to read and write.
When states review instructional materials, most focus on a few key things, such as alignment to standards, usability, and sometimes specific components like background knowledge.
That work has been incredibly important. It’s created more structure for curriculum review and helped raise expectations across the field. But from what I’ve seen, there’s still a critical piece missing.
The missing piece
Even when materials align to standards, the instructional practices used to teach those standards don’t always align with the research on how students learn to read and write. That matters because standards define where we want students to go, but they don’t define how students get there. For example, a standard might expect students to recognize irregularly spelled words or identify key details in a text, but it doesn’t specify the instruction needed to build those skills. That’s where evidence comes in!
For state leaders and district teams, this raises an important shift in mindset: not just asking whether materials are aligned, but how they support the instructional practices students need to succeed.
We know from the science of reading that students need explicit, systematic instruction. But they also need opportunities to practice and build automaticity in foundational skills alongside strategies to support developing reading comprehension and an understanding of how language works. Without those pieces in place, students may not actually develop the skills needed to meet those standards over time.
Another challenge is that most curricula include a lot of content. They’re designed to meet the needs of multiple states and contexts, which means there’s often a wide range of materials and approaches included. So if you’re looking for aligned practices, you’ll likely find them. But that doesn’t mean everything in the program is aligned.
And if you’re only looking for what’s present—rather than also identifying what may be missing or misaligned—you can overlook practices that don’t support students effectively. This is why, when The Reading League reviews curricula for our Curriculum Navigation Reports (CNRs), we talk about “red flags.” It’s not meant as a label or reason to reject a curriculum, but as a signal for where educators need to be especially thoughtful in how materials are used and implemented.
Policy can create the conditions for change, provide direction, and—in some cases—funding. But policy alone doesn’t change instruction.
National director of policy and partnerships, The Reading League
Levers for change
For states, this work can get complicated quickly. There are tight timelines, competing priorities, and a lot of pressure to simplify decision-making.
One of the biggest challenges I’ve seen is when complex evaluation tools get reduced to simple checklists or scores. When that happens, we lose the nuance that makes those tools valuable in the first place.
These resources are designed to support decision-making, and they work best when they’re used in partnership with organizations, experts, and others who can help interpret the research and the findings.
More broadly, we’ve also seen a significant increase in science of reading legislation across states, and that’s an important step.
Policy can create the conditions for change, provide direction, and—in some cases—funding. But policy alone doesn’t change instruction. Even high-quality materials, on their own, aren’t enough.
If we want to see real impact, we have to think about the full system. That requires not only policy and high-quality materials, but also building educator knowledge, using data effectively, and providing ongoing support and coaching. It takes alignment across all of those elements to actually strengthen what happens in classrooms.
It takes a league
At The Reading League, we often say, “it takes a league.” That idea really applies here.
This work depends on educators, policymakers, and organizations working together, so that what we know from research is reflected in the materials we use and the instruction students experience every day.
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