American students need help with reading. How about helping their teachers?
For decades, Mississippi students struggled to read, and the state ranked low in educational quality. Not anymore. Strong results on student tests — dubbed the “Mississippi Miracle” — have thrust the southern state into the national spotlight.
But the state superintendent who was at the helm during those literacy reforms repeatedly pushed back against the vague term. Instead, Cary Wright described the state’s success as the “Mississippi Marathon.”
“This doesn’t happen overnight,” Dr. Wright, now Maryland’s state superintendent, said this year. Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce Event. “It’s something that happens over time.”
Why did we write this?
Dozens of states have passed laws directing a “science of reading” approach to helping struggling students. But who teaches teachers how to achieve this?
Literacy experts say it happened with the relentless pace of a “teach-to-read” instructional approach — and a trained workforce to support it. They say that the nation’s higher education and K-12 education systems are slowly but surely trying to close knowledge gaps between the laws of reading science and the workforce charged with teaching children to read.
Today, about 40 states and the District of Columbia have laws or policies related to literacy, according to one report Education Week Analysis. California took another step in that direction when Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation in October that provides funding for teacher training and instructional materials. The mission underpinning the laws is urgent: Nationally, 40% of fourth graders were reading at a level considered “below basic” on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress.
But legislation can only go this far without adequate preparation of teachers. If there’s any question about need or desire, consider the 243,000-member Facebook group called “The Science of Reading – What I Should Have Learned in College.” Daily posts, many from teachers, asking for advice or offering suggestions.
“Are there schools that do good literacy under… [science of reading] Approach and what do your intervention services look like? a group member asked recently.
What do teachers need to know?
Within classrooms that use the Science of Reading approach, teachers focus more on phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
If you’re scratching your head, think of it this way: Babies learn that sounds correspond to letters or letter combinations, which then form words. Words have meaning, and when put together they tell a story.
Two years ago, only 28% of teacher preparation programs adequately addressed those elements of evidence-based reading instruction, according to Harvard researchers. Reviewed by the National Council for Teacher Quality. And 22% of programs did not adequately prepare aspiring teachers for any of these components.
When the board releases its next review of teacher preparation programs in the spring, Heather Pesky, the group’s president, expects to see improvement.
“The reason I’m optimistic is that there are so many states that have adopted new reading laws that include requirements for teacher preparation programs to align their programs with the science of reading,” she says, pointing to Colorado and Mississippi as examples.
These two states also require a robust licensing exam for teachers who enter the classroom.
“The gap between research and practice”
On the higher education front, Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts is one of the leading institutions in this field. The private Christian college is accepting applicants for its new Doctor of Education program in the science of learning, which will begin next summer and include a focus on language and literacy education.
The program builds on the college’s existing efforts to train aspiring teachers in evidence-based approaches but targets a new audience: education leaders, teacher educators, and advocates. Gordon officials hope it creates a ripple effect.
“There is a gap between research and practice,” says Julia Donofrio, a professor of education at Gordon University. “Research has been around for a long time, but getting it into the field is what takes a long time.” The goal of the program will be to arm doctoral students with the knowledge necessary to “read research and translate it into teaching practice for teachers.”
But comprehensive transformation of teacher preparation programs across the country will take time. For starters, literacy experts say experience remains a barrier. College faculty may not be well versed in the science of reading.
The educational obstacle may be defining the science of reading. Cognitive neuroscientists, such as Marianne Wolfe, director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at UCLA, call for a broader understanding of the evidence-based approach. She says it should include basic literacy skills and deep reading skills.
“It’s slower,” Dr. Wolf says, referring to teacher preparation, “because I think people don’t understand that it’s not just phonics.”
Getting ready for Friday night
Laura Patranella, a fifth-grade teacher in Seguin, Texas, admits she has an unconventional hobby on Friday and Saturday nights. She reads books on how to improve her education through the science of reading.
“I’m always obsessed with finding the next way to do things,” she says. “It’s just a simple tweak that has a really big impact.”
Her dedication to her craft has paid off. Last school year, 83% of her students showed growth in reading on a Texas standardized test known as STAAR (Texas State Assessments of Academic Readiness), Ms. Patranella says. The progress her students are making fuels her desire to learn more on her own, but she knows this is a high demand for her peers in the field.
“There is never enough time to teach,” she says. “If you’re exhausted, there’s only so much you can do.”
So, what’s the best way to train teachers who didn’t learn the science of reading in college?
Tennessee has taken an approach that strongly favors practical application in the classroom. Using pandemic-era federal funding and grants, the state launched the Reading 360 initiative, which included resources for schools and summer training for teachers, several years ago.
The teachers were trained through an online course and then, most importantly, in groups that included colleagues — teachers, literacy coaches and principals — from the same schools, says Lisa Kunz, a former chief academic officer for the Tennessee Department of Education who led the Reading 360 initiative.
“This gives you support when you return to the classroom,” she says. “You could walk down the hall to your second-grade teacher and say, ‘What did we do? How does this work with my materials?
The Education Recovery Scorecard, a collaboration between researchers from Harvard and Stanford, found just that Tennessee Ranked No. 9 in Reading’s recovery between 2019 and 2024. Neighborhood Southern states States like Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi also showed strong gains in reading during that period.
Those four states have been on alert for a long time, says Dr. Coons, who most recently served as Virginia’s state superintendent.
“It was a deep commitment to work for five, seven, 10 years,” she says. “And it will take this kind of deep and sustained commitment to make sure that we are embedding the right kind of practices for our students over time.”
But not all of the work is done at the state or school district level. Some of it stems from grassroots efforts to meet teachers’ demand for literacy training.
The Gwen Foundation, which supports and expands the work of expert literacy teachers, receives hundreds of applications annually from teachers who want to participate in its fellowship, says Kata Solo, the foundation’s executive director.
The purpose of the fellowship is straightforward. Ms. Solow says the foundation has found “really great reading teachers” who have figured out how to translate the theory surrounding the science of reading into effective teaching strategies in the classroom. These teachers are then paid to share what they are doing on social media or through webinars.
It is a “teachers teaching teachers” model.
“We believe that teachers are generally the best teachers for other teachers,” Ms. Solow says. “And they’ll be the best persuaders, too.”