91ɬÂþ

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for 91ɬÂþ Newsletter

Nearly 25 years ago, I walked into the U.S. Department of Education at what felt like a remarkable moment in the history of reading instruction. The had just been released, and for the first time in my professional life, there was broad agreement that educational policy should be grounded in scientific evidence. 

As assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education under George W. Bush, I had the privilege of helping to translate that research into policy. It was an optimistic time. We believed that if we could align classroom practice with what decades of research had taught us about reading development, we could dramatically improve children’s lives. 

Looking back, we were right about the science. But we were strikingly naïve about its implementation. 

Last week, New York released its latest state reading assessment results. The were discouraging. Reading proficiency had declined, particularly in grades 3 through 5, leading many to question whether — the evidence-based literacy program introduced in 2023 — was working at all. 

It’s a fair question. If all we have is a single set of state test scores, that conclusion is understandable. But state assessments capture only one moment in a much longer process of instructional change. To understand whether NYC Reads is making a difference, we have to look beyond a single test.

To answer that question, my team of researchers at New York University has spent the past three years in dozens of New York City classrooms, many in schools where reading achievement had remained stubbornly low for years. We weren’t looking for dramatic transformations. We wanted to understand whether the daily work of teaching and learning was beginning to change.  

At first, the changes revealed themselves in small ways. Children no longer looked immediately to the teacher when they came to an unfamiliar word. Instead, they looked back at the print. You could see them quietly sounding out the word, stretching the phonemes with their fingers, and trying again. During dictation, children held up their whiteboards proudly after spelling words they would not have attempted only months earlier. Teachers were no longer carrying the cognitive burden of every lesson; children were beginning to carry more of it themselves. 

The conversations had changed as well. Rather than asking children simply to recall a fact or identify a character, teachers pressed them to explain their thinking, justify an answer with evidence from the text, or connect a new idea to something they had learned the week before. Just as striking, children began asking their own questions — about insects, weather, communities or whatever topic they happened to be studying. 

Vocabulary was no longer treated as a list of words to memorize but as a way of making sense of increasingly complex ideas. Reading instruction felt less like a performance by the teacher and more like an intellectual partnership between teachers and children. 

But observations can be deceptive. Good researchers learn to distrust first impressions, no matter how encouraging they may seem. Were these classrooms simply more engaging? Were teachers becoming more skillful without children learning substantially more? Or were the changes we observed beginning to alter children’s reading trajectories in measurable ways?

We began looking beyond classroom observations to the children’s assessments. The first school we examined had struggled with reading achievement for years. Judging only by its reputation, few people would have expected dramatic progress. Yet the end-of-year assessments told a different story. Children who had entered kindergarten with little or no measurable word reading were now reading at levels that placed them well above national norms. One child finished the year at the 98th percentile in sight-word reading. Others reached the 90th and 86th percentiles. These were not isolated successes; they were signs that something within the school had begun to change. 

A second school served predominantly multilingual learners. Here the picture was equally revealing. Many children still required intensive support by the end of kindergarten, reminding us how much work remained. But alongside them were classmates reading comfortably within the core range, some reaching the mid-90th percentiles on foundational reading measures. The averages alone could never capture that story because they concealed what mattered most: the distribution itself was beginning to shift.  

The school-level findings were encouraging, but they raised an even larger question. Were these schools exceptional, or were they revealing a broader pattern? Three schools, no matter how compelling their stories, cannot answer that question. To find out, we widened the lens.

We analyzed districtwide reading data collected before the initiative began and compared it with data gathered during the first years of implementation, following the progress of nearly 4,000 students. Unlike an annual state assessment, which provides a snapshot of performance at a single point in time, these nationally normed screeners were designed to measure growth. They allowed us to ask a different question: Were children making meaningful progress as readers?

The results closely mirrored what we had been seeing in classrooms. Across successive cohorts, children continued to make steady gains in reading, with growth evident across grades and among most student groups. The progress was neither dramatic nor complete. Too many children were still struggling to read proficiently, and important differences remained among schools. But the pattern itself was remarkably consistent. 

Classroom observations, school-level assessments, and districtwide screening data were all pointing in the same direction. Independently, each offered only a partial picture. Together, they suggested that meaningful instructional change was beginning to take hold.

So, when I look at the state assessment, I don’t see a contradiction. I see a different measure answering a different question. It reminds us that New York still has a great deal of work to do, particularly in the upper elementary grades where reading becomes increasingly demanding. 

But I do not believe those results tell us we are on the wrong path. Rather, classroom observations, school-level assessments, districtwide growth data and state results lead me to a different conclusion: meaningful instructional change has begun.

Looking back, I think this is another lesson we failed to appreciate when the National Reading Panel was first released. We assumed that once the science was clear, progress would reveal itself quickly. We now know better. Educational change takes time. The important question is not whether the work is finished. The important question is whether it is moving in the right direction.

I believe that it is. Educational change appears first in classrooms, then in children, then in schools, and only later in statewide results. This is not the moment to abandon course. It is the moment not to blink.

Did you use this article in your work?

We’d love to hear how 91ɬÂþ’s reporting is helping educators, researchers, and policymakers.