The Reading Crisis Is a Warning About How We Reform Schools

Harvard Professor Dr. Ron Edmonds, more than five decades ago, stated that “We can, whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose true schooling is of interest to us.  We already know more than we need to do that. Whether or not we do it must finally depend on how we feel about the fact that we haven’t so far.”

Dr. Edmond’s words were true then, and they are true now. Our nation has spent years rewriting how schools teach reading, yet the results remain deeply troubling. More than 40 states have adopted Science of Reading policies, but AP News highlighted a national reading recession. The problem demands a harder question: What happens when schools receive a new mandate without the infrastructure to make it work? Without refuting, evidence-based literacy practice is highly effective in closing gaps in literacy proficiency, but we must also develop the internal capacity, expertise, and growth mindset needed to accelerate closing and sustaining literacy proficiency gains. 

I have spent much of my career watching institutions launch promising reforms. The pattern is familiar. A new curriculum arrives, training follows, funding is announced, leaders set targets, and then another priority appears. We repeatedly confuse adoption with implementation. Knowing more has not consistently translated into doing better. Approving a policy is one act. Building the leadership, knowledge, coaching, data systems, and professional habits required to carry it into classrooms is another.

The consequences reach far beyond a line item in a district budget. They reach into the one resource schools can never replenish: student time. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, average fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores in 2024 were both five points below their 2019 levels. Only 31% of fourth graders performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level. Those numbers represent children whose instructional time cannot be recovered. A district can replace a program next year. A child cannot get back the year in which reading skills should have taken root.

This is why initiative churn is so damaging. When districts continually introduce initiatives without developing implementation capacity, they create reform without institutional memory. When priorities change faster than people can master them, teachers receive fragmented messages, principals struggle to reinforce expectations, and professional learning becomes a series of events instead of a coherent system. Organizations lose institutional memory. Expertise remains attached to individual programs, consultants, or grants instead of becoming part of the institution itself.

The current Science of Reading movement offers a crucial test. State policy can establish a direction, but legislation cannot coach a teacher through a difficult lesson, help a principal interpret classroom evidence, or create shared expectations across a district. Some states that changed reading instruction still saw scores fall, while stronger results emerged where policy was paired with teacher training, coaching, intervention, attendance efforts, and sustained support. The policy matters, but the infrastructure around it matters just as much.

We should change how we measure educational investment. Instead of asking primarily, “What program are we funding?” ask, “What permanent capacity will exist in this organization when our funding, initiative, or partnership ends?”

That means treating leadership development, instructional coaching, usable data systems, professional learning, implementation monitoring, succession planning, and protected time for educators to practice as essential infrastructure. External partners can accelerate progress, but their success should ultimately be measured by whether expertise would begin migrating into the organization rather than remaining outside it.

In the better version of this future, a teacher does not have to decipher a new initiative every few years. A principal understands effective reading instruction and has the capacity to support it. District leaders can examine evidence, adjust practice, and remain committed to the underlying goal. Expertise accumulates instead of disappearing when a grant ends or a consultant leaves.

The alternative is familiar: another mandate, another training cycle, another implementation calendar, and another promise that this time will be different. Meanwhile, students move through classrooms while adults reorganize the system around them. For a child struggling to read, a year of institutional confusion is not a temporary inconvenience. It is a year of learning that cannot simply be returned.

The next generation of education reform should be judged by a different standard, not by how many programs we launch, but by the capacity we leave behind. Policymakers should stop issuing unfunded instructional mandates and instead require and fully fund the coaching and infrastructure needed to carry them out.

District leaders should pause before buying another turnkey curriculum and first build the internal expertise, coaching systems, and protected time teachers need to use it well. Funders should redirect resources from short‑lived, high‑gloss initiatives to investments that strengthen long‑term sustainability. And external partners should stop tracking adoption. Demand implementation, and help schools develop the capability to sustain what works.

About the Author

Dr. Thomas Maridada is CEO of the Institute for Organizational Coherence and founder of the Center for Strategic Leadership and Organizational Coherence. A former superintendent, national education policy leader, and teacher, he has spent decades working across classrooms, school districts, nonprofit organizations, and education systems. His work focuses on organizational coherence, leadership development, educator capacity, and sustainable systems change, with an emphasis on helping institutions build the internal expertise required for lasting improvement.