The Science of Reading Has Won the Argument. Has It Won the Classroom?

The policy debate is over. Now comes the hard part: changing practice.

A few years ago, the “science of reading” was still treated in some quarters as a niche movement—something for literacy specialists, cranky traditionalists, and a handful of obsessives who spent too much time fighting the reading wars on the internet. No longer.

Today, nearly every state has passed some manner reading law valorizing “SoR.” Districts have adopted new curricula. Teachers are taking LETRS and other training programs in droves. Cueing and balanced literacy, once dominant in elementary school classrooms, have come under overdue scrutiny and in some cases have been banned by law. Even former skeptics now speak the language of structured literacy, decoding, and evidence-based practice. In that sense, the science of reading has won the argument. But a new Fordham Institute report asks the more important question: Has the science of reading won the classroom? The answer, encouragingly, is somewhat. But only somewhat.

The distinction matters. In education, particularly in education policy, we often mistake policy victories for instructional ones. Winning the debate in conference rooms, legislatures, podcasts, and social media is one thing. Changing what happens between 8:15 and 2:45 in tens of thousands of classrooms is another entirely. The Fordham report suggests we are still in the middle innings of the ballgame at best.

The report is based on a survey administered to a nationally representative subset of K–3 public school teachers in the RAND American Teacher Panel (ATP) in the fall of 2025. The survey asked teachers about which curricula and training materials their schools use and questions such as:

· “Do you generally favor the use of phonics (i.e., encouraging students to sound out words) or cueing (i.e., encouraging students to use context clues) when teaching?”

· “Which statement do you agree with more? Reading comprehension depends on a set of generalizable skills…[or] Reading comprehension depends on what students already know about the topic and the specific vocabulary used in a text.”

· “A student in your class is having trouble reading an unfamiliar word during small-group instruction. In your opinion, what should a teacher do first?”

In many ways, the survey shows significant movement in the right direction: Most teachers now favor phonics over cueing. Many report having received recent training aligned to the science of reading. Widely respected programs like UFLI and CKLA are gaining traction. Teachers themselves often describe recent shifts toward phonics and explicit instruction as overdue and beneficial. This is no small thing. Frankly, it would have been unimaginable just a few short years ago. (Thanks, Emily Hanford!)

But the report also finds that only half of teachers describe their approach as fully structured and explicit. One in three still report using a “balanced” approach that includes discredited and deleterious methods such as leveled texts and “cueing.” And nearly one in five say they take an “eclectic” or “immersive” approach not necessarily including phonics.

The report’s most troubling finding may be what we might think of as a high-poverty paradox: Teachers in disadvantaged schools report more training and materials aligned with the science of reading than teachers in affluent settings, yet demonstrate weaker knowledge and commitment to it. It could be that the teachers in these settings started from a lower baseline and are still getting caught up, not that their training has been low-quality. In any case, as Amber Northern and Mike Petrilli note in their foreword to the report, the gap portends “dire consequences for poor students should it persist.”

If the science of reading has not fully won the classroom, one reason might be it has not yet won ed schools that prepare the people who work in them. The Fordham report contains a devastating finding: Teachers who rely on their preservice training know less about the science of reading than those who learn it on the job. Worse, teachers who report learning about the science of reading in their preservice programs demonstrate lower knowledge of it. Read that sentence again.

This is not a minor implementation hiccup, it’s an indictment. It suggests that the institutions responsible for preparing teachers may be miseducating them at scale about the most foundational skill they are expected to teach.

This is not a trivial problem, it strikes at the foundation of reform. If teacher preparation programs are sending candidates into classrooms with a weaker grasp of reading science than they acquire later on the job, policymakers cannot treat this as business as usual. State leaders and education agencies must make strengthening preservice training an urgent priority and wield the power they hold over accreditation and licensure to ensure that new teachers enter the classroom ready to teach reading effectively from day one.

Even if we fix teacher preparation, however, the problem does not end there. It is equally important that schools and districts adopt high-quality curricula, like UFLI and CKLA. The Fordham report suggests that teacher knowledge is reinforced—or undermined—by the materials teachers use every day. Teachers using curricula more closely aligned to the science of reading demonstrate stronger understanding of reading science, while those relying on materials associated with balanced literacy tend to show weaker knowledge. Said differently, curriculum is not just a delivery mechanism for instruction; it shapes a teacher’s knowledge about his or her subject.

Speaking of curriculum, it seems to me that states should go further than simply requiring that teacher candidates “learn about” the science of reading. They should ensure that new teachers have been trained to do the work—planning lessons, delivering instruction, diagnosing errors, and supporting students—using high-quality, science of reading-aligned materials. That means tying accreditation and licensure to demonstrated proficiency in teaching specific curricula—not just familiarity with theory. If teaching is to be doable at scale, teachers should enter the classroom already fluent in the tools they will be expected to use.

Fordham’s report pairs nicely with the lessons of Mississippi, which were the subject of an AEI webinar I recently hosted. Mississippi is often described as a miracle, which implies mystery, luck, or divine intervention and flatters our appetite for dramatic stories while discouraging learning. But what happened in Mississippi was not a miracle, it was a marathon. Rachel Canter, whose recent paper framed it that way, attributed the state’s remarkable turnaround to two decades of policy coherence, implementation support, accountability, stronger standards, coaching, training, and persistence. Kymyona Burk, the state’s former literacy director, described the painstaking behind-the-scenes work: monthly meetings, common messaging, clear expectations, troubleshooting, follow-up, and making sure districts actually participated. Kelly Butler of the Barksdale Reading Institute emphasized something reformers too often ignore: Teacher knowledge had to be built systematically, not assumed.

One detail from the webinar has stayed with me: Mississippi officials would regularly review lists of which districts were sending teachers to literacy training, and if a district wasn’t participating, they picked up the phone and called the superintendent. That may sound mundane, but it’s not. It’s what seriousness and accountability looks like in practice: Someone notices an issue and follows up. Behavior changes and outcomes follow. Contrast this with the way that too often we think about reform: pass a bill, announce an initiative and funding, hold a press conference, and assume the field will absorb it (or worse, assume the capacity already exists to execute), as if a school is a smartphone receiving a software update.

The first phase of reading reform was winning the argument against bad ideas. Mission (mostly) accomplished. The next phase is harder: building systems where good ideas can survive contact with reality and resistance. That means better teacher preparation, curriculum selection, and coaching. It means less initiative churn and more consistency, follow-through and patience.

The science of reading may have won the argument. The classroom is where it still has to earn the victory.

—With Annika Hernandez