The Literacy Trajectory

CEO Perspectives from Karl Rectanus

Across the country, districts have made meaningful progress in literacy. They have adopted stronger instructional materials, invested in professional learning, strengthened assessment systems, and built a stronger shared understanding of how students learn to read. That work has moved the field forward.

What I am seeing now is a different stage of the conversation. While district leaders once asked about whether their approach was aligned, many now ask whether those investments are producing more consistent outcomes for students across classrooms and schools. 

The implementation gap emerges when a district’s literacy system looks strong on paper but reaches students unevenly in daily practice. Translating evidence into practice takes time, coordination, reflection, and support across every level of a school system. 

The implementation gap shows up when strong plans produce uneven experiences. For example, a district may have a Science of Reading-aligned curriculum, ongoing evidence-based professional learning, screening and diagnostic assessments, intervention systems, and literacy coaching in place. Each piece contributes to the larger system, and its impact depends on how well they work together.

Instructional expectations, professional learning, assessment, coaching, intervention, scheduling, and leadership support all influence daily practice. When those pieces reinforce one another, educators can move more easily from evidence to action, and students experience greater consistency. This raises an important systems question: What helps evidence-based practice become durable practice?

Across districts, I see the gap most clearly in the variation that naturally appears when instructional models move from planning into daily practice.

Even when schools share the same curriculum, professional learning, and expectations, classrooms will not look identical. Educators work within different schedules, student needs, staffing structures, and levels of ongoing support. The more useful question is what that variation tells us. Some differences reflect thoughtful professional judgment. Others signal a need for greater clarity, time, or support.

Districts can respond by building shared understanding around the instructional practices that matter most while preserving teachers’ ability to respond to the students in front of them. That is where fidelity adds value.

In literacy instruction, fidelity clarifies the practices that matter most while preserving professional judgment. Within structured literacy, that may include shared expectations around explicit instruction, systematic and cumulative skill development, sufficient practice, precise feedback, and responsiveness to student learning.

Fidelity gives educators a common instructional foundation across classrooms and schools. When educators understand what should remain stable and where they have flexibility, teachers can focus their judgment where it adds the most value. Coaches can target support more precisely, and leaders can better understand how instruction is unfolding across schools. That shared clarity also gives continuous and high-quality professional learning a stronger foundation.

One pattern I see in stronger implementations is that professional learning continues alongside the work. The strongest professional learning stays practical, sustained, and connected to the decisions educators make every day. A single session can introduce new research, materials, or practices. Expertise grows when educators apply that learning, reflect on what they see, collaborate with colleagues, and refine practice over time.

That work spans the system. Teachers, coaches, school leaders, and district teams make different but connected decisions that shape literacy instruction. Ongoing professional learning helps those roles build a shared understanding of effective practice, student response, and the next steps that support stronger implementation.

Coaching extends professional learning by giving educators dedicated space to examine student response, reflect on instructional decisions, and refine practice. The strongest coaching conversations focus on what students are doing, where instruction is working, where a skill may need more attention, and what adjustments could help.

Over time, those conversations build a shared instructional language across classrooms and schools. That shared language helps teams learn from what is working, identify patterns, and respond more quickly when educators or students need additional support.

Coaching also strengthens accountability by keeping the conversation centered on student learning and instructional response.

Districts may already have universal screening, diagnostic assessment, classroom evidence, and progress monitoring in place. The next step is reflecting on whether educators know which data to look at, why it matters, and how it should shape the next instructional decision.

Do teachers have protected time to review student data, look for patterns, collaborate with colleagues, and determine next steps? Do coaches, interventionists, school leaders, and district teams share a common understanding of what different assessments are designed to tell them? When students are not making expected progress, does the system provide a clear process for deciding whether instruction, intervention, intensity, or additional diagnostic information should change?

Those structures determine whether data drives action, and without them, even high-quality assessments can turn into another set of scores educators collect without enough time or clarity to use them well.

Strong literacy systems connect assessment, reflection, collaboration, instruction, and student response. Data should help educators answer a practical question: What do we know now, and what are we going to do differently because of it?

Implementation science offers a useful lens for something educators already know intuitively: even a well-supported practice has to fit the realities of a particular school or district. It asks leaders to study local conditions, identify what supports the work, surface what gets in the way, and test whether the support they put in place actually helps. That shift can open up more productive conversations.

When a practice becomes difficult to sustain, leaders can ask, What is happening here, and what would make this easier to do well? The answer may involve time, scheduling, professional learning, coaching capacity, assessment processes, intervention structures, competing priorities, or something specific to a school community. Once leaders understand those conditions, they can respond with greater precision.

Research can tell us what supports skilled reading, but student outcomes depend on what happens when that knowledge meets classroom and school realities. Strong systems help educators translate evidence into practice, learn from student response, and continually refine instruction.

That helps explain why schools using the same curriculum and participating in the same professional learning may still see different results. Curriculum, professional learning, assessment, coaching, intervention, scheduling, and leadership support interact over time, and those interactions shape the student experience.

Student outcomes help districts see how well these pieces work together. Examining results gives leaders a clearer view of what's working well, where educators need more support, and where additional refinement could improve the student experience.

Districts can make meaningful progress by strengthening the connections among the pieces already in place.

They can clarify the instructional practices that matter most, align professional learning and coaching around those practices, connect assessment data to clear next steps, and protect time for educators to reflect and collaborate around student response.

Implementation science adds another useful habit: study local conditions before choosing the support. What is working well here? Where is the work becoming harder to sustain? What is getting in the way? What support would make the next step more realistic? Those questions create room for continuous improvement and help districts respond to variation with curiosity, precision, and support.

The Science of Reading has given the field a stronger evidence base for how students learn to read. The next opportunity is to make that evidence usable, sustainable, and responsive to the realities of schools. Curriculum, professional learning, assessment, coaching, intervention, and leadership all contribute to that work. When those pieces reinforce one another, educators gain greater clarity, implementation grows more coherent, and students experience more consistent instruction.

That is where the work comes back to what matters most: helping more students become confident, capable readers.

Karl Rectanus is CEO of Really Great Reading (RGR), an impact-centered leader driving measurable literacy outcomes for all students. An entrepreneur and advisor, he previously co-founded and led LearnPlatform, pioneering rapid-cycle evaluation and evidence-based decision-making in K-12 education.

He writes The Literacy Trajectory, a series exploring how educators and school systems can improve literacy outcomes at scale.