We fixed reading, or started to. Writing is still an open page.
For most of the last decade, American reading scores have been in what researchers now call a learning recession, and it started years before anyone had heard of COVID-19. Compared to a decade ago, math scores are down in 70 percent of school districts nationwide, and reading scores are down in 83 percent, according to the latest National Education Scorecard from Harvard's Center for Education Policy Research. Eighth grade reading now sits at its lowest level since 1990. The pandemic didn't start this decline. Thomas Kane, one of the report's authors, has described it as the disruption that followed roughly seven years of quiet erosion that began around 2013, the same year smartphones and social media took hold nationally, and the same year Congress dismantled much of the testing-based accountability built into No Child Left Behind.
The most recent numbers, released this June, split cleanly in two. Nine-year-olds, who were barely school-age when the pandemic hit, are now scoring nearly back to their pre-pandemic levels, real, broad-based progress, showing up across every performance level. Thirteen-year-olds, who lost their early elementary years to disruption, are scoring in reading almost exactly where 13-year-olds scored fifty years ago. The students who started furthest behind haven't moved.
A small number of states are the exception, and their gains are real. Mississippi's fourth graders now outscore the national average in reading, a first, and its Hispanic and low-income students rank first in the country. Louisiana moved from 49th in the nation in fourth grade reading in 2019 to 15th in 2024. Neither state got there by passing a law. Mississippi got there by hiring roughly 85 literacy coaches who work inside classrooms two or three days a week alongside teachers, and by holding administrators, district leaders, and state officials accountable for results, not just teachers and students.
I remember visiting a fourth-grade classroom in my first assignment as CAO, not long after our district had rolled out a new reading program of our own, one of the more disciplined implementations I'd overseen. The principal was proud, and she had reason to be, our early screening numbers were finally moving. I asked to see some student writing. A boy handed me a paragraph about the water cycle. He could read every word of the passage it came from. He could not write a complete sentence about it. I remember thinking: we had done the hard, patient work reading actually requires, coaching, accountability, sustained attention, and we had still left half the work unfinished.
That gap does not close on its own. It rarely does, even in the districts doing everything else right.
A Hard-Won Gain, Still Missing Half the Problem
Only 16 percent of educators believe students leave third grade highly prepared in sentence writing and handwriting, according to survey data cited in a recent literacy webinar (EdWeek Top School Jobs, 2026). Read that next to Mississippi's results, and a harder truth appears: even the states and districts that did the difficult, sustained work of fixing reading did not automatically fix writing alongside it. The two got treated as separate problems, on separate timelines, solved by separate initiatives.
They are not separate. Research on the relationship between reading and writing has long shown the two are reciprocal, not sequential. Teaching a student to construct a complex sentence does not just make them a better writer, it measurably improves how well they comprehend what they read (Robertson, as cited in Schwartz, 2023). Sentence-level instruction is not writing's homework assignment. It is reading's unfinished business, in the states struggling and the states succeeding alike.
The Overlooked Element
Practitioners are noticing faster than policy is. A December 2025 webinar titled "Sentence Writing: The Overlooked Element of the Science of Reading" was named one of the Top 25 edWebinars of the entire year (edWeb, 2025). That is not a niche interest. That is a profession quietly raising its hand to say the current approach is incomplete.
In January, UC Irvine's Writing Project devoted its entire annual literacy conference to a single theme: "The Science of Writing," featuring Steve Graham and Karen Harris, two of the most cited researchers in writing instruction anywhere, alongside keynote speaker Young-Suk Grace Kim (UCI Writing Project, 2026). The field is naming its own gap before most state legislatures have caught up to it.
Internal coherence and alignment are not only about resisting too many competing answers. Sometimes they are about refusing to let a hard-won, legitimate answer stand in for a whole one.
The District That Never Let Them Split Apart
Aldine Independent School District, outside Houston, offers a cleaner model, and it looks better now than it did seven years ago. In 2019, the district became the first in Texas to adopt a knowledge approach built on reading and writing together from the outset, not reading first with writing bolted on later (Aldine ISD, 2026). Six years later, in a decade largely defined by national decline, Aldine recorded the largest reading gains among large Texas districts in the state's most recent assessment (Aldine ISD, 2026). Aldine did not wait for a state mandate on either subject. It built both from the same starting point, because they were never two subjects to begin with. Internal coherence and alignment is still the argument.
This is the same lesson as tool sprawl and AI policy, just wearing different clothes. Internal coherence and alignment are not only about resisting too many competing answers. Sometimes they are about refusing to let a hard-won, legitimate answer stand in for a whole one. Mississippi and Louisiana did the real work reading requires. That work is not diminished by what it left out. But a district that finally gets reading right and never asks whether students can write a complete sentence has still built half a literacy program, at exactly the moment it had the credibility and momentum to build the whole thing.
The Choice in Front of You
You do not need to wait for a Science of Writing Act to follow the Science of Reading Act, and if your state is one of the many still waiting for its own reading recovery, you don't need to solve that first either. Ask one question on your next classroom walkthrough: can this student write, in their own words, one clear sentence about what they just read. If the answer is no more often than it should be, you already know where your next initiative lives, and it is not a new program. It is the other half of the one you already have.
References
Aldine Independent School District. (2026, January 29). Aldine ISD to host 2026 Literacy Matters Conference, showcasing district's journey in the science of reading. https://www.aldineisd.org/2026/01/29/aldine-isd-to-host-2026-literacy-matters-conference-showcasing-districts-journey-in-the-science-of-reading/
Chalkbeat. (2026, June 10). New NAEP scores offer optimism for younger students but warning signs for teens. https://www.chalkbeat.org/2026/06/10/new-naep-scores-show-older-students-struggling-in-reading-and-math/
edWeb. (2025, December 2). Sentence writing: The overlooked element of the science of reading [Webinar]. https://home.edweb.net/webinar/lwt20251202/
EdWeek Top School Jobs. (2026, April 28). Restoring writing in grades K-3 as a core pillar of literacy [Sponsored webinar listing]. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/events/webinar/restoring-writing-in-grades-k-3-as-a-core-pillar-of-literacy
ExcelinEd. (2025, March 4). Policy lessons from states that improved students' reading and math proficiency. https://excelined.org/2025/03/04/policy-lessons-from-states-that-improved-students-reading-and-math-proficiency/
Mississippi Department of Education. (2025, January 29). Mississippi's 2024 NAEP results. https://www.mdek12.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/59/2025/01/NAEPRankings-OnePager-2025-0115-JC-v02.pdf
PBS NewsHour. (2026, May 22). What's behind the decade-long 'learning recession' for American students. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/whats-behind-the-decade-long-learning-recession-for-american-students
Schwartz, S. (2023, February 23). 3 takeaways about the connection between reading and writing instruction. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/3-takeaways-about-the-connection-between-reading-and-writing-instruction/2023/02
UCI Writing Project. (2026, January 10). The Science of Writing: 2026 Annual Literacy Conference [Conference brochure]. University of California, Irvine. https://writingproject.uci.edu/uploads/7/2/7/6/72769947/2026_conference_brochure.pdf
Let's Talk
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Can your students write, in their own words, one clear sentence about something they just read? THIS WEEK Pick one classroom this week, any grade, and ask a student to read a short passage, then write one complete sentence in their own words about what it means. Don't help them punctuate it. Don't help them spell it. Just watch what they produce. If the sentence holds together, you have real evidence of coherence between reading and writing in that classroom, not just a screening score. If it doesn't, you've found where your next initiative actually needs to go, and it is very likely cheaper and faster to fix than another decoding intervention. Bring what you find to your next leadership meeting, not as a criticism, but as a starting point. Please share in the comments. I will respond. |
DISTRICT LEADER PODCAST
Most classrooms still treat reading and writing as two separate subjects, taught in separate blocks, sometimes by separate teachers. This episode makes the case that the split is artificial and costly. Ellin Oliver Keene and Dan Feigelson, two of the field's most respected literacy voices, argue that students learn both skills faster and more deeply when they are taught as one connected practice, not sequential ones. They walk through what that integration actually looks like inside a real workshop, from whole class lessons to individual conferences, and why the shift matters most for students who struggle.
Ellin Oliver Keene (49 words)
Ellin Oliver Keene has spent decades studying what it means to truly understand a text. She led staff development for high-poverty schools nationwide and wrote Mosaic of Thought and To Understand. Her newest book, The Literacy Studio, describes students who see reading and writing as two entirely different disciplines.
Dan Feigelson (49 words)
Dan Feigelson taught and led schools in New York City before joining the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. He wrote Reading Projects Reimagined and Radical Listening, which argues conferences fail when teachers lecture instead of listen. Feigelson has said the real work is being fascinated with student thinking.
EDUPRENEURS NETWORK • DEEP DIVE
Breaking Through Educational Plateaus
This week's issue argues that a real reading recovery can still be mistaken for the whole climb. Edupreneurs Network made a version of this same point back in September, about a different kind of local maximum. Read the full piece at edupreneurs.network. A decent win, a beta launch, a reading score increase, can feel like the summit when it is really just the first plateau. The discipline is refusing to stop climbing once the applause starts. That discipline is exactly what this week's issue is asking district leaders to bring to writing instruction.
From the Bookshelf - Thought Leadership
Systems Thinking and Organizational Tansformation
From Chapter 4, "Creating Policy That Doesn't Fight Itself"
Linda Darling-Hammond's research, which I cite in the book, shows that improvement doesn't come from policy mandates alone but from sustained investment in teacher and leader development across the entire system. I wrote that in the context of building leadership capacity generally, but it names exactly what separates Mississippi from the forty-some states that passed similar reading laws and got a fraction of the result. The book goes deeper into what sustained, system-wide capacity actually requires, and why a mandate without it rarely survives contact with a real classroom.
Additional Resources
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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES |
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