Effective Reading Instruction: Why Teacher Expertise Matters Most

What Makes Effective Reading Instruction Truly Work

In my role supporting Tier 1, school-wide professional learning, my responsibility is not simply to help educators administer another program or examine another score report.

My responsibility is to help build a coherent instructional system in which every teacher can recognize students’ reading needs, deliver evidence-based instruction, monitor progress, and respond quickly when students are not advancing.

Our central question should not be, “Are students completing the program?” It should be:

Are students becoming more accurate, fluent, strategic, and independent readers—and can we demonstrate that growth through multiple valid measures?

Digital platforms, diagnostics, and adaptive instructional programs may provide useful information. However, algorithm-generated results, usage minutes, lesson-completion rates, and growth measured primarily by a program’s own assessment should not be treated as sufficient proof of learning or return on investment. These indicators must be validated against direct skill measures, classroom performance, curriculum-based assessments, and independent reading outcomes.

The Institute of Education Sciences and What Works Clearinghouse recommend that schools “provide differentiated reading instruction for all students based on assessments of students’ current reading levels.” Their multi-tier reading guidance also calls for universal screening, targeted small-group instruction, regular progress monitoring, and instructional adjustments when students demonstrate insufficient progress. IES/WWC multi-tier reading guide.

This evidence supports a Tier 1 system built around fluid and flexible movement along the reading-learning continuum—not permanent labels, static intervention groups, or schedules determined by a single diagnostic score.

Teacher expertise leads the way. Data helps guide responsive reading instruction, while technology plays its best role: supporting—not replacing—the skilled educator who knows how to turn insight into meaningful progress.

What This Requires

1. Protect and strengthen evidence-based Tier 1 instruction

Every student should receive systematic, explicit, cumulative reading instruction from a well-prepared teacher. For students in the elementary grades, the What Works Clearinghouse identifies strong evidence for developing phonemic awareness and letter–sound relationships and for teaching students to decode words, analyze word parts, and recognize and write words. It also recommends that every student read connected text daily to develop accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. WWC foundational reading guide.

For older students, evidence-based intervention should address decoding of multisyllabic words, purposeful fluency practice, vocabulary and knowledge building, comprehension routines, and supported work with challenging text. WWC grades 4–9 reading guide.

Intervention cannot compensate for inconsistent core instruction. Our first investment must therefore be in the instructional knowledge, materials, routines, and coaching teachers need to provide strong Tier 1 reading instruction every day.

2. Organize schedules around student needs

The master schedule should make responsive instruction possible. It should protect uninterrupted core literacy instruction while creating common intervention and enrichment periods that do not require students to miss essential grade-level teaching.

Student placement should be:

• Skill-specific rather than label-driven.

• Based on multiple data sources.

• Flexible rather than fixed for a semester or year.

• Reviewed at predetermined, frequent intervals.

• Changed when progress-monitoring evidence shows that a student has mastered a skill, stalled, or requires a different level of intensity.

The purpose of grouping is to deliver the instruction a student needs now—not to define what the school believes that student will always be able to do.

3. Turn professional learning into classroom practice

One-time training is not enough. Professional learning should operate as an ongoing improvement cycle:

1. Identify a specific student-learning need.

2. Study and model the corresponding evidence-based instructional practice.

3. Rehearse the practice with feedback.

4. Implement it in the classroom.

5. Examine short-cycle student evidence.

6. Refine instruction, regroup students, and repeat the cycle.

IES’s Strategies to Improve Reading materials similarly move educators from introduction to practice, feedback, coaching, and professional learning communities. They call for educators to use screening data to identify a Tier 1 instructional focus and connect that need to specific instructional strategies. IES Strategies to Improve Reading.

Importantly, professional development should not be judged by attendance or satisfaction surveys. Its effectiveness should be visible in stronger instruction, consistent implementation, and improved student skills.

4. Use data as a decision-making tool—not as the decision-maker

Data meetings must move beyond reviewing colors, percentiles, dashboards, or aggregate growth. Teams should ask:

• What specific reading skill has the student mastered?

• What prerequisite skill remains insecure?

• What instructional approach has been provided?

• Was it delivered with sufficient frequency, duration, and quality?

• What does the student’s work show?

• Is progress transferring to authentic reading and grade-level text?

• Should the student’s group, instructional emphasis, time, or intensity change?

This distinction matters because data-use training alone does not automatically improve instruction or achievement. A randomized federal evaluation found that additional data-driven-instruction coaching and professional development did not change teachers’ reported practices or improve student outcomes. Data become valuable only when educators possess the instructional knowledge, resources, time, and authority to act on them. IES evaluation of data-driven instructional support.

5. Define return on investment through student outcomes

Our return-on-investment analysis should include the full cost of implementation:

• Licensing and assessment costs.

• Devices and technical support.

• Teacher and student time.

• Professional learning and coaching.

• Intervention staffing.

• Scheduling and administrative demands.

• Instructional opportunities displaced by the program.

Those investments should be compared with outcomes that matter:

• More students reaching validated reading benchmarks.

• Faster mastery of identified foundational skills.

• Improved accuracy, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

• Successful transfer to authentic and grade-level reading.

• Reduced need for increasingly intensive intervention.

• Smaller and shorter-lasting proficiency gaps.

• Increased teacher capacity to diagnose and respond to reading needs.

Minutes logged, lessons passed, and growth on a vendor’s internal assessment may be implementation indicators, but they are not, by themselves, evidence of an educational return.

My Call to Action

I am calling for a school-wide reading improvement model that places knowledgeable teachers—not software—at the center of instructional decision-making.

Let us protect strong Tier 1 instruction, build sustained professional learning into teachers’ work, organize schedules around responsive intervention, and establish progress-monitoring routines that allow students to move fluidly along the reading-learning continuum.

Let us evaluate every program according to the same standard: independent evidence, quality of implementation, transfer to authentic reading, and measurable improvement in students’ skills.

Technology may inform this work. It may supplement instruction. It should not replace teacher expertise, direct observation, responsive instruction, or professional judgment.

Our ultimate measure of success is not whether students completed more digital lessons. It is whether more students became proficient, confident, and independent readers—and whether we built the professional capacity to sustain that improvement.