Jun 22, 2026 · 22 min · 13 segments
Why do so many literacy initiatives start with excitement but struggle to produce lasting results? In this episode, I dive into one of the most common literacy mistakes happening in schools today…
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Before we dive in, I want to tell you about a school I worked with recently, because this completely shifted the way I think about literacy systems.
When I first walked into the school, everyone assumed the issue was the curriculum, the intervention program, the assessments, or the lack of intervention support.
So naturally, the conversation immediately became, "What program do we need next?" Because that's where schools almost always go first.
"What should we buy? What should we adopt? What intervention should we use?" Those are the questions that I started to hear.
So I started digging into the data and looking closely at the instructional systems already happening inside this building, and it was very quickly that I realized this was not just a tier one issue.
Instruction needed to become more explicit, more systematic, more aligned across classrooms and grade levels, and we needed more focus on strong foundational skills.
But the biggest issue was that tier one and tier two were not communicating at all.
Students were learning one phonic skill during tier one small groups and then walking into an intervention learning something completely different.
Different scope and sequence, different prompts, different routines and pacing, different language, different expectations, different everything.
The students st- were struggling the most, right? I remember sitting and thinking, "No wonder these kids are so confused," because can you imagine being six years old and hearing, "Tap the sounds" in one room, "Stretch the sounds" in another room, "Blend continuously" somewhere else or "Say it fast" in another? As adults, we hear those things and think, "Well, they're basically the same thing," but not for struggling readers.
They're trying to figure out what the teacher wants, what routine to use, what the expectations in this room are versus another room, and how this system works compared to the last one.
And that cognitive load matters, especially for students who are already struggling the most.
One of the quotes that has stayed with me from Julia Lindsey is, "The students who struggle the most often experience the most chaos." And once you start looking for it, you see it everywhere.
The students needing the most repetition, the most consistency, the clearest instruction are often the students experiencing the most fragmented systems, the most disconnected instruction, the most transitions, the most inconsistency.
It's so backwards, right? And honestly, part of the issue is bigger than the schools themselves.
Here in Virginia, the VLP structure has unintentionally created some of this problem.
If you are not in Virginia, basically the VLP, Virginia Literacy Partnerships, is a organization working with our state, our DOE, to, uh, support the science of reading in our state.
And so, um, they have created, like many states, our districts are required to choose from an approved curriculum list for core instruction, tier two, so intervention, and tier three.
But the approved lists are not the same, so schools are literally being encouraged to choose different systems, different programs across tiers.
We say, "Your struggling reader needs consistency," and then hand schools different scope and sequences, different routines, different instructional language.
So naturally, schools end up with one program for tier one, another for intervention, and another for tier three, and sometimes another computer-based program layered on top.
Before we dive in, I want to tell you about a school I worked with recently, because this completely shifted the way I think about literacy systems.
When I first walked into the school, everyone assumed the issue was the curriculum, the intervention program, the assessments, or the lack of intervention support.
So naturally, the conversation immediately became, "What program do we need next?" Because that's where schools almost always go first.
"What should we buy? What should we adopt? What intervention should we use?" Those are the questions that I started to hear.
So I started digging into the data and looking closely at the instructional systems already happening inside this building, and it was very quickly that I realized this was not just a tier one issue.
Instruction needed to become more explicit, more systematic, more aligned across classrooms and grade levels, and we needed more focus on strong foundational skills.
But the biggest issue was that tier one and tier two were not communicating at all.
Students were learning one phonic skill during tier one small groups and then walking into an intervention learning something completely different.
Different scope and sequence, different prompts, different routines and pacing, different language, different expectations, different everything.
The students st- were struggling the most, right? I remember sitting and thinking, "No wonder these kids are so confused," because can you imagine being six years old and hearing, "Tap the sounds" in one room, "Stretch the sounds" in another room, "Blend continuously" somewhere else or "Say it fast" in another? As adults, we hear those things and think, "Well, they're basically the same thing," but not for struggling readers.
They're trying to figure out what the teacher wants, what routine to use, what the expectations in this room are versus another room, and how this system works compared to the last one.
And that cognitive load matters, especially for students who are already struggling the most.
One of the quotes that has stayed with me from Julia Lindsey is, "The students who struggle the most often experience the most chaos." And once you start looking for it, you see it everywhere.
The students needing the most repetition, the most consistency, the clearest instruction are often the students experiencing the most fragmented systems, the most disconnected instruction, the most transitions, the most inconsistency.
It's so backwards, right? And honestly, part of the issue is bigger than the schools themselves.
Here in Virginia, the VLP structure has unintentionally created some of this problem.
If you are not in Virginia, basically the VLP, Virginia Literacy Partnerships, is a organization working with our state, our DOE, to, uh, support the science of reading in our state.
And so, um, they have created, like many states, our districts are required to choose from an approved curriculum list for core instruction, tier two, so intervention, and tier three.
But the approved lists are not the same, so schools are literally being encouraged to choose different systems, different programs across tiers.
We say, "Your struggling reader needs consistency," and then hand schools different scope and sequences, different routines, different instructional language.
So naturally, schools end up with one program for tier one, another for intervention, and another for tier three, and sometimes another computer-based program layered on top.
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