By Betsy Hill and Roger Stark
The pressure to overhaul how we teach reading has intensified. According to Education Week, 33 states now have legislation that designates the “science of reading” as the standard for instruction and intervention. Some of these laws include consequences for individual students, such as retention for those who are not reading at grade level by the end of third grade. Indiana illustrates this trend: the state education department publishes approved lists of curricula and materials that align with the science of reading, and students who fail the I-READ3 assessment generally cannot advance to fourth grade.
Foundational Benefits of the Science of Reading
- Evidence-Based Instruction
The science of reading is grounded in empirical research, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience. Decades of studies into how the brain processes written language have clarified the stages of reading development and informed instructional choices. Educators who adopt evidence-based strategies can make instructional decisions rooted in proven principles rather than intuition or tradition.
Early Intervention
This approach stresses the importance of identifying and addressing reading difficulties early. Diagnostic assessments and timely, targeted interventions can prevent many students from falling behind. Early action often yields better long-term outcomes for struggling readers.
Phonics Emphasis
Explicit and systematic phonics instruction, including phonemic awareness, is central to the science of reading. Teaching the relationship between letters and sounds helps students decode unfamiliar words. Research consistently shows that this approach benefits many learners, particularly those with dyslexia and similar reading challenges.
Structured Literacy
Structured literacy offers a sequenced, explicit framework that breaks language into core components—phonology, morphology, syntax—and teaches them systematically. This method supports spelling and reading development and is especially effective for students who struggle with conventional reading instruction.
The Foundational Challenge: Teacher Knowledge
The effectiveness of the science of reading depends heavily on skilled teachers who understand its principles and have sustained professional development. Specialists trained in these methods are crucial, but programs can be vulnerable when those specialists retire, transfer, or leave the profession. Many teachers have not received adequate training in these approaches, which means widespread adoption requires significant and ongoing investment in professional development.
Other Challenges
- Balancing Phonics and Meaning
While phonics is essential, an overemphasis on decoding can crowd out instruction in comprehension and meaning-making. Effective reading programs balance phonics with strategies that cultivate understanding, vocabulary, and a love of reading.
Adaptability to Diverse Learners
No single method fits every student. Teachers must adapt instruction to meet a range of learning styles and needs, which can be difficult within highly prescriptive programs.
Cultural Relevance
To engage all students, reading materials must reflect diverse backgrounds and experiences. Critics note that some implementations of the science of reading do not always prioritize culturally relevant texts.
High-Stakes Testing
The emphasis on explicit instruction and measurable skills can increase pressure to “teach to the test,” risking the narrowing of curricula and diminishing opportunities to foster reading for pleasure and deeper critical thinking.
The Science of Reading Meets the Science of Learning
State legislation recognizing the reading crisis signals that leaders and communities are no longer content with the status quo. For decades, only about one in three fourth graders have read at grade level. Change is overdue. Yet two important questions remain underexamined.
First: if teachers are being trained in the science of reading, should similar efforts be applied to other subjects—math, science, and each discrete area of the curriculum—so that instruction across the board is informed by the best available evidence?
Second: some students learn the skills taught by the science of reading and still struggle to read fluently and with comprehension. What underlying factors might explain why improved instruction alone does not always lead to expected results?
The Common Thread: Cognitive Skills
One gap in current discussions of the science of reading is attention to cognitive processes that underlie all learning. These mental processes—often called cognitive skills—enable the brain to take in, make meaning of, organize, store, and retrieve information. Examples include sustained attention, visual span, sequential processing, visualization, working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility.
The science of reading typically focuses on phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, but it often overlooks whether a student’s core cognitive capacities support those reading processes. Consider how weaknesses in specific cognitive skills can interfere with reading progress:
Sustained attention: The ability to remain focused over time. When attention drifts during decoding or reading a sentence, critical information can be missed, creating gaps in comprehension.
Visual span: The amount of visual information the brain processes at a glance. Students who perceive one letter or one word at a time often struggle with decoding efficiency and fluency; those who take in groups of words or whole lines more readily grasp overall meaning.
Sequential processing: The capacity to perceive and remember items in order. Reading depends on order—letters, words, and ideas must be processed in sequence; deficits here can confuse meaning.
Visualization: The ability to form and manipulate mental images. Strong readers frequently visualize scenes to aid comprehension and recall; students who struggle to form mental images may find comprehension and retention difficult.
Working memory: The power to hold and manipulate information in mind. Working memory helps readers maintain relationships across a sentence, connect new information to prior knowledge, and monitor understanding as they read.
Inhibitory control: The capacity to suppress inappropriate responses. Students who habitually guess or blurt words may be acting from weak inhibitory control rather than poor decoding strategy.
Cognitive flexibility: The ability to switch perspectives or approaches. Reading often requires shifting between decoding and word recognition pathways, understanding different characters’ viewpoints, or revising interpretations in light of new information.
A student can master phonics and still struggle if these cognitive capacities are underdeveloped. The science of learning shows that cognitive skills are not fixed; they can be strengthened through targeted training and experience. Research indicates that cognitive skills account for a substantial portion of variance in academic performance—making them a critical part of any comprehensive literacy strategy.
Closing Achievement Gaps
The science of reading has the potential to narrow achievement gaps by providing consistent, evidence-based instruction to learners from all backgrounds. But to maximize impact, schools should pair high-quality reading instruction with support for the cognitive skills that enable learning. Integrating evidence-based literacy teaching with a comprehensive cognitive-skills development program creates a more robust platform for reading success and can produce synergistic gains.
Ultimately, the science of reading should be regarded as one powerful tool in an educator’s toolbox, not a single, universal solution. The most effective literacy programs strengthen both teaching practices and students’ underlying capacities as learners. By investing in teacher training and students’ cognitive development, educators can make better-informed decisions that meet diverse needs across varied learning environments.
About the authors
Betsy Hill is President of BrainWare Learning Company, which applies neuroscience to build learning capacity. An experienced educator, she has studied neuroscience and education with leading experts. She has served on university boards, teaches strategic thinking in graduate programs, and has received awards recognizing her contributions to learning excellence. She is co-author of the book “Your Child Learns Differently, Now What?”
Roger Stark is Co-founder and CEO of BrainWare Learning Company. He has led efforts to make the science of learning and cognitive literacy training accessible and affordable. Roger helped develop a comprehensive, integrated cognitive literacy training tool delivered online and is co-author of “Your Child Learns Differently, Now What?”