Across the country, literacy is a top priority for state education agencies. Developing a strong literacy system requires significant effort, including thoughtful decisions about selecting instructional materials; strengthening educators’ professional development; designing screening systems; and establishing routines to implement, monitor, and improve initiatives over time.
To help state education leaders navigate these complex decisions and support stronger literacy outcomes for students across grade levels, the Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs) offer a wide array of free research-based resources. Below, we highlight some of the key questions state leaders are navigating and share evidence-based resources that can help build states’ capacity, support informed decisionmaking, and allow for local flexibility.
Selecting high-quality instructional materials
How can states define and select high-quality materials and interventions?
States are elevating high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) to strengthen literacy instruction at scale. When thoughtfully selected and implemented, HQIM can help improve students’ outcomes and reduce burden on teachers by providing coherent lesson structures and supports so teachers can spend less time searching for or creating materials and more time delivering instruction and responding to students’ needs.
Many states help their districts identify HQIM. For example, using lessons learned at the national level, the Maryland State Department of Education is developing rubrics to identify HQIM that include standards alignment, knowledge building, support for multilingual learners, and Universal Design for Learning.
Rubrics and other structured tools can offer states a consistent way to review and select or recommend materials and interventions—including REL Southeast’s Rubric for Evaluating Reading/Language Arts Instructional Materials for Kindergarten to Grade 5. This resource can help states evaluate reading and language arts instructional materials and assess how aligned they are with evidence on reading instruction before they are approved for or recommended to districts. The rubric is grounded in research about how to teach reading and language arts effectively. It draws from six What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) practice guides, which summarize evidence-based recommendations for different areas of literacy instruction.
For states with HQIM initiatives, partnering with their REL can provide access to customized support. RELs can help states use evidence to develop rubrics for identifying HQIM, and help them understand whether their HQIM strategy is being implemented as intended, how it’s influencing district curriculum decisions and classroom practice, and whether it’s leading to measurable progress in student outcomes.
Strengthening educator professional learning
How can states help teachers anchor literacy instruction in evidence-based practice?
As states strengthen literacy policy, educators also need access to high-quality professional learning tools that help them translate research into classroom practice. One practical way for educators to connect professional learning directly to evidence-based practices is to use the REL Southeast’s Professional Learning Communities Facilitator’s Guide. It provides a ready-to-use structure for a literacy leader to facilitate professional learning sessions tied to the WWC practice guide, Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade, and includes more than 30 videos of teachers modeling how to use these strategies in real classrooms.
REL Mid-Atlantic’s Toolkit to Support Evidence-Based Writing Instruction in Grades 2–4 builds on the WWC practice guide, Teaching Elementary School Students to Be Effective Writers, and translates its recommendations into structured professional learning materials. The toolkit includes eight discussion-based professional learning community sessions, independent reflection activities, and sample lesson plans to help educators provide daily writing time, explicitly teach the writing process, and foster engaged communities of writers.
As literacy policy expands into upper grades, REL Southwest’s Providing Reading Interventions for Students in Middle School (PRISMS) Toolkit builds on the WWC practice guide Providing Reading Interventions for Students in Grades 4–9. The PRISMS Toolkit supports administrators, interventionists, coaches, and content-area teachers in implementing structured reading interventions for students reading below grade level and helps extend literacy systems beyond early elementary.
Two more literacy-focused REL toolkits will come out this year, including a toolkit to help educators provide evidence-based reading comprehension instruction (building on the WWC practice guide Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade), and a toolkit for differentiating reading instruction (building on the WWC practice guide Assisting Students Struggling with Reading: Response to Intervention (RtI) and Multi-Tier Intervention in the Primary Grades).
Although high-quality materials and professional learning can strengthen classroom instruction, states are also focused on building strong systems to identify students who need additional support and connect them to effective interventions.
Designing screening and support systems
How can states design or select a universal literacy screening system that reliably identifies students who need support and helps ensure the data lead to action?
Universal screening tools and early literacy assessment decisions have high stakes. They determine which students are identified for additional support and, in turn, how instructional resources and intervention systems are deployed. Some states—including New Jersey and Delaware—have codified literacy screening requirements and linked them to multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) frameworks.
To support these high-stakes decisions, RELs work with states to apply research-based processes for selecting valid screening tools and strengthening MTSS systems to help ensure that assessment data leads to timely intervention.
REL Midwest’s Guide to Using a Research-Based Process to Review and Select Early Literacy Assessments draws on research identifying the foundational skills most predictive of later reading success, such as letter identification, phonemic awareness, vocabulary development, and thinking and reasoning skills. Recommendations include early literacy screenings for all students to flag any potential reading problems at the beginning of the year for early intervention, with a second screening midyear in kindergarten and grade 1 using screeners with strong predictive validity.
For states refining MTSS implementation, REL Mid-Atlantic’s Consistent Implementation of a Multi-Tiered System of Supports fact sheet highlights a related priority: defining high-quality screening and data-use routines so that assessment results meaningfully inform instruction and continual improvement.
To help educators select effective intervention strategies for students identified as needing support, REL Pacific’s Resource to Support Selecting Effective Reading Interventions for Grades K–3 shows how states can review literacy interventions, analyze supporting research, and present findings in a quick-reference visual aligned to their MTSS framework.
RELs can also partner directly with states to strengthen universal screening and MTSS implementation. For example, REL Mid-Atlantic worked with the District of Columbia Public Schools as it rolled out its MTSS framework across all schools, helping to establish clear standards for effective implementation, identify the conditions that support success at the school and district levels, clarify data collection needs, and develop a communication strategy to help ensure educators and families understood the system and that students received appropriate, tailored supports.
Implement, monitor, and improve
How can states help schools and districts implement literacy initiatives effectively—and establish systems to monitor and improve them over time?
Sustained literacy improvement depends on not just strong policy design, but also how well initiatives are implemented, monitored, and refined over time. RELs can work alongside state and district teams, building their capacity to assess implementation fidelity, identify strengths and gaps, and build structured improvement cycles that help ensure initiatives translate into classroom practice. And the following REL resources offer practical tools to operationalize this work:
- REL Southeast’s Self-Study Guide for Implementing Literacy Interventions in Grades 3–8 supports educator teams in collecting baseline data, prioritizing needs, monitoring progress, evaluating implementation, and identifying ways to improve implementation of literacy interventions.
- And the Guide and Checklists for a School Leader’s Walkthrough During Literacy Instruction in Grades 4–12 helps principals and instructional leaders observe research-based literacy practices in classrooms and strengthen implementation monitoring and feedback loops. The tool includes checklists—aligned to five WWC practice guides— for frequent, brief walkthroughs that support coaching and professional growth.
From priority to practice
Across the Mid-Atlantic region and nationwide, states are moving quickly to set expectations and provide supports for strong literacy instruction. Together, these REL resources reflect a shared principle: improving literacy outcomes depends on not only identifying evidence-based practices but also equipping educators and leaders with practical tools to select, implement, monitor, and improve those practices over time.
For state education agency leaders balancing multiple initiatives, these tools can support more informed decision making, clearer expectations, and stronger literacy systems designed to benefit students across grade levels.
