A few days ago, I was part of a panel at the AIM Institute in Philadelphia. As I prepared, I wrote these remarks—thinking through what I wanted to say about literacy, leadership, and the importance of alignment in making real change happen.
But when the moment came, I didn’t deliver them. Instead, I made a different choice.
Early in my career, I achieved things that looked impressive on paper. I built a career in basic science, publishing, and earning recognition. But I did it through an unhealthy coping mechanism—one that told me I had to be the smartest person in the room. That drive served me for a time but at a cost. It no longer serves the impact I want to have.
The truth is, the people we need to hear from most are those in the field—educators doing the work day in and day out. So, in that moment, I set my words aside and did something that mattered more. I handed the microphone to my friend and trusted colleague Margaret Goldberg. And I didn’t need it back.
Still, these reflections hold meaning, and I hope they have some value. They capture patterns I’ve observed, challenges we need to name, and a way forward that I believe is necessary. So, I’m sharing them here, as I originally wrote them—not as a speech I gave, but as a reflection on some of what I’ve learned and what still needs to change.
Here are the words. I share them with you now, knowing that what matters most in any moment is shaped by the context and the people in the room.
I come to this conversation not as someone who works in schools every day but as someone who has the opportunity to observe, listen, and learn from educators, school leaders, and policymakers across different contexts. So, I’ve been observing all of you—learning, reflecting, and trying to see things at various levels of awareness.
But before I begin, I want to acknowledge something important.
The only reason I can do this work—the only reason I can stand here and share these reflections—is because of the trust people place in me. The trust of the educators and leaders who open their schools, their classrooms, and their experiences to me. The trust of the students and families whose stories I carry with me. And the trust of those who give me the space to speak today.
I don’t take that lightly, and I don’t take it for granted. So, I approach this conversation with gratitude and a deep sense of responsibility to honor that trust by being clear, honest, and reflective in what I share.
My role often involves visiting schools, talking with teams, and studying how literacy instruction and intervention are being implemented at scale. Over time, I’ve started to see patterns—what works, where things break down, and what leadership practices seem to make the biggest difference in whether strong literacy instruction actually reaches students.
At a micro level, I constantly think about the schedule—how it runs day to day and how everyone fits into it. Time and time again, I observe children not being given sufficient opportunities for authentic, teacher-facilitated instructional interactions. I see a lack of time spent engaging with text alongside a teacher who can provide the scaffolds they need. And I commonly observe students who are profoundly behind not receiving high-dose intervention in a sustained way, delivered by a highly knowledgeable and skilled teacher.
This is what I see far too often. And when I visit classrooms, I look beyond the learning itself—I see the helplessness on students’ faces and the frustration and fatigue of educators who are trying to make a broken system work.
But what is the larger pattern?
One idea that has emerged from these observations is something we can explore together. As a placeholder, we could call this The Alignment Principle—the idea that sustainable success isn’t driven by pushing harder but by designing systems that work together. When leaders ensure alignment between instructional goals, institutional structures, and daily practice, students get the intensity of instruction they need, and teachers get the time and support to deliver it.
But when leadership is fragmented or forceful—trying to turn misaligned gears—systems break down, and instruction suffers.
And from my lived experience, I know that when this happens, lives and families are shattered.
Much of this thinking is about the urgent need to shift toward a prevention model—ensuring that from pre-K or day one of kindergarten, students receive the structured, systematic instruction necessary to build strong foundational literacy skills. But we must also recognize that some students will not respond as effectively to these efforts. These students will require high-dose, intensive, multi-component intervention to make meaningful progress.
When we get prevention right, we accelerate the process of differentiating struggling readers, revealing those who require this far more intensive level of support. AIM stands as a refuge for students who need precisely this—one beacon among a small constellation of similar schools.
But public schools are not aligning their levels of support in a way that creates the excess instructional capacity needed to meet the most intense needs of students like those at AIM.
And to be honest, the data plainly shows that too many schools have an overwhelming percentage of students who can’t read at a basic level. These schools are concentrated in predictable neighborhoods and communities.
Research—both my own and that of many others—confirms that these rates far exceed the number of students who should require sustained, multi-component intervention. The students who are struggling fall into multiple groups, but they do not add up to the level of reading failure happening in schools across the nation.
I don’t have the answers—no one person ever does. But I do want to challenge us to think about these problems in a clear and honest way. And with humility, build community and empower teams to find solutions unique to schools across the nation.
So, as you reflect on this, you might consider:
- How does the daily instructional schedule create or limit opportunities for students to get the support they need?
- How do leaders use student outcomes not just to respond to individual needs but to identify systemic gaps in instruction and support?
Leadership isn’t just about ensuring implementation fidelity—it’s about fostering instructional intensifiers, small but critical moves that deepen impact, refine teaching, and drive student learning forward.
How we align systems determines whether those intensifiers emerge—or get lost in the chaos and destruction of misaligned gears being turned by leaders who are not grounding their efforts in the alignment principle.