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by Matt Renwick

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A monthly podcast about literacy instruction and school leadership <a href="https://readbyexample.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">readbyexample.substack.com</a>

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June 12, 2026

Building Trust as a School Leader: A Conversation with Dr. Jen Schwanke

👋Hi, it’s Matt. This week, I spoke with Jen Schwanke, former principal, current deputy superintendent, and author of Trusted. (Full subscribers can watch the video of our conversation below.) Enjoy! Also, my <a target="_blank" href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScezEM1XpMq8AgC8OlUfZ4sY1ukHH6WZvCkxzDmsTvS-ZG4mw/viewform?usp=dialog">feedback survey</a> closes soon. If you have a few minutes to spare, I’d love to know more about your experience here. Take care, -MattJen Schwanke has spent her career inside schools as a teacher, a building leader, and now a deputy superintendent in Ohio. She is the author of five ASCD books, including her most recent, Trusted: Trust Pillars, Trust Killers, and the Secret to Successful Schools. She also writes the newsletter “Principal Problems with Dr. Jen” and co-hosts the Principal Matters Podcast, which has surpassed 1.5 million downloads.In this conversation, Jen and Matt discuss what it takes to lead with trust: riding the inevitable ups and downs of the principalship, delegating without losing accountability, building the self-awareness to recognize when you are undermining relational trust, and staying connected to students when compliance and logistics pull you in every other direction.What We Discussed* The connection between trust to student outcomes* The difference between being trustworthy and being trust-willing* How to recognize when you are unintentionally harming trust with your staff* What it means to lead through teachers, from the inside out* The area where teachers are most willing to take feedback from their principal* The two things that keep Jen grounded as a leader when the job gets enormousAbout Jen SchwankeJen Schwanke, Ed.D., is a longtime educator who has served as a teacher and leader at all levels. She is the author of five ASCD books, including Trusted: Trust Pillars, Trust Killers, and the Secret to Successful Schools. She writes the newsletter “Principal Problems with Dr. Jen” and co-hosts the Principal Matters Podcast. She is an instructor in educational administration at The Ohio State University and currently serves as a Deputy Superintendent in Ohio.Find Jen at <a target="_blank" href="https://jenschwanke.com/">jenschwanke.com</a>, on X at <a target="_blank" href="https://x.com/jenschwanke">@JenSchwanke</a>, and on Instagram at <a target="_blank" href="https://www.instagram.com/drjenschwanke">@DrJenSchwanke</a>.Resources Mentioned* <a target="_blank" href="https://www.ascd.org/books/trusted?variant=125016">Trusted: Trust Pillars, Trust Killers, and the Secret to Successful Schools</a> by Jen Schwanke (ASCD, 2025)* <a target="_blank" href="https://williamdparker.com/podcast-2/">Principal Matters Podcast</a>* <a target="_blank" href="https://jenschwanke.com/newsletter/">Principal Problems with Dr. Jen</a>* <a target="_blank" href="https://choiceliteracy.com/">Choice Literacy</a>Enjoyed this conversation? Share it with a colleague and let us know know in the comments! Paid subscribers get additional access to this community, including the ability to comment, networking events, and invitations to join professional conversations like this one. Reduce isolation as a literacy leader - join us!Full TranscriptMatt RenwickHi, my name is Matt Renwick. I am a coach, former principal, classroom teacher, and I am joined today by a colleague, also a former principal, former classroom teacher, current deputy superintendent, Jen Schwanke. Welcome, Jen.Jen SchwankeHi, Matt, so good to be here, thank you.Matt RenwickGood to be connected with you again. I want to read your bio. You’re a long-time educator, teacher, and leader at all levels. You’re the author of 5 books. The last one is the one we’re going to talk about today, Trusted: Trust Pillars, Trust Killers, and the Secret to Successful Schools, published through ASCD. In my review that I wrote for it, for Middle Web, I wrote it was a book that I wish I would have had when I was a principal — it was just really well done. We’re going to talk more about that, but Jen has published 5 books, all focused on leadership at the school level. She’s a frequent contributor to multiple educational publishers, including Choice Literacy, which we’ve both been contributors to and proud writers for. She also consults with districts and school leaders in the areas of school climate, personnel, and instructional leadership. She’s a frequent presenter at national organizations, including ASCD, ISTE, NASSP, and NAESP, and also an instructor in educational administration at The Ohio State University. She currently serves as Deputy Superintendent in Ohio. You can find her at JenSchwanke.com, on X at Jen Schwanke, and on Instagram at Dr. Jen Schwanke. Welcome.Matt RenwickWhat made you decide that you wanted to write a book about trust?Jen SchwankeWell, let me tell you a story related to that. I’ve been lucky to have a great relationship with my editor at ASCD, and this book came to life because I had just published one on conflict management for school leaders. The ink was still warm on the press, and I reached out to my editor and said, I want to write one about trust. And she said, Jen, my goodness, be quiet for a minute. And I said, no, no, these things do go hand in hand. Managing conflict in a school, and how you talk to people, and how you try to anticipate and analyze and act on conflict is so tied to trust. So here’s what she said to me: we really need you to come up with something that has a true effect on student outcomes. So anything you write about trust has to be tied to student outcomes. And I thought, I don’t know how to do that. I know how to write about how trust feels and how to not be a jerk, but I don’t know if I can tie it to student outcomes. Then I started doing some research, and I was shocked — I should not have been — I was shocked to find how much of a correlation there is between principal and staff trust and student outcomes. Students achieve more when teachers trust their principal. After that, the book was easy to write, because I was able to really focus on the why, my intentionality with building trust, and what happens with students.Matt RenwickI’m glad you wrote it. I’m glad you convinced the editors, because you do get at the student level, and that’s one thing I appreciate about the book and your writing. I’ve read your writing with Choice Literacy, and I’ve been on peer review groups with you. I always appreciate your stories — small anecdotes from your own experience, the ups and downs of the principalship. It’s an interesting polarity: conflict management and trust, those two tensions.Jen SchwankeThat’s exactly right, because you can’t do one without the other. You and I met, probably 10 years ago. You were doing some writing for ASCD, I was too, and we went to an authors’ retreat together, and where we geeked out together was with the literacy piece — the reading, and the writing, and student engagement. To me, it was a little bit of an aha moment to think about how it really all is tied together, including student achievement and progress.Matt RenwickYou note in the book that the only way to be successful as a school leader is to learn to ride the inevitable ups and downs. That conflict, and engagement with it, and trust — that’s something I both miss and don’t miss as a former principal. What strategies did you use in your 17 years as a building leader to ride those waves?Jen SchwankeI had a little bit of an aha moment. I was probably in my 10th year as a school leader, and I was complaining to my dad about it — about a teacher, or a parent, or a curricular resource, or a data point. He happened to be standing on his skid steer with a chainsaw at the time, cutting down some branches after a recent summer storm. And he said, you know what your problem is? You always think there’s going to be a point where there’s no more problems. You’re always dissatisfied, because there’s always another problem. And he looked up to the tree and said, a storm blows in, you gotta cut a few branches down. It’s just the day’s work. I thought about that for quite some time, and I thought, that has been my weakness as a leader. I’m looking for this moment when there’s no more conflict, everybody’s getting along, everybody understands what we’re trying to do, everybody’s engaged in the learning — and that’s never going to happen. Because we’re humans, and we have feelings and responses. So rather than feel like I’m chasing an impossibility, I found a great deal of peace in thinking, problems are going to come and go. That is literally what I am paid to do. The strategies were, first of all, recognition of that. I have to embrace these problems that come. And I will even say — my team will tell you it’s very annoying — they’ll come in and say, we have this problem, and I’ll say, okay, let’s pause and think about this together. That takes self-discipline. It also takes team. Because if you are alone, and you feel like you’re the only one who’s going to ride this up and this down, it gets pretty hopeless — like going in the ocean and taking another wave, and then another wave, and then another wave. And then perspective. It is so easy as school leaders, as teachers, as coaches, to feel like the things in our bubble are the most important to anyone. We have to make sure that we don’t wrap too much of our identity into the work — meaning letting go of the sense that we have to have everything perfect.Matt RenwickThat very much resonates with me. Of those things you listed, the one I struggle with most is letting go of control to get things done. As you said, you need others to help lead. It’s the only way to manage it all. What have you found effective to make it clear what’s expected, and how to do things well, so that you’re not trying to do it all? How do we let go of control?Jen SchwankeThis is something I did not do well at the beginning of my career. I thought that when I got the master key to the school, I needed to put on a Superman cape and be everything to everyone. I needed to know everything, be involved in every conversation, make every decision. And if I didn’t, the whole place would fall apart. I’ve come to know — and part of this was through the research I did in my doctoral program — there’s so much out there about collective efficacy. If, as leaders, we don’t empower our staff, if we don’t say, hey, you got this, or, I need help with this certain thing, and invite those other voices, then the trust and the ability of a staff to let their gifts shine is really diminished. We work with people who have bachelor’s degrees and master’s degrees, and many times we overstep in our assumptions of our own expertise versus saying, hey, you have the expertise. I’ll be honest, to this day, I still have to enact self-discipline and say, Jen, you would not do it that way at all — but the outcome is going to be the same or better if you just step aside. Really, all of this is a synonym for trust. In the book, I make a distinction between trustworthy — which most of us know how to be: be honest, do the right thing, follow through — and trustwilling, where we have to be willing to let other people do their thing, do what they were hired to do, get out of their way, and help and guide them instead of criticize or micromanage.Matt RenwickYou bring up a good point about the differentiation between being trustworthy and being trustwilling. A step of that is humility — and also self-awareness. You talk in the book about how trust killing can sometimes be unintentional. Principals aren’t always aware of how their words and actions are damaging, both what they do and what they don’t do. How did you create that self-awareness, or how have you seen leaders create it, so they’re becoming more adaptive and not making the same mistakes over and over?Jen SchwankeI’m a listener, I’m a watcher, and I watch myself with the most critical eye — but I watch other leaders too, and I watch teachers and coaches and see how they respond to different leadership styles. Self-awareness of when you are undermining relational trust — you can’t measure how important that is. Trust killing is generally unintentional. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, I really want to ruin some trusting relationships today. But many of us miss the cues that we are undermining that relational trust. Two things I’d like to say about this. The first is a bit of an offshoot of the ‘let them’ theory, which many listeners probably know. Let people feel how they need to feel. That comes with a little bit of tension as a school leader, because we can’t just let people do whatever they want — we have to lead, and provide guidance and standards and expectations. But if we are doing things with sound mind, with thought, with input, with an eye to how it’s going to affect students, then we really have to be able to let some things go. However, we’ve got to have our eyes and ears open for the feedback, because it comes in various ways. If I walk into a staff meeting and no one will meet my eye, or if I’m explaining a new initiative and people are just coming at me with all the reasons it won’t work — rather than thinking, okay, this is a staff that is resistant or toxic or negative, what they might be is scared, or uncertain, or nervous about change. We have to listen for feedback and learn from it. I always look for my truth-tellers, the people who will tell me when we’re getting off track. I also tell people: look for patterns and look for mirrors. If every time you roll out a new initiative or program you’re finding significant resistance, that’s when you look in the mirror and say, I may not be communicating well enough, or I may be leading a group of people so scared of change that they can’t see the potential outcomes. Then I have to backtrack and see how I can fill the holes in the sieve so that my leadership intentions are not seen as barriers, but as potential for the future.Matt RenwickThe need for feedback and having your truth-tellers around you is crucial. I was married to one of my truth-tellers. She was a special education teacher in the same building where I was the principal, so if I screwed up, I learned about it very quickly — which I appreciated. And she knew how to approach me in the way I needed to hear it, so that I actually would.Jen SchwankeLet’s talk about that for a minute. Your wife was a truth-teller, and she probably saw things you didn’t see — and there you were, trust-willing. Willing to listen to her, willing to say, where am I going sideways? I’m certainly not saying we all should be married to our truth-tellers, but we need to trust that they don’t want us to fail, they don’t want to bring us down. There’s no ill intent when people try to give us feedback. We can choose to say, thank you, that’s very helpful, let me think about that — or we can choose to say, we’re moving forward. The first one is the only way that you build trust.Matt RenwickHow do you get to that level of intimacy — in a relational sense — so that no matter what happens, you’re still going to be on good terms with each other? I think that’s a barrier in people’s minds, though it may not always be correct. They think this is going to destroy the relationship if I have this conversation, and it really is not, unless something truly egregious has occurred. I didn’t love the story, but I really connected with the story in the book about when you walked into the lounge and heard some teachers talking about you. If I remember right, you didn’t respond in the moment. You kind of walked away and found a custodian’s closet and...Jen SchwankeCried.Matt RenwickI think we’ve all been there. If you’ve been in the principalship long enough, you’re going to catch that at some point. That’s just the nature of the job. It made me think about the principal as an outsider — how we have to lead through teachers, from the inside out. You pushed back on that a little, and I appreciate that, because you don’t think of principals as outsiders, although oftentimes principals do think of themselves that way. Especially teachers who become principals in the same building — they see the shift in relationships right away, just from that positionality. So I guess the question is: how do you balance being somewhat of an outsider with needing to lead the building and maintain those relationships?Jen SchwankeIn the past, many years ago, the principal was very far removed from the day-to-day intentionality of a school. The principal was there to handle discipline, the facilities, maybe suspend kids when the teacher couldn’t or was exhausted. Now, principals are in the muck with instruction, classroom management, and professional development — things that were never the original job of a principal. I understand why it’s still in the DNA of some teachers and principals to think of the work as separate. And of course it is, because the principal is the boss at the end of the day. But the most ideal version of the model is if the principal is the one in charge, but with a team mindset. This goes back to that collective efficacy piece. If a principal thinks of him or herself as an outsider, there’s something wrong there. Outsider is different from leader. Leaders should not be outsiders. Leaders should be in the work. In schools, everybody is talking about everybody else — that’s just human nature. We spend an exorbitant amount of time with the people we work with in our schools. It’s okay if people have complaints or feelings or want to talk about the principal. But we want people to know what we’re trying to do. And by the way, sometimes the negative talk is exactly what you want. There was a teacher I once called to task for the tone she used when talking with children. It was really upsetting. She had been doing it for a decade. I finally heard an interaction with a very young child that shook up the child and even me. I went to her and said, we’re done. We’re not going to talk to kids like this anymore. She marched right to the lounge and said something along the lines of, can you believe she’s insisting I be nice. Well, her colleagues may have nodded along, but deep down, they were applauding me. Many of them came to me and said, thank you for taking on this long-running problem. The things people say — we’re never going to eliminate that. We want them to say things like, I trust her, she’s fair, she follows through. I sure don’t like this PD she’s rolling out, but I see what good it’s going to do for kids. Those are the kinds of lounge conversations we want had about us.Matt RenwickI love that example. If you’re going to have a candid conversation with someone and you’re going to upset someone, upset the right people — the people who need to be nudged to improve — and you’re right, the other teachers are going to quietly applaud. They may not come to you and say thank you, but yes.Jen SchwankeRespect and loyalty deserve a place in this conversation. Sometimes somebody might say something disparaging about the principal that makes the principal feel like an outsider, but that might be one of your most loyal teachers, saying something to a colleague because they don’t like a decision. And that’s okay. We want that collegiality among teachers, where they can talk things through. And then if something’s a real problem, you’re probably going to have a truth-teller who comes and says, hey, do you have a few minutes? Can we talk about this initiative you’re rolling out? Respect and loyalty on both sides make for a very strong school culture.Matt RenwickEveryone’s responsible. I remember coming into my last school, and there had been 6 principals over the past 10 years. I knew trust was going to be an issue. I learned from Anthony Muhammad — the Solution Tree PLC approach — a concern form. Teachers would fill it out: rate the concern 1 to 5, describe what the concern was, what they’d tried to do so far, and what they would like me to do. They’d give that sheet to my assistant, who would enter it into a form anonymously. My assistant would still know who submitted it, so it wasn’t character assassination, but it gave teachers an initial avenue to communicate with me. And eventually, similar to what you’re saying, they just eventually said, I trust them, I’m just going to come and talk to them. That’s a great sign — they trust that you’re going to be respectful and loyal.Matt RenwickThis is always a challenging one: trusting teachers professionally, their professional knowledge. You note in the book that they are the experts, and trusting them means not questioning their knowledge. I wanted to push back a little. I’m strong in literacy — not an expert, but I know it well enough — and there were times when I did know more than some teachers. How do we approach that, especially if we haven’t taught at the grade level they’re teaching, but we know we’re right and there may be some errors in thinking?Jen SchwankeI just talked about this this morning with the Ohio Association of Secondary School Administrators, leading a talk on instructional leadership. I appreciate your pushback, because you’re right: there are times a principal might know more in terms of content knowledge, but that’s generally only going to happen if it’s in your area of expertise. As teachers, we are masters of one subject. Many times, leaders — and I would say this is true for instructional coaches at the beginning — we go in, and I remember when I first went into a science classroom, I thought, I’m going to have to evaluate science? I don’t know math? World language? Over time you begin to understand what to look for, but most of us will never truly understand the depths of content that someone with, say, a master’s degree in that content will have. What we do tend to know as leaders is instruction — what good instruction looks like. And we know what engagement looks like. What leaders need to tease out is this: if I see something inaccurate and damage will be done to a student, I need to step in and correct it, of course. But many times, especially in today’s classrooms, learning is about discovery. Unless a teacher is presenting inaccurate facts and then testing kids on them, it may be part of a journey a student is taking instructionally. We might be able to ask questions about the intent of the content, the intent of the instructional model. The other thing — and I do talk about this in the book — there’s been research on what impact principals actually have when they evaluate instruction. There’s only one area where teachers are really willing to change, and that is not content knowledge, not facts so to speak, but classroom environment. They will listen to their principal about that: where we seat kids, how we manage behaviors, how we set the routine for the class. That is the only thing that moves the needle. So as leaders, that’s what we should focus on. What does it feel like to be in the classroom? How do you manage how do you assess kids? If you went out and lined up 100 students pulled off the street and asked what they remembered about school last year, none of them is going to say, I really liked the day we broke down the Pythagorean Theorem. What they’re going to say is: I liked it when my teacher was kind to me. I liked the day we got to bring Gatorades to school. I had fun when we did that lab. They’re going to talk about experiences that were feeling experiences, not fact experiences. As an instructional leader, I try to look for ways to approach not necessarily the teacher’s knowledge, but how they’re teaching, not necessarily what they’re teaching.Matt RenwickYou could go in almost as a student yourself during non-evaluative visits — learning walks, instructional walks, whatever you want to call it. I recall teachers saying, can you pay attention to so-and-so? I want to see how they respond to instruction. These were teachers I had a good degree of trust with, and you’re right — they wanted to know the response to their instruction. They were open to that feedback.Jen SchwankeI have a new idea I’m teasing out and working on with some groups — a rise theory. My belief is that all of us as educators have four needs. We want relationships: people we connect with, whether students or colleagues. We want an identity: to be known as something, to have a thing — maybe the fun teacher, maybe the tough teacher. We want success: to feel good at what we do. And that ties to the last one, which is efficacy: we want to feel like we’re making a difference. When I work with teachers, I don’t get hung up on factual knowledge or accuracy so much as whether they’re feeling that rise. How can I, as a principal, help them feel it?Matt RenwickI don’t want to go too far here, but it sounds like a potential book down the road.Jen SchwankeI do want to write that as a book. I have to trademark it, because I believe it’s a human need.Matt RenwickI love it. I have one more question, and you’ve already touched on this: students care about being challenged, being seen, and fitting in. I’ve heard that from parents too, and from kids themselves, so it really does check out. When we get buried in logistics and compliance — and you do a great job in the first chapter of listing all the ways the job has become quite enormous — how do you stay grounded in those values, those principles of challenging kids, seeing kids, helping them belong? What grounds you as a school leader?Jen SchwankeThere’s a balance. Imagine a scale, and there are two things that help me stay grounded. One of them is consistency — being the same leader every day. Having expectations and accountability that are what they are, but every day being student-centered, being visible, being available. And then the other is being immersed in the work. I have never, ever regretted putting down my pen, closing my laptop, and going to get immersed in a student activity in a classroom, on a field trip, at lunch, at recess. I have never regretted that. There have been times I didn’t want to. But when I make myself do it, I always think, why don’t I do that more? Consistency and immersion are the two things that keep my scale balanced.Matt RenwickThose are huge trust builders. Thank you, Jen, for talking with us. The book is Trusted: Trust Pillars, Trust Killers, and the Secret to Successful Schools. If you’re a new principal, if you’re looking for renewal, I would recommend it to anyone in leadership — and beyond the principalship. These are good lessons for coaches, superintendents, anyone in those kinds of positions. Thank you, Jen. This was great.Jen SchwankeThank you so much. I appreciate it, Matt. We always have great conversations. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://readbyexample.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2">readbyexample.substack.com/subscribe</a>

April 3, 2026

Dr. Kelly Cartwright: Executive Skills and Reading Comprehension

The science of reading has made real progress in how schools think about decoding and language comprehension. But for a significant number of struggling readers, those two buckets don’t explain what’s getting in the way. <a target="_blank" href="https://education.charlotte.edu/people/kelly-cartwright/">Dr. Kelly Cartwright, Spangler Distinguished Professor of Early Child Literacy at UNC Charlotte</a>, has spent her career mapping the territory other reading models leave out — specifically, the role executive functions play in coordinating what skilled readers do.In this conversation, Dr. Cartwright explains what executive functions (EF) actually are, why they matter for every reader and not just students with ADHD, and what her research reveals about the kind of EF interventions that actually move the needle on reading outcomes. She also makes the case that the field’s tendency toward dichotomous thinking — decoding over here, comprehension over there — may be leaving a large group of students without the support they need.Check out the video recording of this conversation below, available to full subscribers. Join the community today!Show NotesResearch and Articles (links embedded in title)* Duke, N. K., & Cartwright, K. B. (2021). <a target="_blank" href="https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rrq.411">The Science of Reading Progresses: Communicating Advances Beyond the Simple View of Reading</a>. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S25–S44.* Cartwright, K. B., & Palian, S. R. (2024). <a target="_blank" href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00461520.2024.2418392">Considering Roles of Executive Functions in the Science of Reading: A Meta-Analysis Highlighting Promises and Challenges of Reading-Specific Executive Functions</a>. Educational Psychologist, 59(4), 263–290.* Wagner, R. K., et al. (2021). <a target="_blank" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8483584/">A Model-Based Meta-Analytic Examination of Specific Reading Comprehension Deficit</a>. Annals of Dyslexia, 71(2), 260–281.* Austin, C. R., Vaughn, S., Clemens, N. H., Pustejovsky, J. E., & Boucher, A. N. (2022). <a target="_blank" href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10888438.2021.1947294">The relative effects of instruction linking word reading and word meaning compared to word reading instruction alone on the accuracy, fluency, and word meaning knowledge of 4th-5th grade students with dyslexia</a>. Scientific Studies of Reading, 26(3), 204-222.* Chi, M. T. H. (1978). <a target="_blank" href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203763087-4/knowledge-structures-memory-development-michelene-chi">Knowledge structures and memory development</a>. In R. S. Siegler (Ed.), Children’s thinking: What develops? (pp. 73–96). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.Assessments Mentioned* <a target="_blank" href="https://www.guilford.com/add/cartwright2/cartwright2-supplement.pdf?t=1">Graphophonological Semantic Flexibility (GSF) Assessment</a> — freely accessible; measures cognitive flexibility in managing letter-sound and meaning features of words simultaneously (from Chapter 4 of Executive Skills and Reading Comprehension - see below)Books Mentioned (embedded Bookshop links are an affiliate account)* Cartwright, K. B. (2023). Executive Skills and Reading Comprehension: A Guide for Educators (2nd ed.). Guilford Press. (<a target="_blank" href="https://bookshop.org/a/97726/9781462551491">Bookshop</a>) (<a target="_blank" href="https://www.guilford.com/books/Executive-Skills-and-Reading-Comprehension/Kelly-Cartwright/9781462551491?srsltid=AfmBOoqaox0ILchmOTMVnx-n_xWuatPQgHQ6____El0Ug2mOLIlh0xSf">Guilford Press</a> - download flyer for 25% discount)* Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print. MIT Press. (<a target="_blank" href="https://bookshop.org/a/97726/9780262510769">Bookshop</a>)* Page, L. This Book Made Me Think of You (<a target="_blank" href="https://bookshop.org/a/97726/9798217186990">Bookshop</a>) — recommended by Kelly Cartwright* Weir, A. Project Hail Mary (<a target="_blank" href="https://bookshop.org/a/97726/9780593135228">Bookshop</a>) — recommended by Matt Renwick* Richtel, M. How We Grow Up (<a target="_blank" href="https://bookshop.org/a/97726/9780063282063">Bookshop</a>) — recommended by Debra CrouchModel Referenced* The Active View of Reading (Duke & Cartwright, 2021) — diagram available via the Reading Research Quarterly article linked above (and below).Full TranscriptMatt RenwickHi, I’m Matt. Welcome to Read by Example, where teachers are leaders, and leaders know literacy. I am excited to have someone that I’ve been reading about in a pretty specific, but I think important subject area. I’m joined by Kelly Cartwright. Dr. Cartwright is the Spangler Distinguished Professor of Early Child Literacy at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. She is the author of Executive Skills, Reading and Reading Comprehension, second edition through Guilford. Welcome, Kelly.Kelly CartwrightThank you. I’m so excited to be here with you today.Matt RenwickAnd Debra Crouch, author and co-author of Made for Learning with Brian Camborne, is also here. Excited to see Debra again. Are you in the classroom still, Debra?Debra CrouchNo, not right now. I’m actually supervising a couple of student teachers right now. That’s what I’m up to.Matt RenwickAlright, but you were teaching second grade, right?Debra CrouchYes, second and third grade. Both grades.Kelly CartwrightAnd technically, you’re in classrooms, so…Debra CrouchYes, always in classrooms.Matt RenwickSame here. Whenever I can get in, it’s a treat. So, Kelly, I want to start with curiosity. Executive functions have not been a prominent part of the conversation around reading instruction. What made you think they should be? What about this field captured your interest and focus for your research?Kelly CartwrightThat’s a great question. I started out in psychology, but I was interested in how reading works — how reading works in the brain, how our cognitive processes support our ability to read. I was learning about executive functions, learning about the fact that kids, when they are young, are learning to be flexible in thinking about things. It occurred to me that reading is super complex, and it requires that we think about words in lots of ways. I was reading Marilyn Adams’ book, Beginning to Read, while in graduate school, and learning about all of these wonderful executive functions, and realizing that kids have to manage a ton. Grown-ups have to manage a ton of things in their heads, and I wondered about this connection. So, I started off my work in the area of looking at cognitive flexibility specific to reading — flexibility in thinking about words, sounds, and meanings — because kids have to think about words in a lot of ways to learn to be good readers, and we do it without thinking about it. Lots of people are looking at it now and realizing that being able to manage your thinking and manage your reading processes is a really important part of being a good reader.Matt RenwickAre you seeing more interest in this due to the world we currently live in, with constant connection and distraction? Do you see that contributing to this interest?Kelly CartwrightMaybe. I think that people are aware of executive functions in the context of special education, or when a child has ADHD in your classroom and the school psychologist has done assessments and says, “This child has a working memory problem,” or, “This child has an inhibition problem.” We’ve seen more and more diagnoses of executive skill difficulties, like ADHD, over the past few years. Is it connected to technology? I don’t have data on that. But I think the piece that we don’t always think about is that for a child who has executive skill difficulties, we see evidence that there’s a problem — but when everything’s going well, and your working memory and flexibility are supporting your reading processes, it’s invisible. We don’t see them. We see evidence for difficulty, not evidence for success. But being a successful reader means that you have those things in place.Matt RenwickADHD has been referred to as an invisible disability — or difference, however you want to term it — and that resonates with me, because kids don’t always demonstrate it. It’s often an internal kind of thing.Kelly CartwrightExactly.Matt RenwickYou mentioned executive functions, and I think when people hear that, they sometimes just resort to ADHD as a rule of thumb. But they’re different. How would you describe executive functions in a way that’s separate from a diagnosis like ADHD, and connects it to what every reader is trying to do?Kelly CartwrightExecutive functions, when you have difficulties with them, people see evidence of those things when you have a child who can’t focus, or can’t inhibit attention to all the things that are so interesting. But we recruit executive functions in all of our daily activities. Think about going to the supermarket. You need to keep your list of needed items in mind — you don’t want to get home without the noodles for the spaghetti — and that’s working memory, having to hold all that stuff in your head. You might make a list, but that kind of offloads the thinking onto a piece of paper. And you’re still going to have to use it in a flexible way: you’re looking at the shelf, you’re looking at the list, maybe they don’t have the brand you usually buy, or they’re out of the fruit you were going to buy, and you have to flex the week’s menu. You’re also having to use that list to inhibit your attention to the shiny Oreos on the end cap, and not buy the things that are not on the list. That working memory, that cognitive flexibility, that inhibition — they play out in everything we do.In reading, we’re building a mental model of text meaning in our head. As I make my way through a text and learn about a new event, or a character does something unexpected, I’m updating my mental model of the text’s meaning as I go, while still hanging on to the things I’ve learned before. That’s working memory. While we’re doing that, we’re also decoding — shifting between word reading and meaning-making constantly. Even as adults, we process all the letters and sounds. If we come upon a multisyllabic word we haven’t seen, we’re totally using our decoding processes, but we’re doing those things under the level of conscious awareness and switching between them, and that takes flexibility. Or coming upon a word like “wind” — W-I-N-D — if you’re reading about a mechanical toy, it becomes “wind,” but if you’re reading about weather patterns, it’s “wind,” and knowing how to flex that vowel pronunciation is another instance of cognitive flexibility specific to reading.Inhibition plays out in reading when you encounter words with multiple meanings, like “jam” and “traffic jam.” You can’t think about the sticky stuff you put on toast — you have to only think about the congested traffic. All of those things are happening for skilled readers automatically. We don’t notice them. But when children don’t have the working memory capacity, they’re not able to hold in mind the text pieces they need and supply their prior knowledge in order to make an inference. We can support that kind of thinking — put it on paper, use a graphic organizer like an inference map — but as skilled readers, we often expect kids to have the ability to do the things that we can do. Making inferences is so obvious to us, but it’s not obvious when you don’t have the ability to hold all the relevant pieces in your mind.Matt RenwickIf I’m reading a novel and trying to keep track of all these characters, I’m not going to pull out a character map — maybe I might, if it’s a complex novel. But you’re right, we don’t reverse ourselves back to when we were learning to read when we teach. That’s where these external tools can be really helpful to support that cognition.I personally have a hard time remembering all these different systems — it’s hard to visualize. When you teach this, do you use some kind of mental model, metaphor, or imagery to help teachers hold that idea in mind?Kelly CartwrightYou’ve identified something the field probably needs. Models of reading are starting to incorporate executive functions. Nell Duke and I proposed the Active View of Reading — for those of you listening, maybe we can link this in the show notes. There’s a green bubble off to the left that has your executive function and self-regulation abilities, and they are helping drive your ability to recognize words, that word recognition piece, and that language comprehension piece, and your ability to put it all together in service of reading comprehension. That visual heuristic helps teachers to think about the fact that these invisible things actually undergird and support the processes we know readers need. But if I continue to try to teach inference-making in all the typical ways to a child who has working memory difficulties, without thinking about how working memory shows up within reading or how I can support and strengthen those reading-specific working memory skills, then the child may not make the progress I need them to.For kids with ADHD, or adults with ADHD, all of these executive functions show up as difficulties in organization and planning. The child who comes with a backpack that isn’t as organized as we’d like — with an executive function difficulty, the organization isn’t there, and they may not be able to make that mental model of a text’s meaning without concrete support, or a story map, or explicit text structure instruction, so that they can use that heuristic — putting that thinking on the table — to support the working memory where they can’t do it all in their head.Matt RenwickI’ve used the Active View in presentations for school leaders on what they need to know about the science of reading. I’ll start with the Simple View, and then go to your Active View, just to show how complex reading really is. And I like where you positioned executive function — before word recognition and language comprehension. I assume that’s intentional. If you need executive functioning, you need strategic use of strategies. You can’t just teach phonics.Kelly CartwrightYou have to know what to do with the phonics. The Simple View is amazing. It’s elegant. It’s 40 years old now, which is remarkable, and it has longevity in the field because it provides an amazing heuristic to help teachers understand that reading is more than just loving books. It came out at the height of the whole language movement, when phonics was not favored, and the Simple View does an excellent job of demonstrating that if our phonics knowledge — our ability to recognize words using that phonics knowledge systematically — if it’s not there, we are not going to understand what we read. You can’t understand what you read if you don’t pull the words off the page. But likewise, if you can’t understand what people say to you, you’re not going to understand what you read.The Simple View does an excellent job with that. It’s a great place for teachers to begin to see how that complexity works. But what I’ve seen in practice is phonics instruction happening over here in this part of the day, and instruction in language comprehension happening over there in that other part of the day, and never the twain shall meet. But when I’m a skilled reader, I’m doing these at the same time, and I’m having to put it all together. The Simple View — and the rope model is similar — shows these two buckets of skills. The rope goes further to say we do weave them together, but it doesn’t say how. I think that’s where executive functions come in. Executive functions and self-regulation help you to strategically deploy that word recognition knowledge and that language comprehension knowledge and weave them together in service of comprehension — which is a piece that’s over and above each of those alone.I like to use the analogy of that old pat-your-head, rub-your-tummy thing we used to do as kids. I can pat my head by itself, just like I can decode — when assessed independently I do well. I can rub my tummy, and I can do well when assessed on language comprehension independently. But if I have to put them together, it requires some third coordination ability that’s over and above the individual skills. That bridging or integration is represented in the Active View but isn’t represented in the Simple View. The Simple View initially alluded to this idea that kids decode and then comprehend — like a sequential thing — but it’s not. It’s very much an all-at-the-same-time kind of thing.Matt RenwickYou’re multitasking in some ways. It’s why reading is so difficult for some kids.Kelly CartwrightAnd for grown-ups when we are tired.Matt RenwickRight — I’ve hit many mental roadblocks, and I’m like, I need a break, I need to go walk the dog. Movement helps me reset my thinking.We see new resources that are still referring to the Simple View, still framing things as decoding over here, language comprehension over there. Why has this binary been so sticky? Why has the field not progressed to what you’re describing?Kelly CartwrightThis is what happens in fields all over the place — it’s not just education. We like to group things. Cognitively, we like to sort things into groups. There’s the old nature-nurture debate from human development: is a particular trait caused by nature, or is it caused by nurture? People tend to think about that in a really dichotomous way, when the truth is very much intertwined. Even reading disabilities are a great example. Reading disabilities have a heritable component, but environment plays a role too. If you get explicit, systematic phonics instruction, that’s going to move the needle in a way that an environmental factor — not getting that instruction — won’t.Another example: kids with lower socioeconomic resources tend to have more difficulty with reading, and with executive functions. Experience plays a role; heredity plays a role. It’s not a simple either-or. But when we’re thinking about doing something super complicated — Louisa Moats characterized teaching reading as rocket science — not only are we having to do all of those things at once as readers, but as an educator, you are having to help little people who have never understood how letters make words. You’ve got to help them decode, know what the words mean, know how to weave them into phrases and sentences and paragraphs, make mental pictures, make the inferences, deal with syntax and morphology. That’s a lot. And so, to be able to group the things that I need to do as an educator into two buckets simplifies things and helps us organize our day. But it may not always be beneficial for students, because we know that multi-component interventions help students learn to do that integration.Matt RenwickI wish we would pay teachers like rocket scientists.Kelly CartwrightHear, hear. I agree.Matt RenwickIn your meta-analysis, you were looking at executive function interventions isolated from reading instruction and then asking: what’s the effect? And you found that for EF interventions to be effective, they need to be embedded in reading instruction. You can’t do executive functioning interventions in isolation and then expect them to generalize into reading. Why is that, and why does that matter for educators?Kelly CartwrightThere’s a super basic study in cognitive psychology called the chess study. What they did was compare children who were chess experts with adults who were chess novices on two tasks: memory for chessboard arrangements, and memory for strings of numbers. Both are memory tasks, but one is specific to an area the kids have experience with and the adults do not. What they found — and this was a big deal at the time — is that the children outperformed the adults on chessboard arrangements. Children are not supposed to have better memory than adults, but they did on chess-specific memory. And on memory for letter strings, the adults outperformed the kids, as we would expect. That illustrates this idea of domain-specific or task-specific cognition: the thinking within that task gets better. Over time, playing chess helped those kids get better and better at remembering chessboard arrangements. That doesn’t really relate to reading — I’m not saying go out and have people play chess — but within reading, it’s requiring you to do a lot of mental work, a lot of mental gymnastics. Being flexible about pronunciations of words — there’s something called “set for variability” — or being able to shift between thinking about words’ sounds and words’ meanings, or being able to hold aspects of text in mind and update them as you continue to make your way through. That’s reading-specific working memory.So, if I’m doing an intervention that helps to strengthen the kinds of reading-specific executive skills, or the way executive skills show up within reading, that’s going to help the child’s reading — and also their executive skills within reading. But if I put a child over here on a working memory task that looks kind of like that Simon game we used to play as kids, where you’re pushing buttons to remember sequences of tones — that’s not going to help reading. It might help them remember sequences of colored buttons, but it’s not going to transfer. The field went for a while, when executive functions and reading were shown to be related, toward: let’s do executive function interventions, have them do computerized tasks, and it will transfer to reading. But we’re not seeing that happen, because the work was being done in separate areas. When educators can identify the ways that working memory shows up within reading — like inference-making, or the flexibility we’ve talked about, or inhibiting inappropriate word meanings for context — and then intervene in those things to strengthen both the executive skills and the reading skills, then both improve.Matt RenwickWhen you talk about that, what comes up for me is “neurons that fire together wire together.” Is that why we see that?Kelly CartwrightI don’t have all the data we need yet, but we know that reading interventions strengthen connectivity in the reading network. And we know that executive function networks help to connect up the hubs in the reading network in the brain. In a sense, yes, you’re having them fire together — just like an intervention for a child with dyslexia. They need more explicit, systematic phonics instruction to get that letter-word form area in the visual cortex — that part of the brain we repurposed to become reading brain — to build up. When we give them more practice, it improves the connections and the processing. Interventions change brains, yes. But we do need more work to really say definitively, here’s study after study. We don’t have all of that yet.Matt RenwickI’m thinking about kids who have gone through a very isolated phonics intervention and come out as good word callers, but their comprehension hasn’t kept up. It seems like a similar issue — we want the bridging processes, we want to bridge these activities so that kids are fully growing as readers.Kelly CartwrightThat brings up something for me, just thinking about reading difficulties. Dyslexia is one — those kids have word-reading difficulties. But the kids we typically call “word callers,” where they sound like great readers and fly under the radar because they sound awesome — the teacher hears them and thinks everything’s going well, and then the end-of-grade assessment comes and they can’t comprehend, and you’re like, what’s going on? Those children are children where executive skills show up as a difficulty. Kids with dyslexia also have executive skill difficulties, in different ways.A recent meta-analysis by Rick Wagner and colleagues at the Florida Center for Reading Research looked at kids with great word-reading ability but surprisingly poor comprehension. Using the Simple View framework, they examined how much word recognition and language comprehension contribute to reading comprehension for these kids. Those two buckets of skills explain about half of the variance in reading comprehension, and what they concluded was: there’s got to be something else. We know that these students have executive skill difficulties — study after study shows it. This work matters for educators because, historically, we haven’t known what to do with those children. You know what to do when they can’t read the words. But when they can read the words and comprehension just isn’t happening — executive skill-infused instruction helps these kids in ways that typical instruction sometimes does not.Matt RenwickAnd this is an equity issue. You mentioned that low socioeconomic status has an influence on executive functioning as well. I mean, I’m thinking about schools and their intervention banks — they’re almost 100% either language comprehension or word recognition interventions. We are really potentially missing a lot of kids if we’re not thinking about executive functioning.Kelly CartwrightAnd you said “either-or,” and that points to some new work that’s coming out. I’ll point to one particular study — Austin and colleagues out of University of Texas at Austin. They did an intervention study with 4th and 5th graders with dyslexia. One condition had 45-minute intensive phonics lessons — a series of lessons with multisyllabic words — and students learned to decode those words to fluency. The other group, randomly assigned, had 25 minutes of explicit phonics instruction for the same series of lessons, but also 20 minutes of meaning-focused instruction — so they learned what the words meant and were working with the meanings as well as the decoding. And as you might expect, the students with the multi-component intervention — dealing with both the sounds and the meanings of the words — actually outperformed their peers who received phonics alone. It’s important to give kids the opportunities to deal with both at the same time.Matt RenwickWhat steps could an interventionist, or a classroom teacher, take to start redesigning core instruction and interventions with executive functions in mind? What might be a first good step or two?Kelly CartwrightOne way that we approach instruction is to put an anchor chart on the board or have an organizational tool for the child on the desk. There are certain graphic organizers that can help take cognitive load for students, and using them in that way — helping kids put the thinking on the table — really supports kids with working memory difficulties.You can also assess cognitive flexibility. I have an assessment — a Graphophonological Semantic Flexibility Assessment — that measures flexibility in thinking about letter sounds and meanings. It shows how well someone can shift back and forth between the word recognition piece and the meaning-focused piece. Kids and adults who are more flexible in considering both sounds and meanings of words are better comprehenders. Word-calling types of kids, kids with dyslexia, are not good at managing both. It’s freely accessible, so that’s another thing to think about.Fluency is another area. The way we operationalize and measure fluency — we’re looking at rate. Rate just means they can decode automatically. Rate doesn’t tell us whether they’re also managing meaning at the same time. But prosody, or expressiveness, is harder to measure. We don’t always measure it, but that’s an indicator that they’re weaving meaning together with their decoding. The old school thinking is: you get more automatic with word recognition, and it makes mental space for comprehension. But that doesn’t mean you fill that space with comprehension if you don’t know how. Matt RenwickSo oral reading fluency by itself may not be enough. It’s a screener, but we want to investigate further — especially for our right-to-read states where reading fluency is the primary measure.Kelly CartwrightThere are options for examining prosody and expressiveness, but we don’t always do that because it’s just harder to assess. When I’m talking to students, I’ll talk about it as expressiveness, or using your “movie star voices” and putting the feeling in — but you have to know what the text means to put the feeling in the right way.Matt RenwickLet’s talk about a harder part of this conversation. You’ve expressed your position on the popular science of reading discourse. You note in the Active View of Reading article that popular SoR discourse, as currently practiced, may actually be masking complexity in ways that can hurt kids — particularly kids whose reading difficulties don’t fit the decoding-or-comprehension frame. The walls come up, egos get hurt, resistance arises. How do you communicate these critiques effectively, so that people are actually hearing them and are willing to be responsive?Kelly CartwrightIt’s difficult, because educators have put so, so much time and effort into retooling and learning and understanding. But the science — just like any science — is ever-evolving, and we continue to learn more so we can meet the needs of all learners. If we all share that goal, then we just have to keep working toward figuring out why all learners aren’t growing the way we expect them to.If we’re teaching word recognition over here and language comprehension over there in different parts of the school day, and not giving students the opportunity to put them together — to bridge them, as we know skilled readers need to do — then that doesn’t help them do what they need to do as skilled readers. We’re not equipping them in the same way. Like the Austin intervention study with 4th and 5th grade students with dyslexia: the ones who had the opportunity to deal with explicit, systematic phonics instruction and meaning did better on all of the outcome measures than the students who got the explicit systematic phonics instruction alone. If we look at word recognition and language comprehension, we’d say, “Oh, those kids need word recognition!” But the word recognition alone didn’t lift them up as much as helping them learn to do that alongside other things. We have to look at the data on the kids and what they need, and try to avoid compartmentalized thinking. We need more work on multi-component interventions.Matt RenwickSharing the research and being a learner yourself. I’ve found similar results where I’ve shared a study, and the response is usually not defensive — it’s more like, “Okay, I’ll think about it,” and then they circle back around and I do see change in their practice. They may not admit that what they did in the past was not as effective, but I would agree: just share the research and be a learner. So, fun question to close things out. What are you reading right now?Kelly CartwrightI always have a fiction book on my bedside table — that’s my break at the end of the day. I may only read two sentences and fall asleep, as we do sometimes. A literacy professor friend recommended a book titled This Book Made Me Think of You by Libby Page. It’s great — I highly recommend it. I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s a great book.Matt RenwickI’m writing that down. I am reading Project Hail Mary. It just came out as a movie — science fiction. It’s one of those “we gotta save the planet” kind of books. I always try to read the book before I see the movie, because once I see the movie, I picture that person as the character.Kelly CartwrightYou want to develop your own visual imagery — yes.Matt RenwickYes. Debra, what are you reading?Debra CrouchI am reading a book called How We Grow Up by Matt Richtel. It’s all about adolescence and all the science and research coming out now about the brain. He’s got some really interesting things to say, and he’s just a fabulous writer — it doesn’t matter what his topic is, I will always read him.Matt RenwickI’ll put them in the notes. Well, thank you, Kelly, for being here. This was really informative. You read what someone writes and studies, but to hear them explain it is super helpful. I’m imagining your students really appreciate your instruction. Thank you for being here.Kelly CartwrightThank you so much. It was a pleasure. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://readbyexample.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2">readbyexample.substack.com/subscribe</a>

March 20, 2026

What School Leaders Need to Know About the Science of Reading

In this 45-minute presentation, I walk through five beliefs about the science of reading. The intent is to spark curiosity and encourage conversation. Watch this presentation in tandem with my free eBook <a target="_blank" href="https://mattrenwick.podia.com/what-school-leaders-need-to-know-about-the-science-of-reading">What School Leaders Need to Know About the Science of Reading</a>. Use these resources as a starting point for holding much-needed discussions in your school around effective literacy instruction. If you would like support with facilitating this type of conversation, don't hesitate to get in touch with me <a target="_blank" href="https://mattrenwick.com/contact/">here</a>.Take care,MattP.S. Join me for the next professional learning event: a conversation with Dr. Kelly Cartwright, author of Executive Skills and Reading Comprehension: A Guide for Educators.Full TranscriptWhat School Leaders Need to Know About the Science of ReadingTranscript of a presentation based on the free ebook resource available to download.About MeHi, I’m Matt Renwick. I’m sharing this presentation: What School Leaders Need to Know About the Science of Reading, based on the free ebook resource available to download.A little bit about myself. I’m a father of two teens and a husband to Jodi, who is also a teacher. My son is currently in college — whenever I visit, I try to find something fun for us to do together. My daughter is a junior in high school. I’m also a very part-time bookseller at an independent bookstore in my hometown. This is our dog, Millie. She works Sundays with me and is excellent at her job. And one of the things I most enjoy is visiting national parks. My most recent trip was to the Rocky Mountains for a mountain biking trip — though I’ll admit I’m not a big fan of heights, so I drove the rest of the party up to the trailhead and cheered them on from there.Starting With a BookI want to begin by referencing a book — not reading it aloud, but using it as a frame. It’s called Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld. You may have seen it. It uses an optical illusion — is it a duck or a rabbit? One person sees a duck; another sees a rabbit.I’ve found this book especially useful for lowering the emotional temperature when we start talking about the science of reading. After reading it aloud, I typically invite a group to pause and reflect on these three questions:* When we debate reading instruction, are we arguing about what’s best for kids — or about who’s right?* Where in your work do you notice people looking at the same data and seeing completely different things?* What would it take for you to genuinely consider a perspective on reading instruction that you’ve resisted?If you’re watching this with a group, I’d encourage you to pause here and have a conversation.How This Resource Got StartedThe impetus for this presentation came from a colleague who was supporting a new administrator. This new administrator was already getting inundated with requests for evidence-based workbooks and heavily phonics-focused resources. She reached out and asked me to share my take on the science of reading with this administrator.Here’s what I shared in an email:First, reading instruction is complex. It’s not a simple equation you can plug resources into and expect to produce readers.Second, science requires inquiry, not dogma. If a field is a true science, it will continue to conduct research, look at what’s working and what’s not, and reevaluate its philosophies in light of new evidence.Third, multiple sciences of reading matter. We can’t just look at cognitive science. We also have to look at the science of engagement, the science of motivation, the science of efficacy, and the science of goal setting. These all matter.Fourth, authentic texts should support skill development. A lot of resources strip away rich, relevant text in service of isolated skill practice — and we know that doesn’t work.Fifth, programs do not equal responsive instruction. I’ve heard this called “solutionitis” — the idea that buying a program will automatically raise reading scores. We know that’s not the case.I sent that email and waited a few weeks without hearing back. I eventually reached out to my colleague and learned the administrator had left the position. My first assumption was that the complexity of the topic had scared them off — but actually, they’d landed a dream job. Still, the experience got me thinking about all the new administrators coming into these roles without much background in this area. That’s what I want to address through both this presentation and the ebook.My Beliefs — A DisclaimerWhat follows is based on my current beliefs, grounded not just in my own experience but also in research and in conversations with colleagues who know more than I do in certain areas. These beliefs are evolving. I hold them with humility.Belief 1: Teaching Reading Is Not SimpleThere’s been a lot of conversation lately about the “simple view of reading.” I’d argue that teaching reading is anything but simple. It takes a long time to become highly skilled at teaching readers.I recently came across a New York Times article titled “Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore — Even in English Class.” I found it striking because when I taught fifth and sixth graders 25 years ago, we were reading multiple novels a year as a class. Then we moved away from that — toward anthology series, excerpts, comprehension questions, skill packets. I’m not saying whole-class novel study is a best practice across the board. But it’s worth asking: we introduced all these programs, and the result is that kids aren’t reading books anymore. How do we find the balance — where resources support instruction without becoming the curriculum? As Peter Afflerbach likes to say: How do we teach readers, not just reading?The Simple View of Reading — from Gough and Tunmer — reads like an equation: decoding + language comprehension = reading. There’s research that supports this. The problem is that it’s incomplete. It doesn’t account for all the other ways kids become readers.One of the biggest promoters of this simplified narrative has been Emily Hanford’s Sold a Story podcast. I counted the transcripts of the first eight episodes: phonics is mentioned 48 times, comprehension 10 times, and engagement 0 times. You can see how media shapes the public’s understanding of reading instruction — and how that narrative flows into legislation. Wisconsin’s Act 20, for example, is heavily phonics-focused. Some of the assessments it prioritizes, like oral reading fluency, can be useful indicators — but they don’t even measure comprehension.An Active View of Reading — introduced by Duke and Cartwright — is what I promote instead. It still values word recognition and language comprehension, but adds important components: bridging processes (print concepts, fluency, vocabulary knowledge), and active self-regulation (motivation, engagement, executive functioning, strategy use). These aren’t extras — they’re prerequisites for students to become highly effective, engaged readers. Notably, this is a reader model, not a reading model. It recognizes that reading is also shaped by the texts we choose, the tasks we design, and sociocultural context — including diverse authorship, representation, and the absence of bias.A practical implication: expand your assessments. As a principal and teacher, I learned that what we measure is what matters. Right-to-read legislation may mandate oral reading fluency screening, and that’s fine — but we can also look at attendance and behavior as root causes, consider whether language barriers rather than reading skill are the real challenge for some students, and include teacher observations and student voice. Think about what it means to take a fuller picture of a reader.Belief 2: The Science Is Anything But SettledI once posted this on Twitter:“I don’t know who needs to hear this. Teaching a literacy curriculum program like a script, lesson by lesson, to all kids without considering their current interests, abilities, and needs is not scientific, drains the joy out of learning, and leads to inequities.”It got significant engagement — many positive responses, but also real pushback. Someone at the higher ed level responded that teachers actually love the script because it gives them structure. I understand that perspective. But the insistence that the science is settled — and that it’s simply a matter of implementing the right program — is not only factually wrong; it’s intellectually closed.Notice even the language: the science of reading. That definite article is essentialist, exclusive — like “the Olympic Games” or “The Ohio State University.” If you’re for the science of reading, you believe X. If you don’t, you’re outside the movement. People have been pushed to the margins of these communities simply for raising questions. That doesn’t feel very scientific.Any professional field that considers itself a science goes through paradigm shifts — a concept introduced by Thomas Kuhn. Normal science gives way to anomalies, then to a model crisis, then to revolution, then to a new paradigm. Copernicus gave us one example. I believe reading instruction is stuck in the model crisis — cycling through the same debates without genuine revolution. We can’t change the whole profession, but we can make progress locally.One approach I’ve found effective: use professional journal articles to facilitate conversation — not to prove a point, but to create space for educators to engage with ideas. Rachel Gabriel’s article “The Sciences of Reading Instruction” is a good one. It’s balanced, uses helpful metaphors, and raises productive questions.Pair it with shared agreements (I use: stay engaged, experience discomfort, speak your truth, expect and accept non-closure) and a dialogue protocol — like the 4As — to make sure all voices get space, not just the loudest ones.Belief 3: Good Intentions Can Lead to Inequitable OutcomesWisconsin’s Act 20 — our right-to-read law — was written in July 2023. Like many state laws of its kind, its language has been heavily influenced by certain think tanks, commercial providers, and media figures. It requires science-based early reading instruction, mandates universal screening and intervention systems, restricts certain curriculum approaches (no three-cueing in core reading curriculum starting in 2024–25), and requires professional development around structured literacy for K–3 teachers, principals, and reading specialists.There are also third-grade promotion policies. In some states — Ohio, Florida, Mississippi — students who are not deemed proficient can be retained. Up to a third of an entire third-grade cohort in some cases. The long-term effects of that are deeply concerning.I share this because I do believe most people involved in this legislation want kids to perform better. But good intentions can produce inequitable outcomes when:* Single scores become students’ identities* A student who scored at the 24th percentile versus the 25th percentile on an ORF assessment receives a personal reading plan and a letter home — without anyone asking whether they had a rough night, or whether they still see themselves as a strong reader* We do things to students rather than with them, stripping away agency and voiceWhat I’ve observed as this movement plays out in schools: more scripted curricula, limits on responsive instruction, isolated skill practice, decontextualized text, and assessments that measure only what’s easy to measure. The downstream effects include the removal of voice and choice, classroom and school libraries collecting dust, independent reading squeezed out, teacher professionalism diminished, and authentic tasks like project-based learning deprioritized.One counter-move: empower students to curate and organize their classroom or school library. This can be an ongoing project — lay the books out, let students decide the organization, identify gaps, and bring in culturally relevant titles. Use book order points and let kids choose. You’ll see more engagement, more reading, and you’ll free up some of your own time in the process.Belief 4: One Science Is Dependent on AnotherI was recently working with a team discussing teacher beliefs and their role in effective reading instruction. I posed this question: Imagine your principal removed all the core ELA resources from every classroom. Could your teachers still teach their students?After a pause, the group said — yeah, we could.So what would that look like?And that’s when the real conversation started.I raise this because critics of the science of reading movement have pointed out that proponents often can’t articulate a coherent theory. “Sequential and explicit direct instruction” is a process, not a theory. What’s the actual theory of action for teaching readers? That question matters.One answer is an instructional model that allows teachers to be responsive. I’ve used Regie Routman’s Optimal Learning Model from Literacy Essentials in two schools as a principal. What I like about it is the arrows going both directions — we move between whole-class demonstration, shared practice, guided reading, and independent reading based on real-time, informal assessment. If kids aren’t ready, we go back. This takes significant professional development to build capacity, but it also inoculates schools against scripted program dependency.The larger point is this: teaching readers well requires holding multiple sciences in tension simultaneously. Cognitive science — comprehension, decoding, fluency. Affective science — motivation, engagement, identity. Metacognitive science — goal setting, self-efficacy, agency. These don’t operate in isolation. When you weave them together — for example, using a classroom library project that builds both reading identity and cognitive engagement — you see real growth.How to build this knowledge in your staff: As a principal, I had to build my own curriculum. I subscribed to several journals — I didn’t read every article, but I’d browse the table of contents, pull one article, read it with margin notes, and then summarize it in my Friday staff newsletter, linking to the original. I became an information distiller. That made it possible to walk into a classroom and have a research-grounded conversation with a teacher who held strong views — not as an expert telling them what’s right, but as a colleague asking questions. What did you think about that article on Orton-Gillingham? It becomes a much more objective, productive exchange.Belief 5: You Can’t Buy the Science of ReadingThis became real to me as a principal when a reading recovery interventionist was trying to get a first-grade student to come to his sessions. Reading Recovery is a highly evidence-based intervention — but she couldn’t get him to come. We suspected executive functioning challenges and a history of reading struggle that made being singled out feel threatening.So she brought in a Venus flytrap. She told the student: if you come to my room, you get to feed it one fly.Eventually, I walked in, and there was a pile of dead flies next to the plant. This student had started bringing his own food supply. The teacher had to explain that they couldn’t overfeed it. What started as external motivation — a Venus flytrap — gradually shifted toward internal, identity-forming reinforcement. She had the student, after reaching a benchmark, choose a few books he actually wanted to read. That was the celebration.You can’t legislate this. You can’t buy it. It’s built over time through teachers developing deep knowledge — not just of reading, but of kids, of pedagogy, of motivation and engagement, of executive function, of the ways all these strands weave together into a reader’s identity. It takes sustained investment in self-study and collective growth.This shakes out in school-level data as well. As a principal, I used to look at statewide scores and identify schools similar to mine demographically — Title I schools — that were doing better. Then I’d cold-call their principals and reading specialists and ask: what are you doing?Four themes emerged:* High expectations for every student. Inclusion was the default. Intervention was carefully integrated with Tier 1, not siloed.* Sustained investment in teachers. Not cutting PD days. Not just buying a program and saying good luck. Actually coaching and developing teachers over time.* Different programs, shared beliefs. Every school used something different — some used Units of Study, some used anthologies, one had developed their own materials. What they shared was a deep commitment to common beliefs and practices. One principal described respectfully but clearly inviting a teacher who wouldn’t get on board to find a better fit elsewhere.* No superheroes. No one teacher stood out as exceptional. What they had was a willingness to have hard conversations and an evolving, collective commitment to what they knew to be effective.One practical strategy: develop shared beliefs as a staff. I used Regie Routman’s Read, Write, Lead, which includes over 20 belief statements. Each year I’d put them in a Google form — agree or disagree. The first year, we had two shared beliefs. We celebrated. The next year, we focused our professional development on the areas of disagreement. The year after that, we had five. And we kept growing.As a principal, I could then walk into classrooms and reference those shared commitments — affirming what I saw that was aligned, and asking honest questions when something was missing. The expectations were clear. The conversations were respectful.You can also do this as a whole-group activity: post belief statements on chart paper, give staff colored dots, and ask them to place their dots on a spectrum from agree to disagree. Then have them talk about why. This builds not just shared beliefs but perspective-taking — recognizing that most people sit somewhere in the middle, and that the goal is to move together toward greater alignment over time.ClosingI want to close with a student I remember from third grade — a kid who by second grade saw reading as something you do in school, not something you love. A capable reader, but not a joyful one.In third grade, his teacher read aloud Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume. He related to Peter Hatcher — oldest of three boys, with a younger sibling who was like Fudge. He read and re-read that book until the pages were falling out of his copy. He loved it so much that he wrote some not-so-great fan fiction trying to emulate Judy Blume.If you look closely at the bottom left of the fan fiction — you can see my name there.That’s how I became a reader. Not through a script. I’m sure I learned some skills in kindergarten and first grade. But what unlocked reading for me — what helped me see myself as a reader and to love it — was one read-aloud by one teacher who knew her students and knew what would turn them on to reading.Closing question: How do you choose to see your readers? Take a moment to think about how you’re seeing them now — and how you might choose to see them a little differently tomorrow.Thank you for watching What School Leaders Need to Know About the Science of Reading. Please reach out if you have any questions. And thank you for your work, your leadership, and your readership. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://readbyexample.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2">readbyexample.substack.com/subscribe</a>

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What is Read by Example?: A monthly podcast about literacy instruction and school leadership <a href="https://readbyexample.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">readbyexample.substack.com</a>
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