Beyond the Jump: What It Takes to Make Literacy Gains Last

Over the past decade, the Science of Reading has driven important progress in early literacy, reshaping instruction, curriculum, and professional learning across the country. Many districts are seeing real early gains. And yet a harder question is coming into focus: why do those gains so often fade as students move through later grades, and how can literacy growth endure over time?The durability of literacy improvement remains one of the field’s greatest challenges. Too often, early success is built on isolated skill gains that fail to transfer, while fragmented tools and short-term measures mask whether students are becoming stronger readers across grades. Coherence across curriculum, assessment, intervention, tutoring, and coaching continues to be elusive, even as expectations for results grow.Research, district implementation experience, and market insight point to a shared reality: lasting literacy progress depends on aligned instructional approaches, sustained support for educators, clearer signals of what’s actually working over time, and the discipline to move beyond fragmented solutions. The question is no longer whether early literacy improvement is possible, but what it takes to develop enduring readers at scale.