Why “Implementation Fatigue” Is the Real Literacy Crisis

By Lory Reddel , National Literacy Consultant at Lexia

Typically, doing more is considered the key to solving America’s literacy crisis: More initiatives, more policies, more time teaching. But it’s not that educators aren’t trying hard enough. It’s that they’ve been told to try everything — all at once. 

The result? In 2022, National Education Association President Becky Pringle described American educators as “exhausted and increasingly burned out.”  In 2024, the RAND Corporation not only reported educators as burned out but added, “Nearly one in five shows symptoms of depression.” 

Douglas B. Reeves, founder of the nonprofit Creative Leadership Solutions, calls the draining effect of numerous simultaneous initiatives the “Law of Initiative Fatigue.” He also noted that the most successful schools had six or fewer concurrent priorities rather than dozens.

Reeves is not the only educational expert to recommend implementing fewer initiatives to achieve greater success. Peter M. DeWitt, founder and CEO of the Instructional Leadership Collective, advocates “de-implementation:” discarding low-value practices to make teachers’ workload more manageable.

In addition to their cognitive and emotional drain, multiple simultaneous initiatives are often plagued by a lack of coherence, support, communication, or even long-term planning. But when that fragmentation is replaced with a connected framework (e.g., aligning curriculum and professional learning under one unified literacy vision) initiatives thrive.

That’s why Lexia adopts the philosophy of do fewer things better for its approach to aligned, sustainable literacy systems.

When Leadership’s Vision Doesn’t Reach the Classroom

Leadership approval for a mandate doesn’t always translate into day-to-day teaching support. Margaret Goldberg, co-founder of the Right to Read Project, has warned that flawed implementation threatens the effectiveness of science of reading rollouts. For example, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina implemented a science of reading rollout too quickly to accommodate proper logistical planning or garner teacher buy-in. Consequently, the primary outcome was teachers’ resentment.

According to implementation science research, success depends on support and a phased process. An example is Lexia’s research-based five-step Implementation Blueprint: Vision Alignment → Phased Rollout → Embedded Support → Feedback Loops → Sustained Growth.

The Beaverton School District in Oregon successfully rolled out the Lexia® LETRS® Professional Learning program with this approach. The district identified districtwide and schoolwide goals and strategies. Then they selected academic coaches (since they’d also coach the teachers in their schools) and the most interested elementary teachers as the initial recipients.

The training was delivered to cohorts of 40 educators at a time. District leaders used data to determine how the implementation could best support training participants. 

The Literacy Instruction Knowledge Gap

Support and phased rollouts are essential because evidence-based literacy instruction is a completely new concept to many teachers. Nationally-recognized literacy authority Louisa C. Moats observed that research is not “yet included in teacher preparation programs, widely used curricula, or professional development.” Education researcher and policymaker Timothy Shanahan noted, “Classrooms might look a bit different than they did in the 1970s … but they have not changed much with regard to the things that matter to learning.”

In fact, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality, only 25% of teacher-prep programs fully teach the five pillars of reading (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension).

With Lexia’s professional learning, educators bridge the “knowledge-to-practice” divide. For example, research compared the performance of students who used the Lexia® Core5® Reading program and had a LETRS-trained teacher with that of students only using Core5. After one academic year, the Core5 students with a LETRS teacher scored higher in end-of-year (EOY) Acadience composite scores than their Core5-only peers.

What Successful Implementation Looks Like

Lexia’s Success Partnerships Teams help school and district leaders put implementation science into action by providing:

• Personalized implementation planning
• Ongoing professional learning resources
• Real-time monitoring data insights from the myLexia® reporting tool
• Dedicated support at every stage

The result is more gradual but also more effective implementations due to multi-year partnerships, not one-off programs. For example, Lexia partnered with Beaverton for three years to align professional learning and curriculum, including using LETRS knowledge to enhance use of Core5 and Lexia® PowerUp Literacy®. Among students using Core5 with fidelity, the percentage working on or above grade level nearly doubled from 35% to 65%. Among students using PowerUp with fidelity, 99% improved their skills by at least four grade levels in a single year.

Lexia as a Clarity Partner

Lexia is not only ESSA-aligned but its solution suite also connects knowledge, practice, and data. Our vision is that every literacy initiative should lighten educators’ load, not add to it. Lexia constitutes an alignment strategy that helps leaders simplify literacy systems rather than multiply them.

Do Less, Do It Better

The greatest literacy challenge educators face today is staying focused long enough to implement the science of reading well. Educators are resilient but they need better partnerships. They need clarity and support. It’s time to stop chasing every new idea and start sustaining the right ones. Clarity beats complexity.

That’s our mission at Lexia: Empowering educators. Transforming outcomes. One clear, connected system at a time.