Maya Valencia Goodall, Amelia Larson, and Miguel Cardona explain why structure, language, and literacy belong together
A midsized urban district serving many Multilingual Learners did something unique: looked hard at their data before the pandemic hit, not after. It would have been easy to let COVID take the blame for what they found, and that’s the story most people assume, but they didn’t reach for that explanation. Their scores had already started slipping in the years leading up to 2020, well before remote learning became a reality. When they pulled the numbers, without disaggregating by language or by school, one figure was impossible to look past: only about a third of their students were reading at or above proficiency. The other two-thirds were being let down by the approach itself, not by circumstance, and the district knew it.
They had spent years in balanced literacy, and between what the data was telling them and a new state law requiring evidence-based reading instruction, the direction was clear. What wasn’t easy was the timing. They rolled out new professional learning in structured literacy in the middle of COVID, over the same laptops their teachers were already using to hold remote classrooms together, because the data wasn’t going to wait for an easier moment.
That district’s experience wasn’t unique, even though the timeline was. Over 40 states now have some version of a reading law on the books (Schwartz, 2022/2026), and many of those laws landed on districts still sorting through years of what was often labeled the reading wars—the public debate that sometimes mistakenly framed evidence-based foundational instruction and multilingual or bilingual education as opposing positions. Instead, they need to inform one another: children need explicit instruction in how print works and opportunities to develop language, knowledge, comprehension, and literacy across the languages they use.
This is exactly the space the three of us set out to create together: a place where the distance between what the research already knows and what students actually experience stops being something districts manage around and starts being the actual work of implementation, turning what the research knows into what a classroom does, one lesson plan at a time. For a district, that means explicit, systematic instruction in the written code sitting in the same plan as oral language, comprehension, writing, and knowledge building, all of it drawing on the languages and experiences Multilingual Learners already bring, visible in the same lesson rather than scattered across separate initiatives.
Where the Research Has Already Converged
We know a great deal about how people learn to read, and for Multilingual Learners, that foundation does not change. What continues to develop is the nuance of implementation, how those same universal processes play out for a learner building literacy and language in two languages at once. The conversations continue because Multilingual Learners deserve instruction built around the full complexity of what they bring, not a simplified version designed for someone else and adjusted afterward. The components long treated as universal to reading, decoding, comprehension, and oral language are realized differently, and more richly, for a bilingual brain drawing on more than one language system. That means more oral language—more real speaking practice—has to be part of instruction from the start, not added once the other pieces are considered secure.
The Distance Between Legislation, Research, and Practice
Recently, we sat in on a panel conversation with state lawmakers and district leaders who shared their commitment to getting every student, including Multilingual Learners, the reading instruction the new laws are asking for. Across the conversation, the same thing came through clearly: the barriers are real, but so is the effort behind trying to solve them. Everyone at the table took the time to work through the nuances rather than reach for the easy answer, weighing what came next with real care. Funding is tight in places, and some state laws set timelines that assume a pace no district can actually move at. Others don’t name Multilingual Learners at all, leaving districts to figure out on their own what the law’s intent means for the students who need it most. Yet despite those barriers, we watched leaders turn them into opportunities, staying committed to making sure every student gets the instruction they’re owed.
None of that is a reason to stop, and none of the people in that room treated it as one. Every barrier named clearly is a barrier that’s closer to being solved, and what came through, over and over, was a field choosing to treat its barriers as design problems rather than dead ends.
From Convergence to Classroom Practice
At the classroom level, language and literacy don’t develop on separate timelines. They develop together, simultaneously and mutually reinforcing, not one paving the way for the other. Students should encounter worthwhile ideas through discussion, read-alouds, reading, and writing while they receive explicit instruction in the sound–spelling patterns they need. Their home languages, knowledge, and ways of expressing ideas are resources in that work. No student should have to demonstrate complete oral English proficiency before gaining access to substantive texts or writing about what they know.
In practice, a lesson can include explicit phonics instruction and purposeful discussion of content. When a student encounters an unfamiliar written word, the teacher directs attention to the letters and spelling patterns. Meaning can then help the student check a plausible pronunciation or understand a correctly decoded word. If the word is unfamiliar in English, a brief explanation, visual, discussion, or connection to a language the student knows can build understanding without asking the student to guess from context. Reading, speaking, listening, and writing reinforce one another throughout the lesson.
Integration over Isolation
The last piece of this is resisting the pull to let any single component of literacy carry the whole house on its own. Students need accurate word reading and opportunities to make meaning from text. Oral language, vocabulary, content knowledge, discussion, and writing develop alongside foundational skills. Teachers can examine whether a difficulty lies in decoding, unfamiliar English vocabulary, pronunciation variation, or comprehension, then respond with the support the student actually needs.
We use structured language and literacy to describe this intentional design: explicit, systematic instruction in the written code integrated with language development, knowledge building, meaningful reading, writing, and oracy. It is a way to plan and examine instruction, not a claim to have invented a new research framework or program.
Multilingual Learners are central to that design. They bring linguistic and cultural resources, and their literacy may develop across more than one language. Instruction can draw on cognates, morphology, cross-language comparisons, and students’ existing knowledge while teaching the English patterns they need. Their accents or developing English vocabulary should not automatically be mistaken for decoding problems. It is long overdue to consider the needs and strengths of Multilingual Learners as we plan core curricular and instructional design, not as an intervention post-core instruction.
That same principle extends beyond the classroom. Families carry language, knowledge, stories, culture, and literacy practices that schools can build on rather than work around. Strong literacy systems don’t ask families to set aside the language they know best so a child can learn English. They help families use that language to strengthen conversation, knowledge, and reading at home, which reinforces rather than competes with what’s happening at school.
Building a Cohesive Structure
Now we’ve established that the Science of Reading is broad enough to encompass methodologies that work for all students, including Multilingual Learners, we need to ensure that all educators have the tools, training, and support to give students the most appropriate instruction every day. Teachers across the curriculum should have the structure to be able to work cohesively using research-based instruction to achieve literacy goals.
The forward-thinking district we described earlier is still doing this work and its success at boosting literacy rates, including those of Multilingual Learners, still needs to be assessed. However, the decision to examine the data, strengthen foundational instruction, and plan language development alongside literacy offers a direction well worth studying in our pursuit of providing instruction that helps more children learn to read accurately in multiple languages, with depth of comprehension, while using their varied linguistic resources.
References
Schwartz, S. (2022; updated 2026). “Which States Have Passed ‘Science of Reading’ Laws? What’s in Them?” Education Week. www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/which-states-have-passed-science-of-reading-laws-whats-in-them/2022/07
Maya Valencia Goodall is chief impact officer at CORE Learning.
Amelia Larson is chief academic officer at Summit K12.
Dr. Miguel Cardona is president of Cardona Solutions and was the twelfth US secretary of education.
