Massachusetts Passed a Strong Literacy Law. Will Teachers Get What They Need to Make It Work?

Even third graders who were toddlers during the pandemic trail 2019 on MCAS. E4E’s national survey of 2,032 teachers shows what it will take to make the Right to Read Act work.

By Andrew Epifanio, State Director of Public Affairs of Educators for Excellence- Massachusetts

Three months after the Massachusetts Legislature passed the Right to Read Act unanimously, the state released the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) results that confirmed why it was needed. 

In grades 3–8, just 4 in 10 (40%) students met or exceeded expectations in English Language Arts this spring, compared to 52% in 2019. In 10th grade, 45% did, compared to 61%. This past spring’s third graders, who were just toddlers when the pandemic closed schools in 2020, came in 13 points below 2019’s third graders in ELA and 7 points below in math, according to the Boston Globe’s analysis of the 2026 results. Massachusetts’ achievement gaps by race, income and native language also barely moved. Where some narrowed, Deputy Education Commissioner Robert Curtin said, it was because higher-performing groups fell faster, “not because the bottom group rose.” Jack Schneider, director of the UMass Amherst Center for Education Policy, reads the results as “some fairly typical year to year fluctuations” in a system “still recovering” from the pandemic. The pandemic does explain part of the decline. 

Here’s what it doesn’t explain: a gap that shows up in every grade tested, in both ELA and math, six years on.

On early reading, the law is the right response. And the Mass Reads Coalition, Sen. Sal DiDomenico and Reps. Simon Cataldo and Danillo Sena have our thanks for it. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has estimated that only about half of the state’s districts use high-quality, evidence-based curricula to teach early literacy. By the start of the 2027–28 school year, every district must teach from evidence-based K–3 literacy curricula that DESE lists or approves. Commissioner Pedro Martinez pointed to the law as a reason for hope: “We’re already working with hundreds of schools on what we know are the right solutions. The literacy bill now allows us to implement those practices statewide.”

 The Right to Read Act sets the standard for the materials Massachusetts classrooms will use. At Educators for Excellence (E4E), we believe that access alone to high-quality instructional materials is only half the job. The other half is the time and tailored support to use them well: a say for teachers in choosing the materials, professional learning built around the curriculum, protected planning time, and interventions for the students a core curriculum doesn’t reach on its own.

 Mississippi invested in that kind of support, and its fourth graders went from 49th in the nation in reading to 21st by 2022 and near the top by 2024. Its 2013 literacy law paired universal reading screening with state-paid literacy coaches in its lowest-performing schools, and training for teachers in the science of reading, at roughly $15 million a year.

Massachusetts has started down the same road. Literacy Launch, Governor Healey’s early reading initiative, has committed over $55 million in state funds over three years to reading materials, screeners, and coaching, and has helped more than 200 schools move towards evidence-based reading instruction. The law itself creates an Early Literacy Fund for curricula and professional learning, but the $25 million appropriation in an earlier version was dropped from the final bill.

 Teachers are already telling us what support they need. In Voices from the Classroom 2026, E4E’s national survey of 2,032 public school teachers (fielded by RAND and written by the 18 teachers on E4E’s National Teacher Leader Council), 94% said all teachers should use high-quality, evidence-based instructional materials, and E4E’s Massachusetts data shows 83% of teachers here agree. Only 47% called their own materials adequate for helping all students master academic standards, and 27% said so for students below grade level. Asked what would most help them teach well with those materials, 55% chose protected time in the workday to plan, more than double the runner-up.

Districts must give teachers a say in choosing from the state’s list, protect planning time in the master schedule, and budget for supplemental materials for students who are behind. The state must fund the Early Literacy Fund it created and extend Literacy Launch coaching to every district that needs it. Mississippi’s gains took a decade. Massachusetts starts from the top of the Nation’s Report Card, with a unanimous law and teachers who have bought in, and the next two years of decisions in district schedules and the state budget will decide whether that law reaches a third grader.