2030: When we realized the Minnesota READ Act failed

A FutureCast Editorial: What Minnesota truly needed was to repair the system surrounding the reader. You decide, fiction or non-fiction?

It is the year 2030.

Eight years have passed since Minnesota lawmakers celebrated the passage of the READ Act (Reading to Ensure Academic Development Act), signed into law by Governor Tim Walz on May 24, 2023. Education officials promised a new era of literacy. Teachers were retrained. Districts rewrote literacy plans. Schools purchased new curricula. Consultants arrived. Professional development sessions multiplied. The phrase “Science of Reading” became a fixture in every educational conversation. It is essential to recall the 2025 data from the Minnesota School Report Card: during that year, grade-level reading proficiency was achieved by only 30% of fourth-graders in St. Paul and 40% of their counterparts in Minneapolis.

And yet, here we are. Minnesota made direct appropriations specifically tied to the Minnesota READ Act; the Legislature appropriated $37.22 million in one-time funding for Fiscal Year 2025 to support implementation of the READ Act (Minnesota House of Representatives, 2024). 

Reading proficiency improved only marginally. Achievement gaps remain stubbornly intact. Large numbers of Minnesota students still struggle to read, comprehend, write, and think critically at grade level. Entire cohorts of students moved through the system while adults debated instructional strategies, implementation timelines, and fidelity measures.

The problem was never that reading instruction did not matter. It does.

The core issue stemmed from policymakers, many lacking any classroom experience or an understanding of neuroeducational needs, who approached literacy as a solitary variable, detached from the broader systems that encompass it.

The READ Act focused heavily on what happened between the teacher and the student. It is assumed that if teachers received better training and schools adopted evidence-based practices, student outcomes would naturally improve. What was largely ignored were the conditions that shape learning long before a child encounters a phonics lesson.

Students do not learn in a vacuum.

Children arrived at school, some still chronically absent. Families struggled with housing instability. Schools experienced constant leadership turnover. Teacher vacancies persisted. School district leaders ignored the men and women in Minnesota with the education and skill sets to address the critical needs of culturally responsive teaching. Student mental health concerns increased. Class sizes grew. Community trust eroded. Hell, the Minnesota Department of Education came up with the idea to add a Cannabis curriculum in the fall of 2026; talk about being high at the wheel. Yet state leaders continued to act as if curriculum was the primary obstacle standing between Minnesota and literacy success.

It was a classic example of treating symptoms while ignoring causes.

Even before implementation, critics warned that decoding skills alone would not guarantee comprehension. Some scholars questioned whether the evidence supporting structured literacy had been oversold. Others pointed out that students can learn to decode words accurately while still lacking the background knowledge, vocabulary, critical thinking skills, and reading stamina necessary for deep comprehension.

Those concerns were often dismissed as resistance to change. But by 2030, the results forced a more difficult conversation. Minnesota discovered that reading is not merely an instructional challenge. It is an organizational challenge. It is a leadership challenge. It is a poverty challenge. It is a community challenge. It is a systems challenge. The state’s mistake was believing that literacy could be improved through technical solutions alone.

The uncomfortable truth is that schools cannot overcome every external condition through better lesson plans. Teachers cannot remediate years of instability through phonics instruction. Districts cannot professional-develop their way out of structural inequities. And no legislation, regardless of its intentions, can substitute for coherent systems that support children, families, and educators simultaneously.

Perhaps the greatest failure of the READ Act was not its emphasis on literacy. It is assumed that literacy could be separated from everything else.

While policymakers measured implementation benchmarks, students continued to advance through grade levels without mastering foundational skills. While reports celebrated compliance, another generation of children moved closer to graduation without the reading proficiency necessary for college, career, or civic participation.

The question was never whether the READ Act would help some students.

The question was whether it was enough.

By 2030, Minnesota finally received its answer.

It wasn’t.

The lesson for future policymakers is simple: educational outcomes improve when instruction, leadership, systems, family engagement, student support, and community conditions work together. Remove any one of those pieces, and progress becomes fragile. Ignore several of them, and no amount of curriculum reform will deliver the transformation that was promised.

The READ Act attempted to repair reading.

What Minnesota truly needed was to repair the system surrounding the reader.