December 18, 2025

By Basil Tutza

The announcement for the new hub says the hub’s stated mission is to ensure every child has the opportunity to unlock the power of literacy. Why the focus on literacy—specifically,structured literacy?

Learning to read and write proficiently has an impact on communities, employment opportunities, and civic engagement. ALLIED Hub’s mission is to ensure as many stakeholders as possible have evidence-based resources that every child can use to succeed.

Literacy is a cornerstone of successful communities because it shapes economic stability, civic engagement, health outcomes, and long-term equity. Strong literacy skills increase workforce readiness and earning potential, support informed participation in democracy, and enable individuals to navigate healthcare and community systems effectively. Communities with higher literacy rates experience lower unemployment, reduced social and public health costs, and stronger intergenerational outcomes, as literate adults are better able to support their children’s learning. Because literacy development depends on early identification, targeted instruction, and sustained support, community success requires intentional systems and structures. The ALLIED Hub will bring educational institutions, community organizations, non-profits, parents, and policy makers in one place for easy access to any individual or institute that can impact children’s literacy outcomes.

Reading proficiency among young students continues to be a struggle for many schools across the country. Only 30% of 4th graders nationwide scored “Proficient” or more in reading according to the U.S. Department of Education’s 2024 National Assessment of Education Progress. In your opinion, what are some things that schools and teachers need to better teacher reading and improve literacy proficiency, and how can the ALLIED Hub address those needs?

Across the United States, reading outcomes remain a critical concern. Only 30% of fourth-grade students are reading at or above the proficient level. This persistent gap underscores the urgent need for systemic, evidence-based solutions that move beyond isolated instructional fixes and toward sustainable, scalable change.

Research is clear: improving literacy outcomes requires intentional systems and structures that identify and address students’ oral and written language needs early and accurately. When schools implement universal screening systems, educators gain timely insight into students’ skill profiles, allowing instruction and intervention to be aligned to actual need rather than assumption. Early identification ensures that emerging gaps do not compound over time.

Equally important is the infrastructure to respond once needs are identified. Effective literacy systems provide targeted, skill-based instruction delivered with appropriate intensity and duration. Children vary widely in how they acquire language and literacy skills. Some require minimal exposure; others need repeated, explicit practice, and some require intensive, sustained support. Systems must be designed to accommodate this variability rather than rely on one-size-fits-all approaches.

This work cannot rest solely on classroom teachers. Administrators play a critical role in designing, supporting, and sustaining the systems and structures that make effective instruction possible. At the same time, teachers must be equipped with the knowledge and tools to diagnose skill-based needs and deliver instruction aligned to the science of learning and reading.

The ALLIED Hub will help bridge these gaps.

Grounded in implementation science, the ALLIED Hub will provide mini-courses, curated resources, and professional learning experiences that support:

• The design and alignment of literacy systems and structures
• Leadership decision-making informed by data and evidence
• Skill-based instruction responsive to learner variability
• Sustainable implementation at classroom, school, and district levels

By focusing on systems, structures, and skills, rather than programs alone, the ALLIED Hub will support leaders in translating research into practice, ultimately improving literacy outcomes for all students.

The Hub has a heavy emphasis on serving as a resource for K-12 educators, as well as parents and advocates. Who all can benefit from the Hub’s programming, and how are you ensuring that those people access it to its fullest extent?

Anyone who has an interest in a child’s literacy will benefit from the Hub’s programming. The Hub is bringing in national and international experts who have successfully researched, implemented or modeled transformational change in literacy. Teachers, parents and advocates will have free access to resources. The Hub will also be a space to eventually provide testing and tutoring for students near Philadelphia and virtual services for those further away. The Hub will also coordinate efforts with parent groups and advocacy groups to share information.

The Hub is meant to operate on a combination of “research, practice and community engagement,” according to its press release. What kind of projects can we expect from the Hub as it starts up? How do those contribute to its mission?

You can expect the Hub to bring together researchers, administrators, and teachers to discuss how to translate their research into practice. Despite decades of high-quality literacy research, administrators and teachers often struggle to translate findings into everyday practice. Research is frequently inaccessible. It is often hidden behind academic paywalls, written in highly technical language, or disconnected from the realities of schools which makes it difficult for practitioners to apply evidence with fidelity. As a result, it takes an estimated 15–17 years on average for research to move from publication to widespread classroom implementation. The ALLIED Hub is designed to disrupt this timeline by making research-to-practice connections more direct, transparent, and usable. By providing open-access resources, applied learning opportunities, and structured dialogue between researchers and practitioners, the Hub removes traditional barriers and accelerates implementation. In doing so, ALLIED ensures that educators and leaders can engage with research in real time, apply it within authentic school contexts, and more rapidly improve literacy outcomes for students. Be on the lookout for an ALLIED Hub Substack and podcast to bring the discussion to an inbox near you!

Tell me a little more about the expansion of the EdD program. What can a student in the literacy leadership and implementation science concentration expect to tackle? What new avenues does that open up compared to the current Leadership and Management doctorate?

The concentration in the EdD program, Leadership in Literacy Science & Systems Change, is for a building or district leader looking to learn the knowledge and skills to design, lead, and sustain literacy systems that directly improve student outcomes. It may be different from doctoral programs that emphasize theory or isolated research. This concentration is explicitly grounded in systems thinking, implementation science, and applied leadership. Candidates will learn how to build and align structures for early identification, assessment, targeted instruction, and progress monitoring, and how to support teachers in addressing skill-based literacy needs with appropriate intensity. They will also identify a persistent literacy challenge in their school or district, implement evidence-based solutions aligned to what they are learning in coursework, and systematically track student literacy outcomes over time. Recognizing that meaningful change takes time, the program is designed around the understanding that full implementation typically requires three to five years, positioning graduates to lead sustained, scalable literacy improvement rather than short-term initiatives. Once a candidate completes the doctoral program, we expect to recruit them as mentors for other schools and districts that also want to do transformational literacy change.

The Hub’s physical space is going to be officially opened next year—prior to that, what is its development roadmap looking like over the next few months?

Over the next few months, the Hub team is building the syllabi and determining the experts needed to develop the courses in the concentration. At the same time, we are in the early stages of designing the website and crafting resources that will be immediately available once the website is launched. We are working with focus groups that are informing us on what is needed in terms of resource development, mini-course development, and outreach. One of the Hub’s charges is to archive the work of Dr. G. Reid Lyon, an internationally recognized neuroscientist, neuropsychologist, and education policy leader whose work has shaped modern understanding of reading development, dyslexia, and learning disabilities. As the former Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch at the NICHD/NIH, Dr. Lyon led pioneering interdisciplinary research that transformed national literacy policy and evidence-based instructional practice. He has been involved in this work for over 40 years, and we will create a timeline of his work and the research which will be housed partly on the hub and fully publicly accessible in the Drexel Library Archives. In addition, we will be setting up school exemplary sites where we will be able to record evidence-based literacy practices in action.