# Inside the MORE Field Lab: How a Unique Research-Practice Partnership is Improving Implementation in Year Two July 10, 2026 ![District leaders discussing implementation plans around a table](/sites/g/files/omnuum9881/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2026-07/READS%20Blog%201.png?itok=Buwrp_Mf) As World Cup festivities filled Boston this July, the READS Lab hosted a different kind of celebration: a Summer Leadership Institute (SLI) that brought together seven district partners from across the country to share exciting results from their first year of implementing the [Model of Reading Engagement (MORE)](https://www.engagewithmore.org/) curriculum and move the needle on literacy outcomes. MORE takes a new approach to research-practice partnerships. Gathering reading specialists, district administrators, principals, teacher leaders, and others directly involved with MORE, the SLI created space to listen, learn, and reflect—spotlighting year-one successes and exploring how teams can strengthen and deepen their implementation in the years ahead, while continuing to be partners in inquiry. ## **Why MORE’s Impact Matters** As district members waited to hear the results of the first year of MORE in their classrooms, they were grounded in a challenging truth: it’s hard to make an impact in education. Between 2010 and 2016, the Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund of the U.S. Department of Education invested over $1.4 billion to help develop and scale evidence-based K-12 education programs. Of the rigorous studies that followed, [only about one in four](https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED642613.pdf) found positive, statistically significant effects. Yet despite lasting only a few weeks each year, MORE stands out as a truly impactful program. Its [original longitudinal randomized controlled trial](https://www.readslab.org/_files/ugd/f14fc0_3d1ad5b479164af6beab0fec24875f2b.pdf) (conducted from 2019–2021) found MORE led to an effect size of 0.11 on a standardized assessment—an improvement of about 4.5 percentile points. That’s equivalent to roughly 9.5 weeks of additional literacy learning, almost like adding a summer school program, even though MORE instruction takes place in just 30 lessons woven into the regular school year. For those struggling to understand the magnitude of this effect, it helps to compare: - A 0.10 effect size is similar to the difference between a student learning from a [novice teacher for two years versus an experienced teacher](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775707000775?casa_token=xOlMYfw2ldEAAAAA:tWdJHf3AYGB9IDScA7xgk3hjrcJQXqvIwpqTiFUSXtPWr9o1J_2WwCr2MaJUgIV7kNPzZJXdOQ) with five or more years of experience. - For comparison, the highly publicized school cell phone bans have been found to yield a much smaller improvement, a [not statistically significant effect size of about 0.025](https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/PhoneBans.pdf)—less than one percentile point—for high school students. Even with MORE’s impressive results, it takes time to make a difference—in the original longitudinal study of MORE, it took three years to impact far transfer, or students’ ability to understand very unfamiliar texts. So when the results of this year’s implementation with READS Lab’s seven new district partners were analyzed, they provided a welcome surprise to the researchers. After just one year, MORE students had performed better on science and social studies vocabulary and comprehension than control students. More importantly, on a spring formative ELA assessment—an assessment that doesn’t map onto the content of MORE, but rather tests students’ ability to understand new material—MORE had an effect size of 0.12. One district leader said that, despite the short timeline, he was not surprised by the positive results. He had seen teachers bringing discussion protocols and concept maps from MORE into the rest of their teaching and could tell firsthand it had changed the game for his district. ## **From Pilot to Partnership: Inside the Summer Leadership Institute** Neither researchers nor districts are resting on their laurels after hearing these promising initial results. The Summer Leadership Institute is not a victory lap, but the next step in a long-term research–practice partnership, as schools continue to participate in the study for two more years. In their first year implementing MORE, district teams convened in Boston to be immersed in the ins and outs of MORE: how its emphasis on schemas, vocabulary connections, student talk and thought, and cross-disciplinary connections [help students learn](https://cepr.harvard.edu/news/2025/08/teaching-reading-harder-moon-landing-more-program-represents-one-giant-leap); how, in its initial longitudinal RCT, students who used the MORE curriculum as a complement to the regular ELA curriculum [scored higher in both reading and math, and gained 2.5 months of additional literacy learning](https://cepr.harvard.edu/news/three-key-lessons-reads-lab-summer-institute); how MORE works toward the gold standard of instruction: helping students [transfer what they know and apply it](https://cepr.harvard.edu/news/three-key-lessons-reads-lab-summer-institute) to new and different contexts. ![Runners passing a baton or riding a bike](/sites/g/files/omnuum9881/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2026-07/Reads%20lab%20blog%202.png?itok=3yBdKcB_) But like runners passing a baton or a biker learning to ride without training wheels, the aim over time is to shift ownership, beginning a gradual release of responsibility from the READS Lab team to districts and schools. As part of that shift, the SLI created space for second-year leaders to dig into their own data, become partners in inquiry with the research team, and build connections with other schools implementing MORE across the country. In year two, districts reflected on implementation in their own contexts: how they progressed through the key “mile markers” of teacher engagement, student engagement, and measurement of student learning. Teams pored over district-level graphs, noticing patterns in the percentage of teachers accessing the MORE portal and completing trainings, students logging into the online portal and completing digital activities, and students taking MORE science and social studies transfer assessments. ![3 Principles guiding the institute](/sites/g/files/omnuum9881/files/2026-07/reads%20blog%203.png) Alongside peers from other districts, leaders reflected together: What went well last year? What was challenging or could have gone better? What enabled our successes? What barriers got in the way? They saw encouraging patterns—for example, nearly all teachers reached the “mile marker” of completing the app module, and most students logged into the MORE portal and completed a digital activity and their assessments. They also surfaced challenges, such as uneven assessment completion due in part to student absences and the realities of “revolving doors” of enrollment in some third-grade classrooms. In the listening sessions and group discussions that followed, teacher leaders dialogued with principals, filtering up observations from on the ground—how kids that don’t normally participate in class nevertheless engage with MORE; how many students far exceeded the digital activities required of them, demonstrating their interest; how older students could benefit from more teacher monitoring to reach the assessment completion rates attained by younger students. Beyond diagnosing successes and challenges, leaders looked forward, brainstorming new ways to improve implementation. One posited that teachers might benefit from refresher courses mid-year to build on their trainings from the fall. Another wondered how to get even more assessment implementation fidelity, noting “We met our milestone.... but we didn’t get to 100%. I want to know why.” The MORE team brainstormed in partnership with teams, making suggestions for how teachers could mentor and support each other and how communication could improve across school implementation teams. Teams also spent time going deep on planning: logging into the MORE portal and resolving tech issues before the year starts; working through a “Get Things Done” checklist; filling out a RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) plan; calendaring out key milestones; and mapping out SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time bound) goals for the year. ![Calendaring post-it notes](/sites/g/files/omnuum9881/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2026-07/Reads%20blog%204.png?itok=mB5DJdrh) In the process, the SLI reinforced an essential message: continuous improvement is about incremental progress—doing it 1% better each cycle, learning from both successes and temporary failures, and letting the data “tell the truth” about how students are doing. ## **Partners in Inquiry** The SLI also underscored that research is not just a top-down process. District partners are co-designers in the MORE field lab. Teams dug into thorny issues together, from how to improve the length and structure of MORE assessments to support student engagement to how to boost the volume of lesson recordings submitted by teachers (which researchers are using to study whether teacher’s use of language when teaching MORE—versus a standard ELA curriculum—are contributing to MORE’s impact). Districts shared creative ways they were adapting MORE to fit their school day—such as embedding MORE writing tasks into existing writing blocks or adding scaffolds so students could complete activities more independently. The MORE team’s stance was clear: teachers and district leaders are the experts in their own students, and adapting activities so students can truly accomplish them is not only allowed, it is essential. ## **Sustaining MORE All Year: Building a Learning Network** One of the biggest challenges districts named is, in some ways, a compliment: they want more of MORE than the 15 days of science and 15 days of social studies already available. Leaders see teachers latching onto MORE’s schema work and discussion protocols and are eager to sustain these practices beyond the official units. That’s high praise for a new curriculum taking root amidst an ever-changing sea of academic interventions and innovations hoping to improve student outcomes—work that is backdropped by a decade-long, nationwide learning recession. It can be an uphill battle to distinguish the gold from the pyrite, but after CEPR’s Education Scorecard team sounded the alarm in May about sustained declines in student achievement, leaders across the country have been on the hunt for interventions that genuinely move the needle. ![Leaders discussing their plans for the year ahead](/sites/g/files/omnuum9881/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2026-07/Screenshot%202026-07-10%20at%203.02.15%E2%80%AFPM.png?itok=0q2ffVMv) MORE’s demonstrated impact on reading (and spillover effects on math), its emphasis on building knowledge and vocabulary, and its growing evidence base across diverse districts make it an important piece of the puzzle. By engaging in the MORE field lab, districts are not only improving outcomes for their own students; they are contributing to the broader scientific and practical knowledge needed to address this grand challenge. The SLI reminded leaders that they are not alone. They are now part of a network of nearly 150 schools piloting MORE over the next few years, and this growing community of practice will learn from each other’s challenges, solutions, and innovations to drive results for their students. ## **Join a Future MORE Cohort** Interested in joining a future cohort of MORE districts? [**Sign up here for more info.**](https://engagewithmore.org/sign-up) See also:- [ Reading Instruction ](/focus-areas/reading-instruction) - [ Blog ](/news-type/insights) - [ MORE (Model of Reading Engagement)/READS Lab ](/projects/more-model-reading-engagement) - [ 2026 ](/year/2026) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)