The Wright Hire: What Maryland's Decision Tells Us About Literacy Reform
When Maryland recruited Dr. Carey Wright to lead its public school system, the choice seemed striking: a strongly Democratic state turning to the architect of literacy reforms from a deeply Republican one. You could read that as a political story. But it might be more useful and accurate to understand it as evidence of something else: that beneath the visible layer of policy, literacy reform is spreading in ways that don't follow partisan lines.
A survey of state legislation by the Albert Shanker Institute found that 45 states and the District of Columbia enacted reading reform laws between 2019 and 2022 — investments in teacher training, early screening for reading difficulties, reading coaches, alignment of practices and materials with literacy research — and characterized the effort as nonpartisan and state-driven (Neuman, Quintero & Reist, 2023). The non partisan momentum is visible at the federal level too. The Science of Reading Act of 2026 (H.R. 7890) passed out of the House Education and Workforce Committee in March 2026, co-led by a Democrat and two Republicans.
But legislation is what we see, it doesn't tell us how reform takes hold inside a school system. That process is harder to see. It happens through professional networks, staffing decisions, and relationships — the kind of work that unfolds over years before it shows up in outcomes. Last year, a Maryland Democrat and a Tennessee Republican — both former teachers — made exactly this point in a joint piece, arguing that staying the course on science of reading reform requires of cross-partisan commitment.
Researchers who study how change spreads across school systems have found that professional networks and trust relationships are often better predictors of whether change takes hold than the policies themselves (Fullan, 2001; Spillane, 2004). Alan Daly and Kara Finnigan's work on social networks in education reform shows that how ideas travel through systems — who talks to whom, who learns from whom — shapes implementation in ways that policy mandates alone cannot (Daly & Finnigan, 2010). Bryk and Schneider's research on trust in schools points in the same direction: relational infrastructure is not the soft backdrop to reform; it's a core condition for it (Bryk & Schneider, 2002). Dr. Wright herself has noted this as well. Speaking at the Reading League Conference last fall, she shared, half-jokingly, that she'd had more breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with people than ever before.
The Wright hire is indeed the right one; but also, not just a pragmatic decision by a state looking for someone with a strong track record — though it is that. It's also a signal that something real is moving at a level that's harder to see. Education leaders and practitioners are crossing political lines and passing similar bills in red and blue states because people doing the work are learning from each other across those lines — through networks, relationships, and hiring decisions.
There may be value in learning to notice these early signals — a leadership hire, a cross-state collaboration, a professional network that's pulling in the same direction. These don't guarantee outcomes but they suggest that something is taking hold, and that it may be worth paying attention to even before the results are visible. In Maryland's case, state officials are starting to claim some promising results — see Governor Moore's announcement during his 2026 State of the State address.
In short, when a Democratic state hires the architect of a Republican state's literacy reforms, that's not a political story. It's evidence that the work of reform is less partisan than we sometimes assume – and in this case, demonstrably so. Other prominent voices have begun making this case, emphasizing the importance of keeping literacy tethered to evidence and away from politics. Perhaps the blue-red frame matters less than we think — and holding on to it makes it harder to see where things are shifting and what is actually working.