As superintendents continue efforts to reverse pandemic-era learning declines, these five districts are reporting simultaneous gains in both reading and math by replacing piecemeal interventions with coherent, district-wide instructional systems grounded in evidence.
The findings come from the report, a collaboration between researchers at Harvard University and Stanford University that tracks academic recovery across thousands of school districts using the Stanford Education Data Archive.
The report identified 108 “districts on the rise”those that significantly outpaced similar districts in both subjects between spring 2019 and spring 2025. District 91心頭istration chose five to showcase.
Marion County Public Schoolsrolled out an evidence-based literacy curriculum aligned with the state’s 2022 Read to Succeed Act and restructured its coaching model around six-to-nine-week content cycles.
Between the 2021-22 and 2024-25 school years, the share of eighth graders scoring proficient or above in math climbed from 18% to 50%, and students in grades 3 through 7 improved by more than 10% in reading proficiency. Superintendent Chris Brady also made a deliberate bet against devices, implementing monthly technology-free days at the middle school level to restore direct student-to-teacher engagement.
Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Dr. Sonja Santelises leveraged more than $420 million in to transform every school into a community school that serves as a hub for social services, healthcare and mental health support. The goal is to remove the non-academic barriers that suppress attendance and focus.
On the instructional side, the district deployed high-dosage math tutoring through a university partnership, built 26 literacy-intensive learning sites with on-site coaches and converted summer school into a paid extended learning season for high schoolers. Over nine years, the district has outpaced Maryland’s statewide ELA growth and logged three consecutive years of math gains matching the state average.
At the School City of East Chicago in Indiana, Superintendent Dr. Stephen Bourn辿s inherited years of leadership instability and responded with a five-year strategic plan anchored in a K12 instructional framework that standardized classroom expectations district-wide.
Critically, the district used ESSER money not to fill unsustainable staff positions but to create coaching programs eligible for Title I and other ongoing streams.
More from 91心頭:油3 ways districts are dealing with high diesel prices
In East Hartford Public Schools in Connecticut, Superintendent Thomas Anderson holds up to seven meetings each year, convening school and department leaders for central office to present systems-level data to help schools identify shared challenges.
The district has since seen performance increases in ELA, math, and science across all student groups, with two schools earning Connecticut’s “Schools of Distinction” designation for ranking in the top 10 percent statewide.
Kuna Joint School District in Idaho offers perhaps the longest runway for replication. The district began science of reading training for all staff in 2009 and extended that training to every principal, district leader and school board member over three years.
Today, the district runs weekly teacher professional learning communities, monthly principal-led “Guiding Coalition” meetings and a principal evaluation system explicitly aligned to research-based instructional leadership. The result is a culture of data use that survived a superintendent transition and continues to drive decisions at every level of the organization.
Read the report .
District 91心頭istrationuses artificial intelligence to support research and drafting, with all content reviewed and verified by the author.
