How WE Did It: Our District’s Implementation Story

The second session of Lexia®’s Science of Reading Week Spring 2026 moved from the national view down to the district level, with Loudoun County, VA, opening the playbook on how they achieved measurable adolescent literacy gains.

Michelle Picard, Ed.D., Supervisor of Secondary English and Reading for Loudoun County Public Schools, walked through her team’s process from the inside: the planning timeline, the professional learning model they built, and the data-informed decisions that got evidence-based instruction into classrooms across multiple school buildings. 

Picard was candid about the messy parts, too, including what it took to align the curriculum, help teachers develop new skills, and keep the work moving forward even as staff and leadership changed.

Lexia’s Octavia Gray-Essex, Ed.D., and Senior Evaluation Specialist Snaeha Mathew added perspective on how the district is pairing classroom observation with AI-assisted analysis to understand which practices are actually driving student growth. 

What makes this session stand out is its focus on the “middle” of implementation: that crucial stretch between committing to a new approach and seeing consistent results. The presenters showed how Loudoun County set up professional learning as ongoing support rather than a one-and-done workshop, and how they used data to course-correct without scrapping the plan entirely.

For anyone evaluating literacy solutions or getting ready to scale something new, this session works as both a proof point and a playbook. The strategies are concrete, replicable, and grounded in what one district actually did—rather than simply what sounds good in theory.