The Regional Educational Laboratory Northwest developed a crosswalk tool that helps state and local education agency teams assess how well literacy frameworks, plans, guidance, and resources align with recommendations from eight What Works Clearinghouse practice guides. The blog explains the research behind the tool, provides step-by-step instructions for using it, and describes ways states and districts can apply it to literacy planning, resource review, multi-tiered systems of support guidance, and policy work.
State education agency and local education agency staff regularly develop, review, and refine literacy frameworks, or literacy plans, guidance documents, and resource collections. Determining whether those materials reflect the best available research is time-consuming, and doing it consistently across a team is harder still. The Regional Educational Laboratory Northwest developed a crosswalk to make that process more time-efficient and systematic. The crosswalk maps the recommendations from nine What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) literacy practice guides into a structured spreadsheet format, so teams can assess whether a document or set of resources addresses each recommended practice.
About the practice guides
The WWC practice guides synthesize rigorous research on literacy instruction across grade bands and student populations. Each guide distills the evidence base into a set of recommended instructional practices with a description of the level of evidence. By bringing these recommendations together in a single resource, the tool makes it easier for teams to understand the full body of evidence, identify connections across guides, and make informed decisions about which practices to prioritize in their literacy framework.
- Foundational skills (grades K–3)
- Reading comprehension (grades K–3)
- Teaching writing, elementary (grades K–6)
- Teaching writing, secondary (grades 6–12)
- Assisting students struggling with reading: response to intervention and multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) in the primary grades (grades K–6)
- Reading interventions (grades 4–9)
- Adolescent literacy (grades 5–12)
- English learner students (grades K–5)
- English learner students (grades K–8)[
The guides were published between 2007 and 2022 and reflect the evidence base as of those dates. Teams should keep publication dates in mind when interpreting recommendations, particularly in areas where the research base has continued to develop.
How to use the crosswalk
Each tab in the crosswalk spreadsheet corresponds to one practice guide. To use the crosswalk, a team selects the tab or tabs relevant to their grade band or student population, then works through each recommended practice. For each practice, team members:
- Review the practice and its level of evidence.
- Decide whether the practice should be addressed in the document or resource.
- Rate the degree of alignment as not addressed (0), partially addressed (1), or fully addressed (2).
- Record notes in the final column to capture rationale, flag gaps, or identify next steps.
The crosswalk is designed for team use. Including a consensus step in which team members discuss ratings before finalizing them can strengthen the process and create a shared record of decisions. The completed crosswalk can serve as a reference document that teams return to as materials are revised over time.
Ways states and districts can use the tool
- Reviewing a statewide literacy framework or district literacy plan. Curriculum directors or literacy coordinators can work through the relevant tabs to identify gaps before a framework or plan is finalized or updated.
- Evaluating materials for a resource bank. Teams reviewing submitted materials can use consistent scoring criteria to assess alignment with research-based practices across submissions.
- Developing or revising MTSS and intervention guidance. The crosswalk includes practice guides specifically focused on struggling readers and intervention systems, making it useful for teams building or updating MTSS frameworks.
- Grounding instructional frameworks in research. Literacy leaders developing instructional guidance can use the tool to check that key research recommendations are reflected before materials are released.
- Supporting legislative and policy work. When legislators request information about evidence-based literacy practices or consider bills that touch on literacy instruction, state education agency staff can use the tool as a structured reference for preparing testimony, background documents, or formal responses.
Getting started
The crosswalk provides a practical starting point for teams that want to connect their work to the research base without reading through eight practice guides from scratch. It does not make decisions about what their own documents should say; that judgment belongs to the team. What it offers is a structured, consistent way to account for practices that are supported by the research.
