In 2016, the Wake County Public School System in North Carolina, the nation's 15th-largest school district, confronted two dilemmas common in U.S. education. First, a quality review had revealed weaknesses in its literacy curriculum. Although curriculum can have profound effects on student learning, not all curricula are rigorous and engaging (Steiner, 2017). Second, Wake struggled with professional learning for new literacy standards and practice shifts. Research has found that teaching expertise is the most important factor in school effectiveness, but few teachers believe their professional learning is effective. To address these difficulties, Wake adopted EL Education's open-source 3-8 language arts instructional model. This model integrates a standards aligned curriculum aimed at challenging, engaging, and empowering students with paced assessments, detailed teacher resources, and an embedded professional learning approach. The result -- if implemented well -- is a coherent approach to instruction that Kathy Toma, Wake's senior administrator for middle school English language arts, calls "a paradigm shift in pedagogy."