About Us

About Reach Every Reader

Reach Every Reader launched in 2018 with the goal of making significant progress on the crisis in early literacy. The initiative formed a dynamic partnership between the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Integrated Learning Initiative (MITili), and the Florida Center for Reading Research (FCRR) and College of Communication & Information (CCI) at Florida State University, to impact early literacy. The work of Reach Every Reader is funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI).

The Reach Every Reader Vision

Reach Every Reader’s vision is that all children will be readers with the skills, knowledge, and interest to read for learning and pleasure. We want every child to succeed, and we don’t want to wait for children to fail before we help them thrive.

Why Reading?

Reading is essential for all forms of learning, and for accessing many experiences and opportunities in school and life. There is a strong base of knowledge about reading development as well as significant investments in reading interventions. Yet, over half of U.S. children are not proficient readers by the end of 3rd grade, and there has been little progress in the last few decades in helping students gain necessary reading proficiency. Early reading struggles have long-term consequences for both the learners and society:

A student who fails to read adequately in first grade has a 90% probability of reading poorly in fourth grade, and a 75% probability of reading poorly in high school.

⅔ of students who cannot read proficiently by the end of the 4th grade will end up in jail or on welfare.

Low literacy costs the US at least $225B each year in non-productivity in the workforce, crime, and loss of tax revenue due to unemployment.

Supportive interventions can help some students, but these interventions are often implemented too late and haphazardly. Research and practice remain too-often disconnected, despite a widespread recognition of the importance of reading. We have an opportunity now to help millions of children become successful readers.

Our Approach

Our approach is developmental. We’re taking the long view, starting early with foundational literacy, screening before children struggle to read, and building strong content-rich knowledge through the early grades. We combine this sustained focus with rapid learning and continual adjustment to the individual needs of children and the adults who support their reading. Many current and historical efforts react to students’ struggles to read rather than proactively using knowledge and practice to help all children develop as readers.

We know we can’t reach every reader alone. Learning from and partnering with others – parents, teachers, school and system leaders, and other people and organizations working on this problem – is part of our strategy for success. We partner to go farther faster, whether with families, educators, researchers, or technology developers, and we build from prior work, learnings, and expertise, both our own and others’. One of our mantras is to “make new mistakes.” Our quick cycles of feedback and iteration combined with rigorous research aim to help learners, families, and educators now, while also learning things that help us reach more readers effectively soon.

We are committed to sharing our work along the way, both what works for whom in what contexts, as well as the inevitable challenges we encounter. In this way, we expect to not only make significant progress on the literacy crisis, but offer up a model for future cross-organizational development and the translation of evidence into scalable practice that can be applied to other significant challenges.

About Us

About Reach Every Reader

The Reach Every Reader Vision

Why Reading?

Meet the Team

Our Approach

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