Remarks to the South Madison Rotary Club
I appreciate the terrific chat with members of the South Madison, WI Rotary club on Monday, 3 August 2026. slides // remarks I shared this background link prior to the talk.
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72 year old ESL Student Learns to Read using Fast Lane Literacy
“Its very clear to me that Afi understands the difference between some of what she’s doing guided by me, and that she’s getting a new skill. This is different because she is reading, like her grandchildren.” Ruth Robarts is a lifelong teacher…
Continue reading →Madison Scorecard: Will our kids be ready?
3,888 (43.7%) Madison 4k to 3rd graders scored below the 25th percentile in a 2024-2025 national literacy comparison group. The Wisconsin average is 37% or 97,414 students. Note that Madison plans to spend > $28K per student during the 2025-2026 school year.…
Continue reading →What Makes Fast Lane Literacy Work?
Every parent wants a straight answer to one question: does this actually work, and why? We’ve put that answer in one place. Why Fast Lane Literacy Works, lays out the three principles behind every lesson: Evidence-Based Instruction — built on Science of…
Continue reading →English is Strange & Beautiful
Part 1 of a conversation (excerpt) with Christine Truman Janes during Wimbledon 2026. Soundtrack via Wimbledon Radio, the rest a “mash up”.
Continue reading →The End of Reading Is Here
Rose Horowitch: This shift is often referred to as a literacy crisis. And it’s true that Americans’ basic reading skills are declining. Fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores have slid for the past decade. Amanda Kordeliski, who is on the board of the…
Continue reading →Schools Don’t Just Fail to Develop Critical Thinkers. They Punish Them.
Katy Purviance: A researcher at Williams College set out to study variations in curiosity across elementary school classrooms. She had to abandon the study. The problem was not funding or methodology. As researcher Susan Engel later noted, there was such an astonishingly…
Continue reading →One in seven of its tertiary students scored at or below primary-school level in the literacy tests, up from about one in twenty a decade ago.
The Economist: At their simplest, its tests find out how well people can make sense of the instructions on a pill bottle, or work out how much wallpaper they must buy to redecorate a room. At more advanced levels, they explore how…
Continue reading →An analysis of 200,000 similes from popular fiction
By Russell Samora. Design & Illustration by Shelly Tan.: Similes are all around us. But, if you haven’t considered this figure of speech since grade school, here’s a refresher: similes compare a shared quality of two things, often using “like” or “as.”…
Continue reading →“Over 50% of early childhood students literacy proficient”
Samantha Erstad: Director of Teaching and Learning Katie Grundahl presented findings from early childhood literacy screening data for 4K through 3rd grade students to the School District of Jefferson Board of Education. “This is the required assessment by the state of Wisconsin…
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