Wired to Read
The trajectory of success in life is exponentially higher for a child who is “wired” to read by age three and reads proficiently by 3rd grade than for those children who aren’t. These accomplishments are so important to a child’s long term health and well-being that Minnesota’s Rally to Read is using them as benchmarks of success for achieving their Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG): Transform Minnesota into the state with the highest reading proficiency with the fewest inequities and accomplish it with a fierce urgency of now. If you ask Tim Reardon, the executive director, he will tell you that it is a goal that is well within our reach.
Birth of the BHAG
It all started in 2023. Tim was on a call with a group of former colleagues to catch up on their families and what they were working on to change the world for the better. One of the people on the call that day was Peter Hutchinson, a former superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools and a veteran of the reading wars that had been taking place in the state since the 1970s. The Minnesota Read Act had recently been signed into law. Peter was one of the many people who worked on its passage and was lamenting just how long and difficult it was to get it through the legislature.
The conversation reminded Tim of the success Cuba had in eradicating illiteracy during the early days of the Cuban Revolution. It took them just two years to go from being one of the most illiterate countries in the world to one of the most literate. He learned about their success while visiting in the early 2000s while completing a midcareer master’s degree in public administration at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government on a Bush Leadership Fellowship. He ended up sending information about how they did it to Peter. It was while gathering the information that he was inspired to write If Cuba Can Eradicate Illiteracy, Minnesota Certainly Can, an op-ed published on Sunday, April 15, 2023, in the Minnesota Star Tribune. It was a call to action and writing it was the birth of the BHAG.
It also helped Tim connect with others who bought into the BHAG and became as committed to seeing it become a reality as him. He was invited by the president of the Monticello Rotary Club to speak at one of their monthly meetings as a way to raise awareness of the issue and counter apathy and ignorance of it. He also was contacted by Tim Munkeby, an author, educator and business owner, who is passionate about the importance of every child having at least one caring and nurturing adult in their life in order to thrive. Tim and Tim found they were kindred spirits and started meeting regularly to discuss the BHAG. They invited other people into the conversation like Todd Otis, a former Minnesota State representative and a longtime early childhood advocate and pediatrician and co-founder of Doctors for Early Childhood, Dr. Roger Sheldon.
Reading is a Public Health Issue
The conversations encouraged Tim that achieving the BHAG was possible and that they had the right benchmarks. And the more conversations he had with early childhood and reading experts like Dr. Bernadia Johnson, Gevonee Ford and Dr. Artika Tyner, the smarter Minnesota’s Rally to Read got about the structure, strategies and incentives needed to succeed. They also helped Tim and others come to an awakening that reading is a public health issue.
Tim’s confidence was also bolstered because he had experience with a community engagement process that he knew could mobilize community support to achieve the BHAG. After obtaining his master’s degree in public administration, Tim interned with Mark Friedman, an expert in using results-based accountability to get better results in health and human service systems. Tim worked with Mark to address Vermont’s escalating teen pregnancy numbers, and helped facilitate action plans in communities across the state to raise awareness of the problem and motivate people to do something about solving it. At those planning sessions, they discussed
What was the story behind the rising numbers;
Potential partners who could help address the issue and;
What they collectively thought they could do that would make the most difference.
By the end of every meeting, they had a list of a few activities that the community could take action on that were no cost or low cost and were likely to succeed because they were research-based or something meeting participants knew would work in their community. Minnesota’s Rally to Read is using a modified version of that process to achieve the BHAG.
Tim’s speech to the Monticello Rotary Club was like putting a match to gasoline. Things exploded in a good way. Rotarian Monica Martin, an immigrant from Colombia, raised her hand and said, “I’d like to get a model for Spanish speaking people here that we can replicate throughout Minnesota.” Her call to the superintendent of schools, Eric Olson, ignited the passion of the community. He rallied educators and administrators in the district to get behind the BHAG and start working to achieve it. Martin and Olson mobilized members of the business community and civic groups to take action to help meet the BHAG’s benchmarks. One of many changes that has come about as a result of these efforts is that the library now gives parents of newborns a tote bag of resources on how to nurture and develop their baby’s brain in the first three years of life. Things are going so well in Monticello, that another op-ed authored by Tim referring to it as the “Little Engine that Could” when it comes to reading proficiency was published in April 2024.
Go at the Speed of Trust
But as good as it’s going in Monticello, it’s been hard to get traction in other communities. Tim has spoken at many civic organization’s meetings where by the end of it, people were excited about the BHAG and benchmarks. Translating that awareness into action is a challenge. The aspirations of accomplishing the BHAG with “a fierce urgency of now” is running up against obstacles. There is a scarcity mentality among some service providers who perceive new initiatives as competition to their funding. School districts face capacity issues as they implement the Minnesota Read Act reforms to incorporate the science of reading in classroom curriculum. Budget shortfalls and looming reductions of state and federal spending result in a reluctance to take on any additional initiative regardless of its merit.
When things are frustrating or disappointing, Tim reminds himself of the words of one of his board members who said their work can only go at the speed of trust. He knows that managing his impatience at the pace of change is imperative or it may jeopardize efforts to build the partnerships necessary to achieve the BHAG. His sense of urgency is fueled by his knowledge that there is just too much at stake. Art Rolnick, the former head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and an early childhood advocate, once told him that you could estimate the number of prison beds you would need in 15 years based on the number of kids who were not reading proficiently by third grade.
For a long time schools and teachers have been blamed for kids not being able to read. Tim will tell you that the blame really lies with us for not making sure every kid’s brain is “wired” to read when they enter school. He remembers talking to the father of four young children who shared that he was so busy with his older children, he often didn’t have much time to read and play with his 3 year old. There are approximately 60,000 babies born each year in Minnesota and about 5 million people who are 10 years old and older. Tim calculated this means there are about 83 laps available for every infant born in the state to be sitting on. Laps are one of the places where the important and sacred work of wiring a young child’s brain to read happens. With five sisters, Tim’s parents didn’t always have a lot of one-on-one time with him, but he remembers sitting on his grandmother’s lap being read to and told he was the best little boy in the whole wide world. Every child deserves that experience and as Tim will tell you, we have the capacity to make it happen.
Getting the Minnesota Read Act enacted into law was huge because it created goals and accountability for success. The BHAG feeds into its goals by delivering kids that will be more successful in school because their brains are wired to read and with the right instruction and intervention will be reading proficiently at grade level. Tim looks forward to the day when he can talk about the BHAG in the past tense and tell the story of how Minnesota achieved it. He knows that day is in his future, so he will keep showing up in communities across the state to share why wiring a kid’s brain to read and making sure they are reading proficiently by third grade is so profound and brings together the pieces of the puzzle to success in life. That is something every child deserves.
Learn More
Visit Minnesota Rally to Read to learn more about the BHAG, benchmarks and how you can get involved by volunteering and or making a tax deductible donation.
Visit Little Moments Count to learn about how important little moments are in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life.
Also, to learn more about reading as a public health issue and why it’s considered the “greatest civil rights issue of our time” please visit The Right To Read.
