Launching Reading Futures

I wanted to share some news — I’m launching a company called Reading Futures. We’ll work from first principles — delivering evidence-based, high-intensity intervention for children with indications of dyslexia in the early grades. When their young brains are still plastic, when the right intervention and the right interventionist can create a reading future. Every child deserves one.

We’re at a moment, with technology, with know-how, with new ways of working together. We can reconfigure work that has historically happened in private schools, in solo sessions, in occasional pull-outs, or, too often, not at all. Professor Jason Yeatman (Stanford University) has signed on as our scientific advisor, and my friend Liz Kline will lead on product and platform.

It’s very much early days — we’re working on pilots, adapting models that are proven to work, experimenting on a few different dimensions, measuring everything. More to come.

Friends like Beth Anderson, Margie Gillis, and Jamey Peavler have been so generous with me, helping me to understand the space, the issues, what needs doing, what’s possible. Lee Wilson and Bart Epstein have helped me figure out how to organize and prioritize the work. Larry Berger has been a booster.

I’ve been especially lucky to work with Professor Yeatman. His research includes neuroimaging and innovative assessment, deep in the mechanisms of reading and the effects of intervention. 

We're finding our way in a field with deep roots — the Orton-Gillingham approach goes back 80 years. We've been following the evidence — decades of intervention research and iterative program development. And we've been wondering, as we get to scaling models and instrumenting the work, what the frontiers are. 

We are committed to the children we will serve, to their families, to the broader community. Evidence-based practices and sustained personal relationships are the core of our model. We'll innovate instructionally, organizationally, and technologically, always in service to helping our children learn better and live well. 

If dyslexia is an area of interest to you, please let me know. We’re currently planning summer pilots, both in summer school settings and at home, for rising 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders. We’re interested in insights on virtual and hybrid learning - organization, tips and tricks. Drop me a note and let’s find a time to talk.

If you want to stay in touch with Reading Futures, you can sign up on our landing page.

Thanks so much!

-Dave