From college classrooms to kindergarten rugs, my education journey reveals how America’s failure to teach children to read is not an accident—it’s a system we’ve learned to tolerate.
I did not begin my career in a kindergarten classroom. I began in higher education—at the Academic Center for Excellence within a private college in Maryland—working with students who had already crossed the finish line we celebrate so loudly: high school graduation. They came to our team for help with study skills, time management, college writing support, and accommodations for disabilities. On paper, they had made it. In reality, many of them were still trying to master skills needed to exceed in college.
As an adjunct professor teaching at several community colleges—including campuses within the Baltimore City Community College system—I began to see something that unsettled me. Students from neighboring counties arrived with markedly different levels of preparation than those from Baltimore City. The gap wasn’t subtle. It was structural. It was predictable due to the consistent inequity and marginalization endured by city families, schools, and communities. It was devastating.
Some students could navigate complex texts, build arguments, and engage in discussion. Others—graduates of the same American public school system—struggled to write a coherent paragraph or comprehend a basic reading passage. We like to call this an “achievement gap.” What I saw was something else entirely.
The Remedial Track Trap
The most painful part of my work wasn’t grading papers or leading adult learning. It was sitting across from students trapped in what higher education politely calls “remedial courses.” Remedial English. Remedial math. Non-credit bearing. Financial-aid draining. Dream-delaying.
I watched students enroll in these courses again and again, each attempt costing them time, money, and—eventually—hope.
One day, a father of three sat across from me. This was his final attempt at passing remedial English. He worked full-time. He showed up. He tried. But when I read his writing, when I listened to him read aloud, I knew something he was just beginning to realize: he had never been taught how to read at a level that would allow him to succeed in college. Yet, he had a high school diploma. That moment has never left me.
The question that echoed in my mind wasn’t about him. It was about American K-12 urban public education. How does a system graduate a man who cannot access the very text required to succeed in the world beyond it?
The Moment Everything Shifted
That was my turning point. I could have stayed in higher education—tutoring, remediating, patching the wounds. But I realized something I could not unsee:
By the time students reach college unprepared, the system has already failed them—repeatedly, predictably, and quietly.
So I made a decision that surprised even me. I left higher education, and I went to elementary school.
Why I Started at the Beginning
People often assume the most urgent work happens in high school—credit recovery, graduation rates, college readiness programs. However, through the lens of what would become The Urban Education Change Equation, I saw something different:
If a child is not reading proficiently by third grade, we are not preparing them for college—we are preparing them for remediation.
So I started where the problem starts, in our nation’s neighborhood public elementary schools.
I walked into classrooms filled with young students—curious, brilliant, full of possibility, and I saw what I had not fully understood from the college side. The children were not behind because they lacked ability. They were behind because we lacked alignment, urgency, and collective accountability.
The System Is Working Exactly As Designed
Through the Urban Education Change Equation, we name this clearly:
High-impact leadership teams + healthy, human-centered school culture + sustained, evidence-based literacy instruction across disciplines = quality teacher retention and excellent student outcomes.
But when any one of those variables breaks down—when leadership lacks clarity, when culture lacks psychological safety, when literacy instruction is inconsistent—the equation collapses, and when the equation collapses, students pay the price. Not immediately. Not always visibly. But inevitably.
They pay in third grade reading scores. They pay in middle school disengagement. They pay in high school credit recovery, and they pay again—quietly, expensively—in remedial college courses that should never have been necessary.
This Is Not a Pipeline Problem. It Is a Prevention Failure.
We often talk about the “school-to-college pipeline,” but pipelines suggest flow. What I witnessed was blockage and not because students lacked potential—but because we delayed intervention until it was too late to be efficient, too late to be equitable, and too late to be just.
Early literacy is not a strategy.
It is the strategy, and it must be systemic. Not one classroom.
Not one initiative. Not one passionate teacher working in isolation, but entire schools—aligned, focused, relentless—around the science of how children learn to read.
What I Know Now
I have sat in college classrooms with students who were failed by the system. I have sat on kindergarten rugs with children who still have a chance to be served by it. The distance between those two moments is not twelve years of schooling. It is a series of decisions. Decisions about what we prioritize. how we teach, and what we are willing to tolerate.
The Truth We Have to Say Out Loud
We do not have a graduation problem. We have a preparation problem. Until we confront that truth—with urgency, with clarity, and with courage—we will continue to celebrate diplomas that mask dysfunction and send students into the world unprepared for what comes next.
A high school diploma should open doors—but if a student cannot read what’s on the other side of it, then we didn’t graduate them, we passed them along.