The New Yorker recently published a comprehensive examination of America's reading crisis, "Dyslexia and the Reading Wars," and we're honored that our advisor, Dr. Nadine Gaab, a neuroscientist and professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, was featured prominently throughout the piece.
The article explores a topic that drives our work every day: proven methods for teaching struggling readers have been known for decades, yet so many children still struggle to access them.
One of the most powerful insights Dr. Gaab offers in the article challenges a common misconception about how children learn to read. Many parents and even some educators assume that if you surround children with books and read to them regularly, literacy will emerge naturally—the way spoken language does.
Dr. Gaab frames it differently:
"You can't just lock a group of kindergartners in a library and expect them to emerge, a couple of weeks later, as readers. It's more like learning a musical instrument. You can listen to Mozart all your life, but if I put you in front of a piano and say, 'Play Mozart,' you will fail."
For some children, the process happens relatively smoothly. For others, it requires more explicit instruction, more repetition, and more time. Dr. Gaab uses a highway metaphor to describe these differences: "Maybe instead of four lanes you have two, or instead of a smooth surface you have a bumpy one."
The article highlights a critical finding: a typical learner needs 3 to 5 repetitions to master a new concept. A struggling reader might need 10 to 20. A dyslexic reader might need 200.
The article features schools like the Windward School in New York, where students receive the intensive, structured literacy instruction based on the Orton-Gillingham approach, which has been proven effective since the 1920s. The transformation stories are powerful: children who couldn't read a single word become avid readers. Mothers cry tears of joy after their daughters ask for books for the first time ever.
Dr. Gaab emphasizes that the window for intervention is narrow. At Sprout Labs, we've heard from many families who've spent those early critical years hoping for improvement to happen organically, due to well-intentioned but misguided advice.
By third grade, when reading problems become impossible to ignore, psychological and emotional damage has often already set in. As Emily Hanford, who produced the influential "Sold a Story" podcast, states in the article: "If you are a kid who is struggling to read, you are experiencing failure really fast, and you are experiencing massive confusion, and it is actually fucking frightening."
The article includes devastating stories of children who developed anxiety-induced behavior issues and deeply-felt shame. The human cost of late intervention—or no intervention—is catastrophic.
The success stories highlighted in the article come at a stark cost.
The Windward School, the private school featured prominently in the article, costs roughly $76,000 per year. Other private dyslexia programs cost similar amounts. For families who can afford it, the results are life-changing.
But the article leaves room to ponder if this model can scale to meet the scope of the crisis. Seventy percent of fourth graders in America are not reading on grade level. When the South Bronx Literacy Academy opened in 2023, there were 10,000 second and third graders in the Bronx alone who would have qualified for admission based on reading scores.
Dr. Gaab's work, featured in this article, represents decades of scientific research into how the brain learns to read. We know what instruction works. We know when to intervene.
Media outlets like The New Yorker and NPR are bringing this science to mainstream audiences. More families are coming forward to share their stories. State legislatures are passing laws requiring schools to adopt science-based reading instruction.
And technology is reaching the point where it can deliver high-quality, high-dosage instruction at scale while maintaining the rigor and personalization that struggling readers need.
The convergence of validated science, public awareness, reducing stigma, and scalable technology represents the most favorable moment we've ever had to tackle this crisis.
We applaud researchers like Dr. Gaab, media outlets, and the countless parental advocates that are deeply dedicated to solving the national reading crisis.
Alex Temple is the Head of Marketing at Sprout Labs, where she helps parents understand the importance of early reading intervention, and connect with the right resources to help their children achieve literacy success.
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