Elijah speaks with Rebecca Kockler, educator turned tech leader, about illiteracy in the United States and her pioneering approach to fixing it.

American kids today are the worst at reading on record, with Black, Latino, and Native American kids suffering most from lack of access to good literacy education. With reading an almost prerequisite for success in life, this dynamic will only serve to widen wealth disparity across races in years to come.

In a fascinating 1 hour chat, we go to the heart of the dysfunction in our education system, hearing how market forces have put bad curriculum on our kids’ desks for years, and the awesome story of how Louisiana State overcame this by applying behavioral design to create real impact on the lives of real students.

You’ll learn about the architecture of a cutting-edge “For-Purpose” organization practicing truly kid-centered design, and what it means to build product to solve real world problems rather than simply to further one’s own wealth.

If you’re ever felt exasperated by our education system and felt an urge to fix it, you’ll enjoy this episode.

Today’s Guest: Rebecca Kockler
Rebecca Kockler is Program Director at Reading Reimagined, a for-purpose organization dedicated to ending the “decoding threshold” and eradicating illiteracy so that every kid, regardless of race, can read confidently and set themselves up for a more prosperous life.

Modern Mantra is currently collaborating with Reading Reimagined on the design of literacy applications for underprivileged children in the United States.

Connect with Rebecca and Reading Reimagined

• Rebecca's Twitter: https://twitter.com/rkockler
• Reading Reimagined website: https://aerdf.org/programs/reading-reimagined/

In this episode, we discuss:

• 03:47 - How traveling in rural Guatemala inspired a life devoted to giving back through education
• 06:55 - How bureaucracy in education has a bad name but also brings big benefits
• 08:55 - Eradicating literacy - how literacy is the most important value schools can deliver but the current system is failing to deliver
• 11:18 - What’s driving inequities in literacy learning?
• 15:54 - 4 reasons are our school curriculums not driven by research and the role of market power
• 20:26 - How Louisiana got 90% schools to use a research-based curriculum and significantly raised learning outcomes
• 22:25 - Ways we can incentivise adopting research-based curricula?
• 25:29 - How might we standardize teaching in literacy?
• 29:08 - The best role of tech in reading education?
• 31:41 - Decoding in literacy education and how it’s the crucial building block of our ability to read and communicate
• 37:09 - The organizational architecture of Reading Reimagined - integrating research x product x school systems
• 38:30 - Biggest challenges designing and developing EdTech
• 42:32 - For-profit vs for-purpose - chasing revenue to solve real problems vs chasing revenue for self wealth
• 50:49 - The impact of eradicating illiteracy - confidence, wealth, class mobility
• 55:27 - Who Reading Reimagined is looking for - opportunities for talent

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