Comment by rahimnathwani | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rahimnathwani | Hacker News Reader

"if you are a parent, I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas on how you foster reading amongst your students/children"

From birth: We read to our son often.

August 2020: I saw a recommendation on HN for the book "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons".

Aug-Dec 2020: I spent 25-30 hours following that playbook. (15-20 mins per day, 5 days per week, 20 weeks.)

August 2021: Our son (now almost 5yo) reads beyond the level that will be expected of him when he finishes Kindergarten (2 years from now). Most important for me: he's improving (both decoding and comprehension) without our help. He just picks things he wants to read (from his bookshelf, from the library, or from the thrift store), and gets started. He'll re-read books he likes, and abandon others.

Anyone who can read at high school level can follow the instructions in the book I used. Assuming you can find people like that for minimum wage(?), it should be possible to teach N children to read for $500 * N. ($15/hr x 30 hrs = $450, plus some money for materials.)

To put that $500 into context: it's approximately the same as SFUSD spends per student per week.

If you can really teach every child to read, for $8 per student ($110k/14k = $8), that would be a game-changer.

I love this - your commitment to being an engaged/active (reading) parent has totally paid off! To add some color here, that's kind of the equity problem we hope to address by being strictly B2B for now. Majority of our students today come from Title 1 schools (ie schools where 92% of the population comes from low-income families and receive free breakfast and lunch programs). Both parents are rarely even around/present (which was the case for me growing up as well). If a parent is present, they are (on ave) working 2 jobs to make ends meet or English is not their fluent language. That's why the 42% of grade 4 students reading far below their level is highly skewed towards Title 1 school population (though reading is generally in decline across the board regardless of socioeconomic status). Litnerd provides a level playing field for students who don't have parents that can read to them and be as engaged as you are are with your son (which I 100% admire and commend you for). 65% of US schools are Title 1 classified schools. This is a problem that effects majority of Americans and a B2C first approach completely neglected this audience. Finally, for transparency, we charge the district between $30-50 per student for a full year's worth of materials (books, curriculum/lesson plans, live stream teachers/actors, video episodes, our SaaS tool etc).

Thanks for this detailed answer.

I'm lucky that I don't have to work two jobs, am a native English speaker etc., and this definitely isn't easy for many parents in tough circumstances.

What I don't understand: how is it that school districts spend so much money, yet can't teach kindergarteners to read?

If I wanted to run a kindergarten class of 30 kids, where the kids were looked after all day, and taught to read by the end of the year (36 weeks), then I'd need:

1) A space to teach them, with furniture ($2k/week?, i.e. $72k total).

2) Three adults ($75k/year each?, so $225k total).

3) Some books ($3k?).

That would cost $300k, or $10k per student per year. This is less than many school districts spend per child.

With that setup, at any time, you could have:

1 adult conducting a 1:1 reading lesson

2 adults keeping the other 29 kids occupied

Each kid would get 4 x 15 min reading lessons per week. So, even if they were to be absent for 30% of the school year, they would still have plenty of time for 100 lessons.

What am I missing? Is there other important stuff they do in kindergarten, that could not be covered well if you were to set things up this way?

In fairness, schools spend approx $14k per student per year. So, your spend numbers are not far off. Unfortunately, even with that level of spend, school teachers are not paid nearly as much in salary! Of course there are many other inefficiencies that need improvement as well. But I know you already know that.

I like how you approach this though!

I would imagine the word "nerd" in litnerd is a bit of a putoff to the student population you're targeting. Is that not the case? Or are you also trying to get them to embrace that word as positive?

Thanks for question. In all honesty, out of 14k nyc students not 1 complaint about the name so far :) Litnerd is kind of a known endearing name librarians and English/literacy majors use describe each other. And on the other hand, we play up the “lit” aspect for the older kids. Because dungeons and dragon themed choose your own adventure stories is exactly that: lit :) Either way, we just haven’t had students of schools hate the name as much as I think some on HN have (which is totally cool. Happy to hear different views).

Talking about cost: my son used a program called Reading Eggs for just around US 70$ per year (including math lessons!) and after 2-3 months he could read independently. I gave it to him in Kindergarten when we were in lockdown and he started relatively slowly (a new unit every two days for 15-20 minutes a day). In the beginning, I had to sit with him and help him navigate a little bit but after a few lessons, he could learn all alone. The lessons were designed so amusing and engaging, my son could stay on it all by himself. After a year, he was able to read on the level of grade 2 and his math level was also beyond his age.

We’re no native English speakers but my son went to an English speaking kindergarten. All seemed so natural and easy to me that I could not understand the fuss about teaching reading in America. I mean one could not get cheaper than that and giving tablets to millions children and problem solved!

I second that book. My father in law used it to teach my wife and her sister to read, and my eldest daughter. My youngest is not yet willing to follow the lessons though. We'll try again when she's 4.

Same here, really worked exceptionally well with our child. We just chipped away at a couple of lessons in the evenings most week days. Worked surprisingly well.

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