‘Experts’ like to make a science out of the simple things like teaching a child to read.  How about reintroducing phonics?  It has great success. 
All of these experts should be told to figure out two of the Japanese writing scripts, hiragana and katakana without being told what sound each symbol makes, and see how well they do. Without phonics, this is the method many schools nowadays are using and then they wonder why kids can’t learn to read.

Like the Sunday Movie - in embracing the true diversity of children, the path is not the one-sized-fits-all found in public education system, and more importantly their crazy belief that low-income children have genes that are reactive to low-income situations? Humans have built-in survival modes, no matter the income. It is all about breaking down the code of the brain, to figure out better ways to our reactions in stress in the environment.

That said, until the education system embraces the brain code, the growing body of knowledge and advances being made to understanding the code of the brain -  and its implication in society and the education of our youth of all sizes and shapes (the diversity), the public education system will continue to chase the band-aid solutions that actually makes learning difficult for one and all.

On the Matthew Effect - “The converse of this Matthew Effect that Stanovich outlined in the mid eighties where he developed a model of the educational have’s and have not’s in reading is a sadder tale. Those children who experience inordinate difficulty in breaking the code, who aren’t able to quickly assemble these sounds and put them into larger units we call words, and rapidly proceed through the sentences don’t develop the level of automaticity that allows them to have the cognitive work space available to them. As a result of that lack of automaticity, their resources are taken away and focused on the word level and they aren’t able to operate on the meaning.

So, as a result they find reading to be discouraging, it’s less satisfying and this feedback loop begins where because it’s not pleasurable, because it’s difficult, they don’t engage in it. And because they don’t engage in it as often they don’t develop the automaticity and on and on you go. Now that’s even further compounded by the fact that these educational have not’s are given material that’s well beyond their reading ability. So, the cycle gets exacerbated because we don’t tack or calibrate children’s reading level with the print we give them. And so the cycle just gets worse and worse.”
http://www.childrenofthecode.org/library/refs/mattheweffect.htm#MatthewEffect

The day sometime in 2004, I bumped into a paper about the Matthew Effect, and then it led me to the Children of the Code site. It was another directional change in my journey, that I now had the knowledge to make the educrats eat their words of stating that my child was slow, poor parenting ability and the Ontario medical professionals did not know what they were talking about.

Yes reading makes kids smarter. My problem how to get my kid to read, using the materials at hand without costing an arm and leg and bypassing the public education system of one-sized-fits-all approaches and myopic 19th century thinking.

The Children of the Code, opened up my world by giving me the knowledge and in turn my brain kicked in finding innovative ways to get my child to read, and obtained knowledge. I had to become a computer techie, in order to reformat record albums to digital, of recordings of stories or old 1940s radio shows of stories found on the web to be put on CDs. So glad I did, as my child followed the books that were not on the school approved list, her vocabulary and knowledge was building. Cognitive improvements started to appeared, and I knew she could hold her own by the time she was in grade 6, dealing with her peers who were the very good readers with larger knowledge banks.

And soon, my child was achieving, and became serious competition that threatened to displaced one or two of the high achievers, as my child moved up the ladder of achievement. And I did make the educrats eat their words, for daring to state my child is only capable at the very best a 60 average. What I could not do, was moved the educrats of 19th century thinking, to look at the research and why my child was achieving, despite her learning difficulties. Even Stanovich was rejected, including the other Canadian researchers and this came after the American researchers and the researchers across the globe.

Yes, it would be awfully nice if education leaders made reading their national priority and focus. on the 21st knowledge of science, rather than the 19th century knowledge.

A letter written to the Oprah show

“Dear Oprah:
I am 76 years old today.
I spent the first 75 years of my life wondering why I could not read or spell as well as other friends and family. I didn’t know why I had such a hard time finding the right word when I spoke, or why I couldn’t say the words correctly when I could retrieve them.
I didn’t know why I so often got lost in cities I had lived in for years, or why I still had to stop and think for a moment before I knew my right from my left. I didn’t know why I had such trouble memorizing things that seemed so easy for others.
Or why someone like me – someone who has started and run two businesses – could still not read well, or spell correctly enough to take a message and then be able to read it afterwards.
I didn’t know that I had severe-to-profound dyslexia.
For 75 years I prayed for God to help me. Last fall, I prayed again – that God would please, PLEASE, send me someone who could teach me how to spell.”
http://susanbartondyslexiastories.com/2013/01/08/it-is-never-too-late/

In 2013, with all the advances that have been made in reading research, all the knowledge obtained, and all the wonderful programs and reading instruction methods - the public education system still lives in the 19th century style, that there is no help, no program to turned dyslexics into good readers. and ergo by high school - no funding, no access for high school students struggling in the reading process.

And yet a 75 year old is learning to read, and the esteem professionalism of the public education system say it can’t be done. Impossible in their eyes. Further down the letter - ” I read the word authentic for the first time last month. I can now spell words that I could not even say before. I am 75 years old. Believe me – there is hope.”