Costly failures come with lesson: Reading success begins at birth
Special Report: Memphis’ Reading Test
As a reward, Saimiya Swift, 4, gets to be the "brain" in the class for a day as children read out loud from the board during Alice Holman's pre-K class at Porter-Leath's Douglas Head Start School on April 23, 2019. (Jim Weber/Daily Memphian)
Special to The Daily Memphian
David Waters
David Waters is Distinguished Journalist in Residence and assistant director of the Institute for Public Service Reporting at the University of Memphis.
PART 3: Billions of government and philanthropic dollars have funded new curricula and standardized tests, teacher evaluation systems, charter schools and takeover schools. But it hasn't made much of a dent in the third-grade reading gap or any other measures of student performance.
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