Breaking the Cycle: Literacy, Justice, and Our Collective Responsibility

Grateful for colleagues who believe what I believe: literacy is the ripple that leads to a life rewritten.

Last week, I met with a friend of mine who is also an administrator in a local juvenile detention center. He reached out in search of professional development for his teachers. As he described the students in his care, the picture he painted was deeply troubling. The average student is sixteen years old. Their average reading level, based on the Woodcock-Johnson assessment, is fourth grade. His question was both urgent and heartbreaking: “We want these students to graduate. But is there any way we can actually teach them to read?”

The short answer—thankfully—is yes. We can design professional development tailored to the needs of adolescent struggling readers. We can provide structured literacy routines, assessments, intervention practices, and coaching that strengthen teacher knowledge. But beneath this conversation lies a much harder question, one that stretches far beyond a single facility: Why is this happening in the first place? And how do we stop it from happening at all?

The School-to-Prison Pipeline: A Literacy Issue

We often describe this pattern as the school-to-prison pipeline, but it is just as accurate to call it the illiteracy pipeline. A child who cannot read in elementary school begins accumulating losses year after year. This is the Matthew Effect—where early readers read more, learn more, and grow more, while struggling readers fall further behind. What begins as a small gap becomes a widening gulf that shapes a child’s identity, academic trajectory, and life outcomes.

By the time these children reach adolescence, they have endured years of frustration, quiet shame, and academic failure. They have missed the volume of reading needed to build background knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension. They sit in classrooms unable to access grade-level text, surrounded by peers who can. School becomes a place where they feel exposed, misunderstood, and defeated.

This is the starting point for disengagement. For absenteeism. For behavior challenges. For hopelessness. And for too many, it becomes the starting point for the school-to-prison pipeline.

This progression is not inevitable. It is preventable. And here is a truth we must hold tightly: Children do not age out of learning to read, and schools cannot age out of teaching them.

As long as students are in our care, they deserve instruction that meets their needs.

An Educational Crisis with Societal Consequences

Low literacy is not just an educational issue; it is a social, economic, and public health issue. Earlier this year, I listened to Hilderbrand Pelzer III speak in Chicago about the staggering impact of illiteracy on communities and justice systems. His message was clear: this crisis cannot be solved by schools alone. Illiteracy affects employment, civic participation, economic stability, mental health, and community well-being.

Families with limited literacy often face higher hurdles navigating healthcare, workplaces, and school systems. When we see sixteen-year-olds entering detention centers unable to read, it reflects a long chain of missed opportunities—not just by one teacher or one school, but by entire systems meant to support them. Addressing this crisis requires a shared commitment from schools, families, communities, and policymakers.

Putting a Name and a Face to This Crisis

We often talk about the school-to-prison pipeline as if it’s a distant policy issue, but it is deeply human. It has a pulse. It has a story. Hilderbrand Pelzer III puts it plainly: this isn’t data, it’s children—children who can’t read and now find themselves incarcerated, believing their futures are already gone because school never taught them how.

Hearing him speak made me think of Deon Butler. Growing up with undiagnosed dyslexia, Deon spent years pretending—pretending he wasn’t struggling, pretending he could read, pretending he fit into classrooms built for students who actually could. Illiteracy shadowed every part of his life, leaving him ashamed, anxious, and uncertain about his place in the world.

Deon says that for a kid who couldn’t read in his neighborhood, the choices narrowed quickly: sell drugs or play football. Football became his lifeline. It carried him into college and ultimately to signing with the Detroit Lions. But even then, his inability to read eventually cost him an NFL contract—a reminder that talent can provide opportunity, but it cannot erase the consequences of being failed by the very system meant to support you.

And here is the question that stays with me long after his story ends: Without football, where would Deon have ended up? If he had not possessed extraordinary athletic ability—if sports had not offered him a path forward—what future would have been left for him?

And even more urgently: Are all kids this lucky?

We know the answer. They aren’t. Most struggling readers are not rescued by talent. Most do not get scholarships, or scouts, or second chances. Most simply slip through the cracks until the cracks become canyons.

Pelzer and Butler remind us that behind every reading score is a child who deserved consistent, evidence-based instruction long before the justice system entered the picture. Their stories demand that we stop talking about this crisis in abstract terms and start seeing the human beings living its consequences.

What We Can Do: A Multi-Level Effort

Change must begin early. Prevention in elementary school is our greatest tool—explicit, systematic reading instruction grounded in how the brain learns to read. Teachers need deep knowledge and ongoing support. Screening and progress monitoring must be routine, so no child’s struggles go unnoticed.

But the work cannot stop there. Adolescents need targeted, structured literacy intervention—not more guessing strategies, worksheets, or simply being read to, and not a watered-down curriculum that lowers expectations. They need instruction that rebuilds the skills they were never given, delivered in ways that honor their intelligence, dignity, and potential.

Communities matter too. Language and literacy grow in homes, libraries, community centers, after-school programs, and everyday conversations. When children are surrounded by language-rich environments, their futures expand.

A Call to Courage, Urgency, and Tomorrow

When my friend asked, “Can we teach them to read?” my answer was yes. But the question that haunts me—the one that belongs to all of us—is: How do we make sure a child never reaches sixteen without the ability to read in the first place?

We already know what works. We have decades of research on how to teach reading and how to support struggling learners. What we lack is not knowledge—it is collective courage. The courage to change instruction. The courage to adopt evidence-based practices. The courage to intervene early, consistently, and compassionately. The courage to do better by every child.

Literacy is not just an academic skill. It is freedom. It is agency. It is safety. It is possibility. A child who can read sees a future worth reaching for. A child who cannot read often sees no future at all.

Pelzer’s students. Deon Butler. The teens in that detention center. They are not outliers. They are mirrors—reflecting what happens when we wait too long, assume too much, or settle for “good enough.”

The school-to-prison pipeline is not inevitable. It is built. Which means it can be dismantled.

And the dismantling starts with us.

So, to all my teachers out there who are wondering what they can do: start small. You can start tomorrow.

Blend a word slowly and intentionally. Pre-teach a vocabulary word that gives a child access to the text. Offer a decodable that lets a student finally feel successful. Sit next to them for two calm minutes and listen to them read. Select one evidence-based routine—and let it become your daily anchor.

Because change doesn’t arrive all at once. It grows—one small step, one deliberate choice, one spark of understanding. Until finally, one child looks up and says, “I can do this.”

And who knows—your small step might be the first step in changing the entire trajectory of a student’s life. That’s the ripple effect of great teaching. It starts quietly. It starts humbly. It starts tomorrow.

Let’s build that ripple—together.

When we know better, we teach better.

See you next Sunday!

References

Butler, D. L. (2023). The gift & the curse: One man’s journey with dyslexia. Stacked Up Books.

Hilderbrand, P. III. (2010). Unlocking potential: Organizing a school inside a prison. R&L Education.

National Institute for Literacy. (2009). Developing early literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP). National Center for Family Literacy.

Rayner, K., Foorman, B. R., Perfetti, C. A., Pesetsky, D., & Seidenberg, M. S. (2001). How psychological science informs the teaching of reading. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2(2), 31–74. https://doi.org/10.1111/1529-1006.00004

Stanovich, K. E. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21(4), 360–407. https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.21.4.1

Torgesen, J. K. (2000). Individual differences in response to early interventions in reading: The lingering problem of treatment resisters. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 15(1), 55–64. https://doi.org/10.1207/SLDRP1501_6

Wexler, N. (2019). The knowledge gap: The hidden cause of America’s broken education system—and how to fix it. Avery.