BYRON DONALDS

Read to Succeed

What It Is

As a parent, there is nothing more magical than reading to your children. We began when our boys were just days old. My favorite bedtime book was Goodnight Moon [or other book]. I can still recite it by heart and cherish the memories of those early days of being a father and reading to my firstborn. Over time and as each of our children learned to read, we would alternate reading chapter books – our sons reading one page and then Erika or I would read the other.

Ensuring that your child can read is not magic. It’s a foundational to a life of opportunity and meaning.

Every child must Read to Succeed.

Reading is the first step on road to realizing the big Florida dream of your child’s Success Plan.

Reading didn’t come easy for all our kids. Every child is different. But every child must learn to Read to Succeed.

As governor, our Read to Succeed initiative will ensure that every child has the reading skills required.

This is not a new mandate. This is about empowering all parents and all teachers with the tools, technology, and tutoring to ensure every child can Read to Succeed at grade level by third grade.

What It Does

Every district will have science-of-reading-based teacher training programs through Florida’s colleges and universities, ensuring the next generation of educators enter every classroom equipped with proven literacy instruction methods to enable excellence.

Every parent will have early reading indicators in Kindergarten through Grade 2 and tiered intervention supports available to their child. Empowering parents early means better outcomes for children, schools, and parents.

Every teacher will have these same tools and students struggling to read at grade level in the third grade will have access to extra tutoring to get on track. Third grade teachers that excel in this area will be incentivized and innovative teachers will be recognized with a new statewide “Read to Succeed Award” recognizing individual classroom teachers who demonstrate exceptional or innovative approaches to literacy instruction.

Lastly, every child will Read to Succeed, opening doors to a lifetime of opportunity and meaning that only comes through a strong foundation of reading and literacy.