News

We are proud to announce that we have received official approval from Miami-Dade County Public Schools to implement ReadyToRead as an official phonetic afterschool program in District 2.

We celebrate this expansion into public education as it pilots a critical transformation in the delivery of early education within our district. Under a unique, cost-effective model of “students teaching students,” our volunteers cultivate foundational literacy and reading comprehension skills using ReadyToRead’s tiered phonetic curriculum.

As we prepare to measure student progress through standardized FAST assessments, we hope our pilot’s successful outcomes will demonstrate an economic incentive for public schools to adopt this highly scalable implementation model.

We are proud that ReadyToRead, when delivered to under-resourced communities, actively helps ameliorate generational cycles of poverty through education.

December 3–Present: Proud partner with Toussaint L’Ouverture Elementary School

Our Leader In Action

What Agenda Item H-13 Spells Out for Early Literacy Education in Miami Dade County Public Schools

About H-13: Officially passed for the 2025–2026 school year, agenda item H-13 outlines educational interventions designed to strengthen students’ third-grade Language Arts preparation throughout MDCPS. Once standardized assessments are administered to second-grade students to collect trackable data, the actions outlined in H-13 will initiate: students will receive targeted support to ensure they are equipped for the drastic transition in critical reading comprehension that occurs in third grade.

Items like H-13 are exactly the steps that must be taken to ensure the success of third-grade students district-wide, with its strategies for success beginning in second grade. To amplify the impactful actions outlined in H-13, ReadyToRead’s mission and philosophy propose that a student’s success in critically engaging with reading material is dependent on a strong mastery of phonetic fluency that is cultivated well before second grade.

At the start of the new school year, our founder, Isabella Valderrama, spoke in utmost support of the opportunities H-13 supports, whilst simultaneously advocating for the necessity of earlier interventionist strategies beginning in Pre-K to effectively combat third-grade difficulties. Within reputable scientific literature, accredited studies strongly indicate that a student’s reading skills are largely predicted by their phonetic exposure in the infancy of brain development. Meaning students who receive phonetic learning well before even first grade-in harmony with their neurological development span-maximize their linguistic and academic potential as they approach third grade.

As the item itself puts perfectly, a student’s success in Language Arts is essential for long-term academic and career success. Yet, as students continue to slip below Language Arts proficiency standards, our community is plagued, as Isabella states, “by an issue of enormity.” Thus, we at ReadyToRead have a crucial vision: by capitalizing on the neurological window of opportunity of our students, society sees unprecedented and rewarding economic returns from a student’s upward trajectory.

Our proposed solutions within this vision? In collaboration with MDCPS members, ReadyToRead requested the Board’s recognition of ReadyToRead as an afterschool program in one elementary school and its official approval to submit FAST assessment data of our students during the 2026–2027 school year. If the data collected was satisfactory, we proposed that several student initiatives that follow the “students teaching students” model and target Pre-K phonetic literacy be implemented in afterschool programs across our county. Through our most recent partnership with Toussaint L’Ouverture Elementary School, ReadyToRead is one step closer to achieving our vision and honoring the groundwork laid out by items like H-13.