About Us
Family matters.
Local villages in each community support families.
Youth Success Movement is a grassroots movement — not a program — that empowers families and communities to close the Skill Gap and solve the reading crisis, one village at a time.
Vision
Every child in America enters school ready to learn. Every struggling reader gets the targeted support they need. And every community owns the solution — because reading success is not a program we deliver. It's a movement they build.
Mission
To solve the reading crisis in the U.S. by empowering families and communities to close the Skill Gap — not through schools alone, but through a grassroots movement of neighbor-supported, family-centered action.
The Challenge--why this matters
The education crisis is real
70% of 4th grade students in the U.S. failed to score proficient in reading based upon the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress.
40% scored below basic proficiency.
Math scores are worse.
This is a longstanding challenge.
There has been little, if any, progress in decades.
The pain is real
Students who struggle in school are often labeled and frustrated.
This impacts self-esteem and behavior.
The situation can impact family life.
2/3 of students who cannot read proficiently by the end of 4th grade will end up in jail or on welfare.
Over 70% of America’s inmates cannot read above a 4th grade level.
1 in 4 children in America grow up without learning how to read.
Nearly 85% of the juveniles who face trial in the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate, proving that there is a close relationship between illiteracy and crime.
More than 60% of all inmates are functionally illiterate.
https://dosomething.org/article/11-facts-about-literacy-america
Understanding the causes
Most students who struggle in school have a Skill Gap.
Schools work hard. Teachers care and deliver great instruction. But when some students succeed while others fail in the same classroom, the difference isn't instruction. It's learning effectiveness.
When children are weak in any of these areas, they have a Skill Gap — and most never catch up.
Schools can't close this gap alone. But a community can.
The Solution — How We Work
We ae not a Program.
We are a Movement.
Most reading initiatives are programs — imposed from the outside, dependent on funding, gone when the grant ends.
We're building a movement — owned by the community, sustained by neighbors, designed to last.
The Village Model
Support is organized locally through Village Communities — groups of families, volunteers, and supporters aligned with each elementary school boundary area.
Each Village provides:
Family Support — Coaching for families with children ages 0–5 to build strong foundations
Student Programs — Cognitive skill assessment (Gibson Test), targeted brain training (BrainSkills), and reading instruction (Reading Kingdom)
Community Hub — Local website, social media, forums, events, resource directory
Family Ambassadors — Trained parent guides who support 10 families each
Village Leader — Local coordinator working 5–20 hours/week
Parent & Youth Councils — Community voice in decisions and outreach
Program thinking is imposed from the outside, survives and is driven by outside funding, people in the community have little say in how the program is run, and there is usually little buy-in from those being served.
Our movement is created and managed by those living in the village, there is greater buy-in through a sense of ownership, any grant funding goes to support those in the village directly, and many of the benefits of the village accrue to members without the need for external funding. The village keeps going as long a members want it to.
Proven Results
We have worked with thousands of students
Evidence and science based
Practical implementation experience
There are many different elements to our approach.
No single program can holistically address the skill gap for all children.
We have adopted several free resources that have a significant base of science and proven results.
This includes mindset and social emotional learning.
Brain Gym exercises.
Visual and auditory processing exercises.
Early childhood development protocols.
The bulk of our reading training is done through an early reading program called Reading Kingdom.
https://www.readingkingdom.com/
This program has over 50 years of research and development and practical experience.
They have an adult version and a version designed to serve children diagnosed with ASD.
We use an online cognitive skill assessment and brain training program that has over 50 years of research, development and clinical application. This program has successfully served over 100,000 students.
The main company has over 150 clinic worldwide.
At a New Orleans elementary school serving 100% low-income students:
92% of 4th graders passed the state reading test — up from under 25%
88% of 1st graders scored proficient or above — with 50% above grade level
The independent tester called it the highest-performing class she'd ever assessed
At a Louisiana public school facing closure, 57 out of 60 lowest-performing students passed the state reading test.
Despite these results, school districts refused to scale the programs. The barriers inside the system proved too high.
So we redesigned the model to go directly to families and communities — where change can happen without waiting for permission.
Our story--why we exist
It Started With a Neighbor's Daughter
The founder's neighbor 20+ years ago had a daughter in the 8th grade who could not read. The student attended one of the highest performing districts in the community. The family tried various tutoring programs. Nothing helped. The schools had no solution.
The daughter was frustrated. The family was frustrated. Behavior was becoming a serious issue. The mom knew her daughter has been passed along each grade but that would end in high school. She would not graduate high school unless some miracle occurred. The mom asked the school to do cognitive skill testing but the school refused.
Out of desperation, the mom went to a local university and spent over $1,000 for extensive testing. The daughter had low auditory processing skills but scored in the lowest 2nd percentile on working memory. This finally explained why no amount of instruction worked.
They took this new information to the school, but school officials basically said so what. There was nothing they could do about. After much debate the school finally put the daughter on a 504 plan. But that only provided compensation strategies and labeled her. It did not address the underlying causing of her struggle.
The mother did not give up. She discovered a local clinical brain training company. The training was expensive and challenging, but it worked. It improved the daughter's cognitive skills which empowered more effective learning. With no additional reading instruction, the daughter caught up to grade level and graduated. She went on to community college and received straight A's.
The daughter told me that the cognitive skill testing saved her life. It finally told her why she struggled and made it clear that the struggle was not her fault. Now the parents understood there was a reason. However, when the school had no solution even with this information, the family was initially distraught. But once they found the clinical brain training and it worked, the story had a happy ending.
The mother told me one day about the stress this problem had caused on the daughter and family. She suggested the problem was more widespread than most people realized. She knew I was a socially minded entrepreneur so she challenged me to find a way to help all of the children who struggle in school.
I immediately felt that this was my true mission.
I teamed with the clinical brain training company to build an online version of their cognitive skill assessment and brain training. It took many years, but we finally developed something that worked. We validated it in their clinics. It allowed the company to expand worldwide. We also validated the program in schools.
But most schools are slow to adopt change. They respond to state mandates. Cognitive skill testing and training is not an educational mandate, so most schools will not consider it.
We did not give up. We continued to find ways to help students and families and expanded our tools to better serve all students.
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