Dive Summary:

• According to literacy activists Victor Jose and Rick Ahaus, who created the K-Ready program being experimented with in Richmond, Ind., parents who read aloud to their children 20 minutes per day are "wiring the children's brains for reading instruction."
• The program aims to increase literacy awareness among parents with children under the age of four, and research group ChildTrends says that children who are read to regularly have greater language comprehension, larger vocabularies and greater cognitive skills than their peers by age two.
• K-Ready is Jose and Ahaus' second venture into literacy education, and students in their intensive summer remediation program for Richmond-area students, Third-Grade Reading Academy, have shown an average of more than a grade level of improvement per summer.

From the article:

Before lawmakers throw money at the thorny issue of early-childhood education they should consider an experiment under way in Richmond, Ind., aimed at getting parents to read to their children daily.  K-Ready, the brainchild of two literacy activists, Victor Jose and Rick Ahaus, has one goal: "reducing the number of children entering kindergarten not ready to learn."  "We're trying to get parents to read to their children from the time of their birth until they enter kindergarten," Jose explained. ...