Ruth Genn has spent 25 years in education. She started as an elementary school teacher in the Bronx through Teach For America, then moved into policy work and data and systems change for a large school network, and eventually led an organization in the college access space, supporting first-generation college students in their journey to and through college. But it was her own son’s dyslexia diagnosis that made her reconsider her whole career through an entirely different lens.
A Diagnosis That Reframed a Career
As Ruth watched her son struggle with dyslexia and eventually learned that evidence-aligned instruction was the missing piece for him, she started recognizing the same pattern everywhere: among the young men of color she’d worked with in New York City’s Alternative Schools District (District 79), the over-age and under-credited youth she was trying to help graduate, and the third grader who once crumpled up his paper and ran out of her classroom.
“They were all suffering from not having been taught to read.”
In 2019, Ruth heard about an “all-call” from funders in NYC, called “Imagine NYC Schools,” looking for people to start new schools around a “bold idea.” She connected with six other women from very different backgrounds who shared one thing in common—each had fought for her own child to learn to read. Together, with support from The Windward School (an independent day school that serves students with dyslexia), they pitched their own “bold idea”—a public school built specifically for the system’s most struggling readers.
Their pitch was successful, and the South Bronx Literacy Academy opened in District 7 in the fall of 2023. It was the first district public school in the country built specifically for students with dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities. A second school, Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy, opened in the fall of 2025 in Central Brooklyn.
Ruth is now executive director of Literacy Academy Collective, whose mission is to build a network of public schools bringing culturally relevant, structured literacy to struggling readers at the intersection of race, poverty, and disability.
From One School to The Path Forward
Opening a school built for this population quickly revealed the bigger problem of a lack of in-depth, ongoing training for teachers and leaders. Educators who understood evidence-aligned reading instruction had almost always learned it outside their formal preparation programs. That gap is what led Ruth to help New York State join The Path Forward, a national policy initiative to transform teacher preparation and licensure programs to incorporate the science of reading.
It wasn’t a straightforward path. The commitment from the beginning was to work with an array of stakeholders, including the New York State Education Department (NYSED), the governor’s office, legislators, educational preparation leadership and faculty, K-12 leaders, and unions. In NY, the Steering Committee decided to engage three working groups from across the state. Grappling with the challenges of teaching literacy was no small task. In the end, there was clear agreement that the current state of literacy instruction in NY State Educator Preparation Programs (EPPs) was inconsistent and needed to change. While NYSED began addressing policy issues, Ruth and her higher education partners knew they had to engage with EPPs, so they set out to raise money to pilot the work directly on EPP campuses.
“We thought it would be great to get one large donation…but the white knight never appeared.”
Instead, a group of innovative foundations came together to provide smaller, significant sums and ultimately funded 11 EPP Campus Transformation grants, totaling close to $6 million.
The Reading League and Deans for Impact served as technical assistance providers throughout, not only providing guidance on aligning teacher preparation courses with the science of reading, but also helping build—and hold—trust with faculty at each campus.
“It has been a true inspiration to see the different ways campuses have used these dollars to transform their programs. Each campus has done something a bit different, but all of them are doing the deep work of making sure that their pre-service teachers are prepared for their classrooms.”
Full Circle
In April 2026, one of the pilot EPP campuses asked to do a “learning walk” at Literacy Academy Collective’s South Bronx school. Some of the visiting professors were skeptical of structured literacy at the start, but by the end of the visit—after meeting the teachers and the principal, seeing the systems in place, and witnessing the data and emotional change happening for students—that skepticism shifted.
For Ruth, it was a moment that closed a loop five years in the making: a leap of faith by the Literacy Academy Collective, The Reading League, and Deans for Impact, paying off in a room full of newly convinced faculty.
“We know there are so many professors out there who are taking a leap and doing the hard work of learning and sometimes re-learning more about the craft they are so passionate about. It is the honor of a lifetime to be part of this change.”
What Keeps Her Going
Teaching reading is hard, especially when teaching kids who struggle. Ruth says the challenges they have faced over the past five years are among the most difficult in her 25-year career. But she’s seen what happens on the other side of a child learning to read.
“When it changes for them, it feels like the world is a different place, like anything is possible. The fact that we could give that feeling to other students and parents drives us like nothing else.”
She’s hopeful about where New York is headed, but she’s clear-eyed that the work is far from over.
“I believe that all kids can learn to read and write, and through hard work and partnerships, we are making it happen.”
We are grateful to Ruth Genn for the leap she took—first for her own son, then for a school full of struggling readers, and now for a statewide effort to change how future teachers are trained. Her partnership, alongside the Literacy Academy Collective and The Path Forward, is exactly the kind of “it takes a League” work we’re proud to stand behind.
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