“All hands on deck” – that’s what it takes to turn many more children into adaptive readers. This was Maya Payne Smart’s message to an audience in the Lubar Center at Marquette Law School’s Eckstein Hall. “Parents, families, communities, we must do our part,” along with educators themselves.
The law school’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education, in collaboration with the Marquette University School of Education, is participating in this effort as a convener to promote public awareness of and address the problem of too few children learning to read well. Two programs in the 2025-2026 school year continued the long-standing commitment to making education issues a focus of the Lubar Center’s policy initiative.
Maya Smart encourages parents and caregivers to take effective steps to develop literacy skills in very young children.
Smart is the author of the book 2022, Reading for Our Lives: A Literacy Action Plan from Birth to Six. She is an associate faculty member of the Marquette University College of Education and chair of the newly formed Milwaukee Reading Commission. She came to Milwaukee in 2021 when her husband, Shaka Smart, became the Marquette men’s basketball coach.
In a Nov. 12, 2025 broadcast, Smart said that when her daughter was little and Smart watched early childhood programs, she paid close attention to what she saw. Did the place look safe, clean and inviting? Now, Smart said, she’s urging parents to not just look, but also listen. Do the people running the center talk to the children, including babies? Do they do things that strengthen a child’s intellect? More importantly, are parents dealing with these things at home? These are valuable steps in child development.
“We need parents to realize that they are not just providing food and a roof over their children’s heads,” Smart said. “They are truly their first teachers and their first advocates of education.” She also promoted improved teacher training. “None of this works if the child comes into the classroom with a teacher who doesn’t know how to teach them,” Smart said.
Building teacher skills was also the theme of a Lubar Center program on Dec. 2, 2025, in which four Wisconsin education leaders described work to implement a 2023 state law requiring literacy education reform.
Barb Novak, director of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s Office of Literacy, said, “My heart wants every single child to be a proficient reader…My brain knows that this happens by building systems.” That process has begun, but she said widespread success will be expensive, requiring more than the $50 million the state has committed so far.
Gabriela Bell Jiménez, academic superintendent of literacy for the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), is at the heart of the work to improve the reading skills of Milwaukee children, who overall are among the most vulnerable in the country. She likened the requirements for success to making an ice sculpture from a large block of ice, saying that one had to melt the block piece by piece, carefully and patiently. “Change is difficult, but we are making progress,” she said. A recent update to the MPS reading curriculum was an expensive but important step, she said.
Rep. Robert Wittke (R-Caledonia), a member of the Wisconsin Legislature since 2019 and a former president of the Racine Unified School District Board of Education, said he would have liked a much larger appropriation — $150 million or $200 million — to support the 2023 Reading Act. He emphasized that professional development for teachers is a priority. “We have taken a step in the right direction with $50 million,” he said, although more will be needed.
Carrie Streiff-Stuessy runs a community organization, Forward Scholars, that places trained volunteer tutors in 10 schools in Milwaukee. Good results were achieved, although with a relatively small number of students. Overall, “I really see that there is change,” she said. But “without the resources it can’t happen fast enough.”
Commitment, commitment and resources were themes in both Lubar Center programs. Marquette’s commitment includes continuing to shine a spotlight on literacy issues.
https://today.marquette.edu/2026/07/families-educatorsleaders-and-money/
