Hello World! How We Are Turning the Page on the American Dream

Kids are capable of so much more than we think.

It’s been over 5 years since I started my last company and today, I’m announcing something new.

I’m launching Page Turner, an ambitious nonprofit startup aiming to turn the page on the American Dream. It’s a dream that any kid, no matter where they start from, can rise to any height they set their eyes on.

We are laser-focused on Kindergarten through 2nd graders who are behind in reading and helping them, within 16 weeks and for as little as $500 in donor dollars, catch up and forever change their educational, emotional, and economic future.

Let me explain why.

I’ve always believed in the fundamental American Dream. Through high and low times in our country, I’ve continued to believe. It is a belief in hope, in freedom, and in the strength and ability of mankind to have no bounds on what they can do.

But the reality is that it doesn’t just happen.

Like many people of my ilk, I believed that I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps, through hard work and focus, to the top university in the nation (go Tigers! 🐅). My success and my failure were entirely in my hands and anyone who failed to achieve such heights has only themselves to blame.

And then I got older. Then I had kids. Then I saw all the hurdles and circumstances and luck and privilege and other things that diverge our paths.

At every stage of our lives, something is helping us that’s a matter of luck or circumstance, that either is extra wind in our sails to make us go faster or a strong current against us, making us have to work twice as hard to make the same progress.

And I saw my children, blessed by the fortune they’d had, by the millions of extra words they heard as babies, by the time we had to nurture them and focus on them instead of focusing on just putting food on the table. Even just the knowledge that reading, talking, and singing to them before they were 5 would dramatically improve their ability to learn and read later in life. And I saw how by the time they were in Kindergarten, introduced to the public school system that the overwhelming majority of kids rely on to reinforce that American Dream, they were already far ahead. And many of their friends and peers were, at no fault of their parents and definitely no fault of the children themselves, were already behind.

But surely, I thought, the public school system would take these children from all sorts of backgrounds and, once they entered formalized education, guide them through, enable them to all have an equal opportunity at that American Dream.

I learned, however, that 70% of children who are behind in kindergarten, never catch up. Which is eerily close to the 70% of children who are below grade level in reading even by 5th grade. 70%. The number just sits in the bottom of my stomach. Not because they didn’t try hard. Not because of anything they did. They showed up to kindergarten and their future was already written.

How sad is that?

How sad is that for them? How sad is that for their parents? How sad is that for the American Dream?

My fortunes have gone up and down but their arc has been toward outsized prosperity. I was fortunate (and lucky) enough to build a decently successful software company, which enabled me to, when I needed it for myself and my family, step away and even retire for a few years. And in that time I reflected on how I could help in a small and a big way to ensure others could achieve that Dream.

I am convinced that the best place to start is the 70% of kids who will enter Kindergarten behind and never catch up.

So today, I’m officially launching Page Turner, to turn the page for 70% of American children.

With a small cohort of 1st graders, we’ve already seen incredible results. Through a 16 week, 2x per week, 30 minute 1-on-1 phonics and reading tutoring, we’ve helped kids go from the 25th percentile or below in reading to well above the 50th percentile, catching them up in half a year and setting them on a trajectory of success that, statistically, they would not have been able to achieve.

We are approaching this from first principles and our goal is to have the most impact for the least dollars.

Right now, we’re able to achieve these results for just $500/kid.

The impact of those $500 goes beyond the over $100 income gain per percentile improvement. This means kids who improve by 50 percentile points, like our kids do, will make $5,000 more every year for the rest of their lives, a 10x return on investment in just their first year of earning.

It’s the confidence they suddenly have when all those words on the chalkboard are no longer gibberish. It’s when they start to pay attention in school because they aren’t constantly a year behind their peers, even though every year they’re also getting a year’s worth of knowledge.

Our teachers are doing all they can. They have 20-30 kids who likely are between 1-2 years behind and 1-2 years ahead. How can they possibly help kids 4 years apart in ability? So they do what they can. They keep the train moving. But that train keeps moving and even if you’re moving as fast as the train, when you start behind you can never catch up.

We catch them up and let the train take them the rest of the way to the American Dream.

There’s much more to come, but if you’d like to help change the trajectory of the future of America, please help 1 child, 1 class, or 1 school catch up: https://www.beapageturner.com/donate

It’s the highest ROI thing you can do for America’s children.

Got more questions? Here’s some FAQs about our mission and why it takes more than sticking an app in front of a kid to solve this.