If your child becomes a reader, 80% of the education job is already done. Over the decades, I’ve seen thousands of kids. When a kid or a parent tells me they read for hours every day and read lots of books, my immediate thought is: “No problem here.” Biology, history, business, legal documents, even a math textbook – everywhere you need to read. If you read very slowly or with great difficulty, you’re behind. But reading also develops something else: quiet cognitive focus. Even a kid reading fantasy novels for hours is learning to sit down and focus. If a kid isn’t reading, they limp through all the academic content. If they are a reader, those basic reading abilities and that cognitive focus can transfer across domains. That’s why I worry less about the kind of education a child is getting than whether they are becoming a reader.