A psychologist, Clay studied education, and realized there is a time where it’s most important to intervene with kids who had trouble reading: before the end of the first grade.
That directly contradicted conventional wisdom, which was kids would “catch on” by themselves in the second or third grade. Many didn’t. Clay’s program, Reading Recovery, spread fast from her native New Zealand. “She was by far the most important champion of the idea that reading problems could be identified and addressed with young children,” said Timothy Shanahan, president of the International Reading Association. “She found that she could catch a lot of these kids up and keep them from falling behind.”
Most importantly, studies of the program shows it works. Clay died April 13 in a hospice in Auckland, New Zealand. She was 81.