Building better readers in South Dakota

Guest column by Dr. Joseph Graves, South Dakota Education Secretary

Growing up on the eastern edge of Sioux Falls in the 1960s was, not to put too fine a point on it, idyllic. And it’s not just that old age depicts the entire calendar of one’s youth as Halcyon Days. Mine really were Halcyon Days. 

We were a middle-class family of five boys, a father who taught junior high mathematics and a stay-at-home mom. Mom doted on …