Mogul’s Millions Make Reading Difference For Kids

Five years ago, Netscape founder Jim Barksdale and his late wife, Sally, “put up $100 million of their own money to improve ‘preliteracy’ skills for preschoolers and reading for children in kindergarten through third grade in Mississippi. The Oxford-based institute they created provides books and teacher training for some of the state’s neediest and lowest-performing schools. Barksdale chose his brother, attorney Claiborne Barksdale, to run the institute, with strict instructions that he wanted results. An independent analysis recently confirmed the program was making a statistically significant difference.”