Interview w/ Kelly Butler

Kelly Butler is the Chief Executive Officer of The Barksdale Reading Institute (BRI). The Institute’s literacy work encompasses early childhood, parenting, professional development for teachers, teacher preparation, and developing literacy leaders.

Ms. Butler is the author of two statewide studies and developed a subsequent statewide initiative to improve teacher preparation programs focused on early literacy instruction in Mississippi’s 15 public and private universities. 

A former high school teacher in the Greenwich, Connecticut Public Schools, Ms. Butler holds a bachelor’s degree in Special Education and a master’s degree in Administration, Planning and Social Policy from Harvard University. She served by appointment to the Governor’s Task Force on Teacher Preparation for Early Literacy Instruction and the State Reading Panel and, most recently, the Governor’s Task Force on Educator Workforce Development. 

Kelly has leveraged the Institute’s successful track record to initiate several multi-organization and multi-state initiatives, including The Big Dippers Short Course in the Science of Reading for Teach For America’s National Summer Institute, The Path Forward: Bringing the Science of Reading to Teacher Preparation Programs and Licensure, and a twenty-member national team of reading experts to review the teacher preparation programs in a neighboring state. 

Kelly is frequently called upon to tell the story of Mississippi’s literacy challenges and successes, and as more states are responding to the literacy instruction crisis, BRI has provided consultation to a number of legislative and philanthropic groups from various states.

Kelly is the recipient of The Reading League’s 2021 Benita Blachman award, for advancing evidence to practice.

Ms. Butler lives in Jackson, Mississippi with her husband, Thorne. They have five daughters.

Further Resources and Kelly’s Picks:

• Barksdale Reading Institute
• Reading Universe
• Parents for Public Schools
• Emily Hanford’s APM Reports
• The Hunt Institute
• Reach Out and Read
• The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
• Travels with Charley; In Search of America by John Steinbeck
• Books by Wallace Stegner
• The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
• Middlemarch by George Eliot