Madison Hutto Muller · Literacy Scientist & Educational Product Designer

The state of literacy

31%

of U.S. fourth-graders read at or above the NAEP Proficient level. Four in ten read below Basic.

The question isn't only whether students learn to read. It's whether we help them understand how language actually works. That's where the work begins.

Grade 4 reading achievement

40%

29%

31%

Below Basic Basic At / above Proficient

Source: National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2024 Reading Assessment, Grade 4.

Reading isn't memorization. It's language, and language can be designed, taught, and built.

What I believe

Language is a system. It can be taught.

01
Language is a system, not a list to memorize.
02
Morphology is the bridge between phonics and comprehension.
03
Vocabulary is teachable when students see how words are built.
04
Reading is reasoning. Meaning is constructed, not collected.
05
Every child deserves access to the structure of language.

Words are built, not memorized, explore one

The model · a MorphoMinds framework

The Morphology Bridge.

Most instruction teaches decoding, then hopes comprehension follows. The span between them is word structure, and it can be taught directly.

Decoding

Phonemes, letters, and the sounds words make. Necessary, but not sufficient.

The bridgeMorphology

prefixrootsuffix

Meaning-bearing parts that turn sound into sense, and let readers solve unfamiliar words on their own.

Comprehension

Vocabulary, knowledge, and understanding of increasingly complex text.

Meet Madison

She didn't set out to build a company. She set out to answer a question.

For fifteen years, Madison taught readers who had been told they were the problem. They weren't. They had never been shown how language actually works, how words are built from parts that carry meaning.

That question, why do so many capable students struggle to read?, became a body of work: curriculum, assessment, a student platform, and the professional learning around it. She built MorphoMinds® because the coherent system she needed didn't yet exist.

Read her story →

By the numbers