Kelly Butler

Kelly Butler is the Chief Executive Officer of the Barksdale Reading Institute (BRI). The Institute’s literacy work encompasses early childhood and parenting for school readiness, professional development for PK-3 teachers and literacy coaches, improving teacher preparation for early literacy instruction, and developing literacy leaders.

Kelly spearheaded BRI’s development of The Reading Universe©, a detailed scope and sequence for training teachers on how to deliver sequential, systemic, explicit reading instruction (readinguniverse.org). She 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, Kelly holds a Bachelor’s degree in Special Education from The University of Alabama 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, the State Reading Panel, and the Governor’s Task Force on Educator Workforce Development. She is a founding member of the Higher Education Literacy Council of Mississippi, a founding member of the Affinity Group of Education Grantmakers, a member of the Advisory Board for the Southeast Regional Educational Lab (SE/REL), a board member of Springboard to Opportunity, and a national advisory board member for First Book. 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 Institute, A Path Forward: Bringing the Science of Reading to Teacher Preparation and Licensure, and a twenty-member national team of reading experts to review the teacher preparation programs in a neighboring state. Kelly lives in Jackson with her husband, Thorne. They have five daughters.