Hello, I’m Munro Richardson.
I’ve worked in the social sector for over 20 years. Much of my work has focused on education. I served as vice president of education at a large private foundation. I helped start up a college access program and an urban college prep charter school.
My day job is leading an early literacy initiative in Charlotte, North Carolina. A good part of this work involves making high-quality academic research accessible and actionable by people who run programs and teach kids to read. I am a data geek and a research nerd. I read academic papers like other people read fiction.
You can read more about me on LinkedIn.
What is Unconstrained Kids?
“The big prize is to discover a new fractal bud. You notice a crack in the surface of knowledge, pry it open, and there's a whole world inside.”
– Paul Graham, “How to Do Great Work”
In August 2023, I had an email exchange with a professor about some literacy research I was investigating. He used an unfamiliar term to describe a literacy skill: unconstrained. By this point, I had read countless academic papers on early literacy over the previous eight years. But this term was completely new to me. Unconstrained. I quickly learned that unconstrained is used by academics to describe literacy skills that are slow-growing. This is in contrast with literacy skills that develop relatively quickly and completely, which are referred to as constrained skills.
At first, I thought that was all there was. As I dug into the academic literature, however, I discovered a bigger world. The original academic paper on constrained and unconstrained reading skills was published by Scott Paris in 2005. Over the next 20 years, researchers built upon this framework, adding mathematics and executive function skills. With over 1,200 citations on Google Scholar, the 2005 paper is one of the most influential in education research published in the past two decades.
Academic researchers advocate for more focus on building kids’ unconstrained skills. They’ve used the constrained skill framework to evaluate the impact of Pre-K programs, activities at home that impact classroom achievement, and the effectiveness of educational apps. They’ve called for assessments, curricula, and interventions that more explicitly incorporate unconstrained skills. These insights have not yet made their way into mainstream approaches or discussion about education. As I write on the Ides of March 2025, I cannot find mentions of constrained and unconstrained skills in major reports, presentations, or webinars about improving reading and math achievement.
The Learning Sciences Exchange at the New America Foundation aptly describes this challenge:
Breakthroughs and insights now emerge regularly from the learning sciences. Yet they are slow to make their way into schools, family support systems, and the social consciousness in positive ways. Too often, new findings on how children learn are left to wilt in inaccessible academic journals, contorted by splashy headlines, or too complicated to lead to real policy changes.
This Substack is part of my effort to bring a powerful 20-year-old insight from academia into the mainstream. Outside of my day job, I research and write about skills. I am particularly focused on the powerful role of slow-growing unconstrained skills. I am working to integrate academic research on the nature and nurture of skills, how kids learn to read and think mathematically, and how ecological systems support or inhibit skill development. This will eventually result in a book on how to build and repair kids’ unconstrained skills.
My focus (the “dependent variable”) is improvement of PreK-12 reading and math achievement. I intentionally use the term “kids” so that people and organizations outside of the schoolhouse (where “students” learn) know that I am talking to you, too. I will occasionally share what I’m learning on this Substack. Everything here is a work-in-progress. The information is based upon a selection of the research I’ve curated so far. Despite my best efforts, some of this information may be incomplete or inaccurate. I will provide updates and corrections when needed. I provide citations where appropriate. As much as possible, I attempt to avoid plagiarism from source material. I conducted this research and wrote the information here on my own. I did not use AI to compose any drafts of this material.
What can you do with this?
If you run, fund, or assist organizations that teach or serve kids, this Substack is for you. I aim to provoke conversation, raise questions, and stimulate inquiry. I hope to make the familiar topics of reading and math achievement a bit unfamiliar. I hope you will ask new questions about your student data and inquire whether and how your programs help kids to build both constrained and unconstrained skills.
This Substack currently provides an introductory description of WHAT constrained and unconstrained skills are and WHY this distinction matters. It does not address HOW to develop, improve, or repair unconstrained skills in particular. I believe what I have found so far – supported by rigorous research and high-quality data – to be important enough to share with you while I continue my larger research project.
Let me know if there are studies, programs, or interventions you think I should know about. I’m open to comments, suggestions, or alternative viewpoints.
Thanks for your interest and your efforts to improve reading and math achievement for kids.
Last updated: March 15, 2025
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