About Tony Pedriana

Tony Pedriana is a career educator who spent the vast majority of his time educating students in Milwaukee’s inner city.  In his varying roles as teacher, school administrator and mentor to principals, his focus remained steadfastly on meeting the needs of children most at risk of reading failure.  Eventually, he came to a realization that the instructional methods used most frequently lacked some essential elements, and that these omissions had a disproportionate impact on poor and minority children, children with learning disabilities and those for whom English is a second language.  He had a difficult time understanding why those so bent on serving children found so little unanimity on their behalf. 

Pedriana’s retirement in 2005 gave him an opportunity to investigate these matters on his own in the hope of discovering a unifying message about which the reading community might coalesce.  Leaving Johnny Behind represents the culmination of that effort.