History

Origin and Vision

The Pacific Institute for Reading Excellence (PIRE) was founded as an organization providing consultation and curriculum development services to districts, schools, and state Departments of Education. Our focus has been on accelerating reading development from day one. Leveraging the Science of Learning and the Science of Reading, we have been able to positively impact students all across the State of Hawai’i and multiple partners across the country. Our vision is to advance the science of reading acceleration by providing state of the art tutoring and professional development services while continuing our Founder’s research agenda focused on identifying the small units of learning that  have the greatest impact on our pupils’ rate of learning.

Our Founder

 Dr. Meng is an avid and efficient reader (now). His interest in reading intervention began as a third grade student who was not well-acquainted with the alphabet. After his teacher recognized this issue, she arranged intensive 1:1 tutoring sessions for him after which he was able to decode text through a slow and laborious process. This led to many years of struggling through homework for many more hours than his peers in order to access the same content. While grateful for the impact of his third grade teacher’s efforts to teach him the basics of reading, he held out hope that a better alternative existed.

While studying at Central Washington University, he had the good fortune to meet and study under Dr. Elizabeth (Libby) Street, a reading scholar with a history of significant achievements and contributions to the scholarship, practice, and policy of reading instruction. Under her guidance, he learned to implement reading intervention for fluency development by conducting such intervention… on himself! In the span of a few short months, the 60 word per minute ceiling at which he had read for most of his life skyrocketed to more than 250 words per minute. He now had the experience of delivering effective intervention in this area, but still had relatively little knowledge of the science behind why such interventions worked (and no understanding that the family of interventions he had been taught had very little dissemination to the broader community).

After this experience, Dr. Meng had ‘caught the bug’ and wanted to share this experience with more people, but recognized that he lacked the formal training to get results with the multitude of challenges faced by others in their reading development. He expanded his studies at Morningside Academy’s Summer School Institute, accepting a position at the school at the end of the program. While teaching at Morningside, Dr. Meng learned to implement the Morningside Model of Generative Instruction, integrating systematic and explicit instruction in early reading skills with the practice procedures of Precision Teaching, culminating in students’ readiness to successfully tackle project-based learning in typical and rigorous classrooms.

Seeing the rapid skill development of his students at Morningside and cognizant of the impact that proficient reading skills have on an individual’s experience with academic achievement, Dr. Meng sought additional opportunities to expand his ability to impact children with reading difficulties. The University of Oregon has the third ranked Special Education program in the country for more than 20 years running, and an impressive history producing scholarship in the areas of reading intervention and scaling up evidence-based educational innovations. This combination proved appealing, and Dr. Meng left Morningside to further develop these skills in the doctoral program at UO. 

Dr. Meng received his PhD in Special Education with an emphasis on intensive reading intervention in 2019. Prior to completing his studies, he had worked as a classroom teacher, special educator, reading interventionist, instructional coach, and private tutor. Dr. Meng’s driving passion for creating and delivering the highest impact educational intervention services possible led him to conduct rigorous research on the best methods for reliably accelerating student reading development during his time in academia. He also conducted numerous implementation projects examining how to best train others to implement these practices effectively. Unfortunately, the constraints of the public higher education system and the reticence of partners in state departments of education to implement rigorous training programs or to measure student outcomes with precision, led to frustrating stagnation in the scaling of these innovations.

This stagnation within the public sector led Dr. Meng to establish PIRE. After working for many years in both private and public education, including a decade in academia conducting research and outreach to develop and refine methods for accelerating children’s reading development to the greatest extent possible, PIRE was the next clear step in advancing this work and bringing its benefits to more children and families. Despite a well-funded career in academia focused on this research and outreach, it became clear that the private sector would provide a more direct route to expanding the reach and overall impact of this work.

Dr. Meng has worked directly with over 300 children and supported the implementation of PIRE-style programs with many more through research and outreach activities over the years. Beginning with his second year teaching (his first year delivering intensive reading intervention), his pupils have made the stipulated progress 100% of the time. In programs he has supported through consultation, pupils have made the targeted growth more than 90% of the time, despite inconsistent attendance from many program participants in this second group of programs.

Key Milestones

Company Launch Date: PIRE was founded in February 2021 and initially focused on supporting partner agencies’ implementation of evidence-based reading intervention services. This work emphasized zoom-based reading intervention services in response to the COVID-19 pandemic which Dr. Meng piloted independently the year prior, and resulted in several well-regarded manuscripts and professional presentations at national and international conferences.

Growth in Offerings: Given Dr. Meng’s history providing exceptionally effective reading intervention directly to students, it was only a matter of time before PIRE expanded to deliver services in this area. Lightning Learning and Steady Support were launched in 2024. From our founding, we have offered Zoom-based tutoring and consultation services in response to the evolving needs of our clients.

Evolution of Services

Program Development: Dr. Meng began work in the private intervention delivery space working across content areas, providing individual tutoring sessions for local clients in areas ranging from reading and writing, to math and science, and test preparation for major exams like the SAT and GRE. Throughout his development as an interventionist and scholar however, he has focused more acutely on accelerating literacy development and providing high-impact intervention services in online environments. At PIRE, we focus on delivering the highest quality reading intervention possible, in an online environment accessible to families all over the country. 

Learning Guarantees and Specialization: Many tutoring organizations provide homework help or low intensity skill development without any cohesive plan for accelerating the learner’s ability to engage with grade-level content (or beyond!). Shockingly, these organizations seem to operate in a consequence free environment devoid of any kind of accountability! 

At PIRE we take a different approach. We guarantee accelerated learning for all of our pupils and offer radically accelerated learning for pupils admitted to our Lightning Learning program. As a parent himself, Dr. Meng understands the importance of peace of mind and accountability in the educational services space. If the parents on our team would not be comfortable purchasing a service, we do not offer it. We believe that your investment in your child’s education (both financial and time) is important and we honor that value by guaranteeing accelerated learning growth in accordance with each program’s terms and conditions.

Our programs operate using what is called a diagnostic-prescriptive intervention framework. This is why our placement testing process is so critical. We take the time up front to determine the specific learning each child needs in order to accelerate their reading development and then focus on building their proficiency with those targets to fluency. This process ensures well-rounded reading growth with maximal acceleration and accountability. 

Impact and Achievements

Pupil Success Stories: Our clients typically experience a year of academic growth in just two weeks’ time. We take clients from functional non-readers who are anxious about being called upon in class and transform them into the students who volunteer to read new passages from their science textbooks aloud to their class. We support students who lack the academic skills necessary for success in their elementary and middle school classes and help them develop the skills necessary to secure placements in highly competitive private schools with rigorous academic standards- without sacrificing every moment of their free time. Many of our pupils enter our services with performance in multiple areas below the fifth percentile. These pupils typically exit with scores at or above the 50th percentile across multiple domains. 

Growth in Clientele: When Dr. Meng was only offering support to local individuals for in-person support, or only offering virtual support for districts and state departments of education, our reach was limited, unable to support the multitude of families in other parts of the country desperately seeking the most successful reading acceleration programs for their own children. Since expanding into this type of virtual support with direct service to students, we have been able to eliminate this barrier to accessing premier reading intervention services for families in distant locales from our base of operations in Honolulu, HI.

Reputation for Excellence: Dr. Meng has received several awards during his career, including the 2022-23 Hubert V. Everly Endowed Scholar in Education award in recognition and support of his exemplary scholarship and service in the area of reading intervention. A former ENLIST scholar, Marit Thomas Rhoads Fellow, and SSI Scholar, Dr. Meng has been recognized for high achievement throughout his career. At PIRE, we are much more interested in the recognition provided by our pupils and their families though. Some examples of what our pupils and families say about working with us:

• “I was always able to read okay Mom, but I didn’t ever enjoy it. Now I LOVE reading!!” – A former pupil to her mother, as relayed to us by the pupil’s mother.
• “Thank you so much for all of your work with [my daughter], her reading improved so dramatically this summer. She came home from school today and told me that she volunteered to read out loud in her science class ‘because I felt it.’ I almost cried. She was so proud of herself.” – Mother of a former pupil
• “He [Dr. Meng] was really able to connect with [my son] and validate some of his feelings about ‘being left behind’ by teachers over the years in a way that others really haven’t been able to. I think [my son] really needed that. His whole attitude toward school and tutoring has changed. He’s fired up to keep improving his reading skills now! Thank you so much for connecting us with Dr. Meng!! I am so grateful for this program. – Mother of a former pupil

Innovation

PIRE has identified numerous synergistic relationships among reading sub-skills that enable us to dramatically improve the rate of reading development for our clients. By leveraging these synergies within our fluency-oriented diagnostic-prescriptive model of intervention we routinely accelerate our clients’ learning to levels others deem impossible. At PIRE we know that proficient reading skills are too important to take “no” for an answer. Instead, we find solutions to the barriers holding our clients back and then guide them through the process of building real, functional fluency with the myriad skills needed for true, fluent proficiency.

The Future of PIRE 

As we look ahead, our commitment remains clear: to continue transforming the lives of students through innovative programs, dedicated support, and a relentless pursuit of accelerating academic growth. Whether through expanding our services or deepening our impact, we remain focused on helping students reach their full potential.