Rachael Garnick is the Pennsylvania Coalition Manager at Teach Plus PA, where she leads the Pennsylvania Literacy Coalition (PLC) in advocating for comprehensive, evidence-based literacy policies and sustainable state investment. A proud Philadelphia native, Rachael brings a deep commitment to service and educational equity to her work. Under her leadership, the PLC mobilizes educators, families, and community partners to advance systemic change through policy advocacy, grassroots organizing, and signature events including the Pennsylvania Literacy Summit and the statewide Day of Action. In its first year, the Coalition helped advance landmark statewide literacy reform, elevating early literacy as a core education priority in Pennsylvania and securing new state investment in evidence-based reading instruction.
Rachael began her career in education as a Teach For America corps member in New York City, where she taught early childhood and elementary students and witnessed firsthand the profound consequences of the literacy crisis. Discovering the science of reading transformed her teaching practice and her students’ outcomes,and strengthened her belief that literacy is foundational not only to educational equity, but to informed civic participation and a healthy democracy. This conviction now fuels her mission to ensure every Pennsylvania student receives high-quality literacy instruction and every educator has the training and support needed to deliver it. She is a graduate of Haverford College, where she studied Political Science and Peace, Justice, and Human Rights, and of Relay Graduate School of Education. She later served as a Fulbright Scholar in the Canary Islands of Spain, where she taught English as a Second Language and led bilingual programming at the region’s largest public elementary school. She also serves on the steering committee for Read by 4th, Philadelphia’s citywide early literacy campaign housed at the Free Library of Philadelphia. In her free time, Rachael enjoys playing tennis, tracking her latest reads on Goodreads, planning her next hiking adventure, hosting Shabbat, and spending time with her cats, Leo and Ollie.
