I continually get passers-by who are teachers. They most emphatically of all give a thumbs-up to the sign and say how students' poor reading skills affect their classrooms and the kids' opportunities to learn things they need.

'I don’t think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while—just once in a while—there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the word 'wisdom' mentioned!' 
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

'No skill is more crucial to the future of a child than literacy.'
― Los Angeles Times

'It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale.'
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

The lean white-haired woman (think Jimmy Carter's mother) passed my sign coming from behind me this morning but she must have seen it head-on before because she raised her slender arm with a thumb up over her head as she was just past me and hollered 'You go'.
I don't know what to say back to such people. I usually just raise the sign toward them. It says it best. It reinforces what she liked enough to commend as she walked by today.

IT'S LATE-AUGUST QUIET these days along Chambers Street where I hold my sign on weekday mornings. I think the message could change the world so I go there with it no matter. 

 
If the schools in the city really went to the mat for the kids, especially about reading, they'd pressure the city to have neighborhood library hours equal to the suburban libraries which are open till 9:00 every night and are open Sundays. Here the libraries close at 6:00 or 7:00 and are not open on Sunday. If that sounds untrue to you, it isn't. I know it seems impossible that New York City would have such meager hours.