$250,000 National Grant to Support High-Dosage Tutoring for More Local Students
(Memphis, TN) – Literacy Mid-South is proud to announce that it has been awarded a competitive grant of $250,000 from Accelerate, a national nonprofit dedicated to scaling high-dosage tutoring through policy, research, and practice. This grant is part of Accelerate's Call to Effective Action (CEA) program, which aims to support innovative tutoring providers in launching, researching, and expanding classroom-ready programs to help students recover from learning disruptions caused by the pandemic.
Accelerate’s Call to Effective Action program, launched in 2021, focuses on scaling personalized learning solutions. “The goal of our Call to Effective Action grant program is to help scale personalized learning solutions to support more kids with learning recovery in the wake of pandemic-related school disruptions,” said Nakia Towns, Chief Operating Officer of Accelerate. “High-dosage tutoring has real potential to address learning recovery in a targeted way, but there are still some gaps in the research that are yet to be explored. We’re excited to help the 2024 cohort of CEA grantees build stronger evidence and begin to fill some of those gaps.”
Literacy Mid-South was selected for its proven ability to scale and commitment to building evidence of program effectiveness. The organization’s Tutor901 program, introduced as an intervention in response to pandemic-related learning disruptions in Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) and local charter schools, showed meaningful student achievement growth, helping students progress toward grade-level proficiency.
The grant funding will be used to continue supporting Tutor901, with an expansion to Millington Municipal Schools (MMS). Additionally, students at MMS will participate in a randomized control study to measure the effectiveness of high-impact tutoring, providing valuable data to further build the body of research for high-dosage tutoring models.
"This grant from Accelerate allows us to continue and expand our efforts to ensure every student in our community has access to high-quality, personalized tutoring," said Sam O'Bryant, CEO of Literacy Mid-South. "With the support of Accelerate and the TN Department of Education, we are committed to addressing learning recovery and helping students regain lost ground due to the pandemic."
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About Literacy Mid-South
The mission of Literacy Mid-South is to provide literacy resources to learners of all backgrounds and ages. The breadth of this work encompasses a number of programs and goals, all working towards one end: 100% literacy in the Mid-South. Through a combination of strategies, including collaborative action, capacity building, resource distribution, and tutoring services, LMS works to ensure learners across the lifespan have access to the literacy resources they need to live their best lives. Learn more about Literacy Mid-South and the organization’s programs here.
About Accelerate
Accelerate is a national nonprofit organization that serves as a central hub for proliferating effective, evidence-based academic interventions. By bridging gaps between research, policy, and practice, Accelerate aims to embed proven high-dosage tutoring programs into public schools now and for the long term.
Accelerate funds innovation in schools, supports high-quality research, and advances a federal and state policy agenda to support this work. Accelerate was incubated and launched by America Achieves in 2022, and is a lead technical assistance partner to the National Partnership for Student Success (NPSS). In its initial years of work, Accelerate has made grants to over 60 programs across 29 states and has funded and supported over 65 research studies, including 21 randomized control trials.
Accelerate is supported by Citadel founder and CEO Kenneth C. Griffin; Arnold Ventures; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the Overdeck Family Foundation; and the Walton Family Foundation.
For more information, visit http://www.accelerate.us.