Following Competitive Process, Accelerate Selects 31 State Education Agencies, School Districts,
Tutoring Providers Among Partners to Join National Community of Practice,
Build Evidence Base for Cost-Effective, Sustainable Learning Solutions

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Accelerate, a new nonprofit organization that seeks to embed high-impact tutoring programs in public schools, today announced it has selected 31 education and research partners to receive over $10 million in grant funding to develop and scale sustainable, cost-effective models for high-impact tutoring that boost academic achievement for students. In addition to supporting innovative programs, the grants target research focused on specific barriers that have previously stood in the way of making high-impact tutoring affordable, accessible, and sustainable. Grantees are working in 28 states across the country.

The announcement comes six months after the organization’s formal launch, at which U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona encouraged public schools to adopt high-impact tutoring models, and days after newly released National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores showed major declines in academic performance of American schoolchildren.

“We know that good tutoring programs work — partly because well-off families have used them to boost student success for generations. And we know that those same programs can be a powerful tool to close racial and economic opportunity gaps when we give less privileged students the same access. What we haven’t figured out yet is how to make high-impact tutoring available for everyone,” said Accelerate CEO Kevin Huffman. “With districts deciding how to spend one-time federal funds to combat the effects of the pandemic, solving that challenge has never been more urgent.”

Research has found well-designed tutoring programs to be one of the most effective educational interventions. However, the best-proven models are labor-intensive, making them difficult and expensive to expand. Accerelate’s grants take aim at that tension.

Accelerate’s grantees, which represent school districts, tutoring providers, nonprofit organizations and others across the country, will receive financial and operational support to design, implement, and scale innovative tutoring strategies; join a national community in which they can share best practices and resources; and help inform Accelerate’s national research and policy agenda on tutoring. All grantees will participate in formal research to assess program effectiveness and to explore research questions that will shape the design of future tutoring efforts.

“The inaugural cohort of grantees represents some of the most innovative organizations in the space,” said Dr. Janice Jackson, Executive Chair of Accelerate and CEO of Hope Chicago. “From tutoring models that are virtual, to models that are embedded in the traditional school day, to models that focus on specific subjects or student populations, each grantee has a unique approach to high-impact tutoring, but all share a common goal of putting forward strategies that are cost effective, that can be scaled over time and that help close achievement gaps, particularly for our most vulnerable learners.”

Among the grantees is Reading Partners, a non-profit organization that provides foundational literacy tutoring to students, and has proven successful through randomized controlled trials. The non-profit received a grant to implement and study its new Reading Partners Connects model, a virtual tutoring program based on the successful in-person model.

“We are excited to be part of Accelerate’s new initiative to embed high-impact tutoring in public education,” said Adeola Whitney, CEO of Reading Partners. “High-impact tutoring is proven to increase student achievement and help close opportunity gaps. While much research has examined the positive effects of in-person tutoring, we are thrilled to be partnering with Accelerate to examine the impact of our Reading Partners Connects online tutoring program which we think can be a game-changer in advancing educational equity at scale.”

Among the other grantees:

• Guilford County Schools is partnering with higher education institutions, including local historically black colleges and universities, community members, and high school students to implement in-person tutoring programming for the lowest 20th percentile students in the district. The program will support English language arts, math, and science across all grades.
• Deans for Impact will convene educator preparation programs that are mobilizing teacher candidates to serve as tutors in high-need schools and will develop a policy framework for strengthening the tutor-to-teacher pipeline.
• Black Hills Special Services Cooperative will provide tutoring to high-need, high-poverty schools and families, serving primarily the Native American community on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.
• Once will partner with school districts in Washington DC, Cleveland, and Hawaii to train paraprofessionals to provide early literacy tutoring based on the science of reading to students in grades K and 1.

The announcement of the inaugural cohort of grantees follows a competitive national selection process. In spring 2022, Accelerate released a Call to Effective Action to recruit partners to design, launch, and scale high-impact tutoring efforts and to build a community committed to impact. A diverse panel of experts reviewed more than 200 letters of intent and invited finalists to submit a full-length proposal. All 31 grantees receiving awards are working with students and schools in this academic year.

View a list of all grantees and a summary of their tutoring models.

Accelerate is a nonprofit organization, incubated and launched by the national nonprofit America Achieves, that seeks to embed high-impact tutoring programs into public schools now and for the long term. Launched in April 2022 with an initial fund of $65 million, Accelerate funds and supports innovation in schools, launches high-quality research, and advances a federal and state policy agenda to support this work.

Accelerate is leading efforts to improve practice on multiple fronts, including as a lead technical assistance partner to the National Partnership for Student Success (NPSS). The NPSS is a joint partnership of more than 100 organizations, The Department of Education, AmeriCorps, the Johns Hopkins Everyone Graduates Center to launch a new coalition formed to expand high-quality tutoring, mentoring, and other evidence-based support programs, with the goal of ensuring an additional 250,000 adults serve in these roles over the next three years.

Accelerate is supported by Kenneth C. Griffin, founder and chief executive officer of Citadel; Arnold Ventures; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and the Overdeck Family Foundation.

For more information, visit http://www.accelerate.us.

SOURCE Accelerate