OnYourMark Awarded $250,000 to Develop and Scale High-Impact Tutoring Models to Boost Academic Achievement for All Students

Dallas, Texas--(Newsfile Corp. - November 8, 2022) - OnYourMark, a non-profit virtual tutoring program designed to equip students in grades K-2 with foundational literacy skills, today announced it has been awarded $250,000 in competitive grant funding. OnYourMark is serving 1,200 students across multiple schools at Uplift Education in the Dallas/Fort Worth region. This funding will support OnYourMark's collaboration with the National Student Support Accelerator to understand how tutor-to-student ratios impact student learning.

The award, presented by the nonprofit organization Accelerate, is part of a broader national effort to develop and scale sustainable, cost-effective models for high-impact tutoring that boost academic achievement for all students.

"Being selected as a part of the inaugural cohort of Accelerate grantees positions OnYourMark to collaborate with other aligned organizations to ensure that the benefits of high-impact tutoring are widely available to students, families, and schools across the country. We are excited to bring a mission focused on early literacy and virtual tutoring to the table as we work to ensure quality, scalability, and increasing access," -Mindy Sjoblom, Founder and CEO, OnYourMark

The tutoring work this year includes exciting research in partnership with twelve schools at Uplift Education in Dallas and Fort Worth and the National Student Support Accelerator.

OnYourMark is one of 31 research and education partners selected to receive the award, as well as to join a community to share best practices and resources and ultimately help inform Accelerate's national research and policy agenda.

"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."

Accelerate's announcement of the inaugural cohort of grantees follows a competitive national selection process. In spring 2022, Accelerate, as part of its launch, released a Call to Effective Action to recruit partners to help it design, launch, and scale high-impact tutoring efforts and to build a community committed to impact and to shaping the evidence base for tutoring. Partners interested in the initiative were asked to first submit a letter of intent outlining their high-level vision. Following review of more than 200 letters by a panel of diverse experts, finalists were selected and invited to submit a full-length proposal. Beyond the inaugural cohort of grantees, Accelerate will continue to make additional investments in tutoring innovation over time.

Learn more about OnYourMark's vision on its website.

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

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About OnYourMark

OnYourMark Education is an individualized high impact virtual tutoring service which exists to ensure that all students have access to high quality foundational skills instruction and become thriving readers. OnYourMark partners with schools as a supplement to the literacy instruction already in place, ensuring that all students have access to individualized lessons on their learning to read journeys. OnYourMark started tutoring in 2021 where early pilots showed that the number of students reading on grade level tripled across the school year. OnYourMark is currently serving 1,500 K-2 students in Texas and New York with a network of 175 virtual tutors.

OnYourMark is supported by Overdeck Family Foundation, the Louis Calder Foundation, Accelerate, and Charter School Growth Fund.

For more information, visit https://onyourmarkeducation.org

Press Contact:
Mindy Sjoblom
Founder and CEO
708-238-7273
msjoblom@onyourmarkeducation.org

About Accelerate

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

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

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/143464