Arkansas is one of five states named Thursday to receive a $1 million grant for incorporating "high-impact" tutoring into the school day in the coming 2023-24 school year.
Accelerate, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for making tutoring a standard feature within the school day, announced the grant through its States Leading Recovery program.
The States Leading Recovery program is designed to help states adopt evidence-based tutoring models and address academic gaps by ensuring students receive effective personalized instruction, according to the grant announcement Thursday.
"In addition to the $1 million in funding, Accelerate will provide all States Leading Recovery grantees with implementation support. Arkansas' new initiative will invest a total of $2 million in scaling high-impact tutoring, as all grantees also were required to match the $1 million grant with public or philanthropic funds," according to the announcement.
Other states receiving similar grants are Colorado, Delaware, Louisiana and Ohio.
"Most states recognize that high-impact tutoring is important, but we need a handful of leading states to create model policy agendas that other states can learn from," Accelerate Chief Executive Officer Kevin Huffman said.
"We need the public sector to invest in tutoring programs that work and structure the school day so that all students have access to those programs, and we need the private sector to create products that are high-quality, scalable and easy to use. Accelerate is working on both sides of this equation with a serious sense of urgency -- millions of students can't wait 10 years for the market to evolve."
The grant, which is to provide literacy tutoring to Arkansas pupils in kindergarten through fifth grades, comes after state lawmakers in March passed the omnibus Arkansas LEARNS Act, which includes provisions for improving student literacy skills. The new law calls in part for literacy coaches to assist struggling schools, literacy screening of primary school students and retention of some third-graders who read below their grade level.
"We are thankful to the States Leading Recovery program for reviewing our application and awarding Arkansas with this generous grant to expand our existing high-impact tutoring programs," Arkansas Education Secretary Jacob Oliva said about the grant. "These additional funds will leverage resources and align with Gov. [Sarah Huckabee] Sanders' Arkansas LEARNS Act that emphasizes enhanced literacy and tutoring programs that will support student learning."
Arkansas was selected for the grant in a competitive national selection process. Accelerate announced the grant opportunity in December 2023 and received applications from nearly a dozen states.
Accelerate -- which cites studies saying the most effective tutoring is aligned to core curriculum and delivered during the school day three or more times per week -- 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.