English Islands

Founder: Erica Derrickson

There’s a literacy crisis in North America where 2 out of 3 students are below reading level, costing the economy an estimated $2.2 trillion per year. When students stay below grade reading level, they are 4 times more likely to drop out, and it takes them 4 times longer to catch up (compared to immediate intervention at age 5).

Dozens of literacy platforms are used across the continent, but they’ve failed to solve this problem because none of them actually teach how teachers teach.

That’s why we built our Automated Literacy Tutor, which teaches and assesses the way real teachers do. Instead of mindlessly tapping on screens, in English Islands students read out loud as our automated tutor listens and provides precise feedback. And while traditional assessments happen around once or twice a year (leading to many students falling behind in between assessments), on English Islands teachers access powerful data that enables them to immediately intervene the very same day a student starts to fall behind.

English Islands is a Science of Reading based Automated Literacy Tutor that boosts reading scores up to 19.3% in under four weeks while providing powerful assessment data to teachers, schools and districts. Without spending a dollar on advertising, just a few months it has spread organically to tens of thousands of students across North America and beyond.