In September, the St. Louis NAACP filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights over an ongoing “literacy crisis” in Missouri schools, implicating 34 St. Louis City and County school districts. According to the NAACP, Black students have been disproportionately impacted, routinely scoring lower on grade level reading assessments when compared with students from other racial demographics. The complaint adds that this data raises significant concerns over the resources, attention, and overall quality of education that Black children are receiving in the classroom, which may leave them lacking key reading and communication skills that are imperative to their success later in life.
Multiple programs have arisen in response to this highlighted educational gap. The NAACP launched its Right to Read campaign in December 2023, which involves a partnership with school districts to implement scientifically proven reading-instruction strategies for all students, with a goal to increase the number of Black third-graders readers who can meet or exceed the national average by 2030.
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In order to bolster this effort, Emerson, an automation technology and software company headquartered in Ferguson, partnered with The Opportunity Trust, a local nonprofit seeking to advance educational equity, to launch the Emerson Early Literacy Challenge. With a pledge of $1 million to be given in the form of several $20,000 grants to select public and character schools, the program will draw upon literacy research and scientifically informed teaching methods to connect teams of educators, school leaders, community members, and literacy experts. Those teams will create and implement reading curriculums for the 2024–2025 school year. In the following 2025–2026 school year, these schools will become eligible to receive up to $250,000 of additional funding as they execute their literacy plans. So far, Atlas Public Schools, Barbara C. Jordan Elementary of the School District of University City, Premier Charter School, and Commons Lane Primary School of the Ferguson-Florissant School District have been accepted as participants.
Eric Scroggins, CEO of The Opportunity Trust, stated in a press release that “The Emerson Early Literacy Challenge provides a critical opportunity to prove that with the right tools and collaboration, we can close the literacy gap and ensure all St. Louis students succeed.” Akberet Boykin Farr, Vice President of HR and Corporate Functions at Emerson, called the company’s donation a “part of our commitment to help organizations working to ensure every child has the skills they need to succeed.”
With a similar goal to address educational inequities, Top Tutors for Us, a St. Louis-based education startup launched in 2023, hones in on a specific challenge that many students face in school: standardized testing. According to founder and CEO Angelica Harris, exams like the ACT and SAT have a significant impact on students’ ability to access higher education. “Standardized test scores are super important–not just for admissions, but also for scholarships,” she says. Merit-based scholarships often require students hit a certain benchmark score on their ACT or SAT. For low-income students, those scholarships mean the difference of being able to attend college or not. However, according to Harris, “Test prep is a luxury. It’s typically only available to wealthy students.” Prospective first-generation college students or students who come from low-income families often do not have access to test-prep classes or tutors, and thus, they usually do not perform as well as students in more affluent school districts.
In high school, Harris explains she able to raise her own ACT score from a 16 to a 32, which gave her access to more than $1.5 million dollars in scholarships. “I realized from talking with college counselors that I actually had a secret sauce–almost like a methodology–to increase a students’ test score,” she says. She began freelance tutoring for ACT, SAT, and other college-readiness assessments. In her last semester of earning her Master’s in Computer Science at Washington University, she entered an accelerated entrepreneurship program, where she developed the idea to implement these strategies on a broader scale. Drawing upon research findings from the National Bureau of Economic Research that Black students’ graduation rates increase by more than 32 percent when exposed to one or more Black teachers in school, she developed Top Tutors for Us–a platform to connect students with culturally competent tutors.
“I found there was a need for Black and Brown tutors; students were really wanting tutors who reflect their background,” she says. “That was a gap in the market.” In her eyes, a culturally competent tutor does not necessarily have to come from the same racial background as the student, but they should be someone who can “understand where the student is coming from and can meet the student where they are.”
Top Tutors for Us not only offers individual tutoring but also contracts with public and charter schools throughout the U.S., including the St. Louis Public Schools district. Working in small groups with a tutor, students receive individualized feedback and homework to help them address their unique challenges on standardized tests. According to Harris, Top Tutors for Us offers a holistic approach to learning that focuses on academic skill-building in addition to testing strategies. So far, the initiative has been a success, with students raising their ACT scores by an average of 5 points by the end of the program.
“It’s a confidence-builder when students see that, ‘Oh, if I get the support and if I work really hard, I can reach my goals,’” Harris says. “It’s a great feeling when I see that these students get scholarship money to get into their dream colleges.” She hopes that the confidence that students gain after overcoming an obstacle like a standardized test will be transferable to other challenges in life, thereby preparing them for success in college and beyond.
Another education-focused initiative with a St. Louis connection, Educated Girls Rock was founded by East St. Louis native Dr. Nisha Glenn in 2012. According to Glenn, who now holds a Masters in Education from Argosy University and an honorary Doctorate and Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award from Leaders Esteem Christian Bible University, her experiences growing up and attending school in St. Louis, Missouri, motivated her to develop an outreach program for girls in similar situations. “Education was just not important in my household,” she says. “I was a girl who always felt that she didn’t have a voice. As a woman, especially a Black woman, we have to work so much harder to have our voices heard and to be valued in certain spaces.”
Although inspired by her St. Louis roots, the nonprofit now facilitates college visits and mentorship workshops for young women in the greater Atlanta area, with a message encouraging girls to take accountability for their own educational journey, advocate for themselves, and develop problem-solving strategies to cope with adversity. While Educated Girls Rock connects young women with the tools to explore higher education and career goals, Glenn says that education can come in many forms. “When we think about education, it’s a necessity. It’s something that we need, and it’s something that we have to fuel ourselves with on a daily basis,” she says. “I always tell people that you never stop learning until you stop living.”
