CommonLit has a real shot at transformational change. Here’s how.
CommonLit is a nonprofit that operates a free reading program that grew to become a core staple of instruction during the COVID pandemic, now serving over 20 million teachers and students. Here’s why you should get involved now and help us make a big difference.
My first job was teaching 7th grade English at a high poverty school in rural Mississippi. I walked into a classroom that had no materials, no books, no computers, and no textbooks. And for the next two years, I spent all of my free time scrambling to build a curriculum that would meet my students’ needs. But what I found online were dinky stories not worthy of my students’ time or attention, and random lessons disconnected from what I had taught the previous week.
Years later, I moved to Boston and began teaching at a different school. On day one, I was handed a curriculum that had been perfected by the veteran teachers before me. The curriculum was packed with high-interest stories, and everything was ready-made: the lessons, the quizzes, the slide decks. It was transformative for my practice and for my students’ growth.
CommonLit is the tool I wish I had when I was a reading teacher in Mississippi: it’s easy to use, highly effective, backed by research, and free forever. I started CommonLit because I deeply believe that if something like this existed for all teachers, we could start to close the persistent opportunity gaps in our education system, in which only 20 percent of low-income students can read on grade level.
Here’s how CommonLit’s story began. In 2014, I left the classroom to chase a vision of what it would mean to improve learning outcomes for kids across the country. I incorporated CommonLit as a nonprofit, used my wedding money to pay an engineer overseas to build version 1.0 of the website, and spent the next two years writing reading lessons at my kitchen table. The story could easily have ended there. Instead, CommonLit took off, and hit its one millionth registered user as fast as Facebook (11 months). Within 4 years, CommonLit’s free online digital library in English and Spanish had been accessed in 75 percent of American public schools, the site had grown into a sophisticated and interactive educational platform, and it was even endorsed by three ministries of education in Latin America. External research showed that classrooms that use CommonLit with fidelity (10+ assignments) tend to see a 20 percent increase in the proportion of students reaching proficiency in reading, as measured by a state reading test.
Then the pandemic hit. Practically overnight, teachers around the world had to reinvent learning through Webex and Zoom. At CommonLit, we saw an unprecedented surge in website traffic, with 38k new teachers and students creating accounts per day in March as our tool became a well-known staple of remote instruction. Our engineers and support staff worked around the clock to support teachers with Distance Learning Units, Accessibility Guides, and 24/7 tech support for teachers — all offered for free through CommonLit.org.
In the middle of a global pandemic that struck the most vulnerable the hardest, CommonLit’s value proposition was extremely strong. Our reading program is free. It’s optimized for mobile devices, and accessible for struggling readers with tools like one-click translation in 37 languages, and text-to-speech read aloud. Our materials are also openly-licensed, which means that schools and districts could quickly adapt and deploy our materials without any red tape. CommonLit now serves over twenty million teachers and students globally.
Moving into next school year, we’re making a big bet on what research shows is the biggest lever to drastically improve students’ learning: full-year curriculum. Why? Curriculum defines what teachers and students do every day together, and a high-quality curriculum can redefine a child’s educational experience.
This is why I’m proud to announce the release of CommonLit 360, our brand new full-year curriculum for English Language Arts for grades 6–10, freely available now on our website. CommonLit 360 is the first of its kind, filling a major gap in the marketplace. It is comprehensive, and includes daily lessons in reading, writing, discussion, vocabulary, and grammar to span the whole academic year. It is easy to use and highly engaging for kids. The reading materials are representative and the topics are timely and relevant. It is openly-licensed, easy to adapt, and offered free of charge for schools everywhere. We developed CommonLit 360 through extensive stakeholder feedback from 50 pilot schools nationally. Finally, it’s a digitally native curriculum, which means that the technology was designed to work hand-in-hand with the content. As one North Carolina teacher put it: “I am blown away. This is the best resource in my 20 years of teaching.”
In keeping to our mission, we’re committed to keeping CommonLit 360 free and developing more content and cutting edge tools that will support teachers and help to close persistent opportunity gaps in literacy education. If you’re not an educator, there are many ways that you can help us achieve this ambitious goal:
- You can donate to us directly now, and help us raise $15 million to support 20 million students. Our model is so efficient that we can deliver it for less than $1 per student served.
- You can also help us spread awareness of our work. We’re @CommonLit on Twitter and Instagram.
- Or you can make an English teacher’s day and invite them to check out CommonLit 360!
Literacy is freedom. Let’s work together to build a system that serves all students.
