Research is clear: the most powerful lever for preventing reading failure isn’t curriculum or funding, it’s effective, evidence-based instruction. Memphis has spent three decades without that lever. The North Star Project is the first initiative in the Mid-South built entirely around it.

“Teaching and teachers hold the key to the literacy of high-poverty students. Educating the teachers, and building professional contexts in which they can do their valuable work, is as serious a business as educating the young students.”
Moats & Foorman, 2008, p. 107

Early results at Compass Orange Mound show what this approach can do. Working with Memphis Teacher Residency, Orange Mound set one shared goal: 90% of Kindergartners reading proficiently.

Teachers trained in the Science of Reading, with coaches working alongside them in the classroom. Two years in, Kindergarten literacy proficiency has more than doubled.

This year’s results: coming soon.

North Star doesn’t just change outcomes inside Compass. K-3 classrooms become active training labs for pre-service and in-service teachers across the city, so the impact of better instruction reaches beyond our six campuses.