LITERACY FOR ALL
Our Mission
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At Literary Academy Collective (LAC) we believe access to literacy is the most pressing Civil Rights issue in New York City. Our mission is to build and support a network of NYCPS schools to allow struggling readers achieve academic success by bringing culturally relevant, structured literacy to students at the intersection of race, poverty, and disability.
We are partnering with schools, families, community-based organizations, and institutes of higher education to build a replicable school model, engage in district support and training for teachers, and educate families in literacy awareness and advocacy
Our goal is to break the cycle of illiteracy for students with dyslexia, LBLDs, and other struggling readers.
​Our Work
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​Our first school, PS 642 South Bronx Literacy Academy (SBLA), opened in fall 2024 as the first district public school in the country specifically designed to support students with dyslexia.
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Separately, in collaboration with the Windward Institute, LAC partners with NYCPS districts and schools, to mount structured literacy pilots by providing in-depth professional development, mentoring and coaching in proven structured literacy programs with NYCPS teachers.
What is Structured Literacy?
Structured literacy is an approach to teaching oral and written language. It's based on the science of how kids learn to read based on decades of research.
"The body of work referred to as “the science of reading” is not an ideology, a philosophy, a political agenda, a one-size-fits-all approach, a program of instruction, or a specific component of instruction. It is the emerging consensus from many related disciplines, based on literally thousands of studies, supported by hundreds of millions of research dollars, conducted across the world in many languages. These studies have revealed a great deal about how we learn to read, what goes wrong when students don’t learn, and what kind of instruction is most likely to work the best for the most students."
Dr. Louisa Moats
What is dyslexia?
"Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge."
