--- title: Going the Extra MILE to Improve Literacy date: 2026-08-18T13:22:00-04:00 author: Geoff Coyle canonical_url: "https://forward.umd.edu/news/going-the-extra-mile-to-improve-literacy" section: News --- # Going the Extra MILE to Improve Literacy *August 18, 2026* — by Geoff Coyle > Research and practice partnership between the University of Maryland, College Park and Morgan State University aims to address systemic literacy challenges in the state. By [Jessica D. Wilson](https://today.umd.edu/author/jessica-wilson) For MR Macgill, a philanthropist and native of Baltimore County, the number $15,000 is shocking. It is the average income of high school graduates from Baltimore City Public Schools six years after graduation.\* “I love Baltimore but that 15,000 number is just not right,” Macgill said. “My philanthropic efforts in Baltimore are focused on moving this number in my lifetime.” Macgill and her husband, Ho Nam, built successful careers in Silicon Valley over several decades and then launched the Nam-Macgill Family Foundation to coordinate their philanthropy. “When we had good things happen to us, we talked about what to do with that money. We said we wanted to give the majority of it away, and to help others,” she said. As Macgill researched ways to raise the average income of Baltimore City Public School graduates, she landed on literacy as a powerful tool for college readiness and retention as well as employability. Both college degrees and access to better jobs could put people on the path to a family-sustaining wage, she surmised. But both college and high-quality jobs require excellent reading skills. When she began to have conversations about improving literacy in Baltimore, she was introduced to the Maryland Initiative for Literacy and Equity (MILE), a research and practice partnership between the University of Maryland, College Park and Morgan State University to address systemic literacy challenges in the state. She was told, “MILE is the right organization to partner with when you want to do research in education. It's credible. It's effective. It's good,” Macgill said. MILE was launched in 2023 with a grant from UMD’s Grand Challenges Program, through which the university offers seed funding to support collaborative projects that address emerging societal issues. “The crux of the work of MILE is to translate the foundational research on reading and language to effective instruction and intervention approaches that occur in classrooms and communities across the state,” said DJ Bolger, associate professor in the University of Maryland College of Education and co-director of MILE. “I always want to understand what are the barriers and what are best practices across the country for students getting to the next level,” said Macgill, who decided MILE was the right partner to discern these barriers and best practices. With that in mind, she and Nam made a $730,000 gift to MILE that will allow it to launch a pilot program involving nine schools in three districts throughout Maryland to provide evidence-based teacher trainings and implementation assistance focused on teaching students, particularly adolescents, to read. Their gift supports Forward: the University of Maryland Campaign for the Fearless, a $2.5 billion fundraising initiative to increase access to a Maryland education, spur groundbreaking research and build stronger communities. Beyond financial support, Macgill also strengthened the relationship between the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) and MILE. The pilot program is being conducted in concert with MSDE's introduction of a new pre-kindergarten to 12th grade literacy policy. Until now, the state literacy policy has focused on students in pre-kindergarten to 3rd grade. MILE's pilot effort will help districts, schools and educators implement this new policy to support adolescent students as well. “MILE’s pilot is designed to both support schools across the state implementing evidence-based literacy instruction for students, but also to highlight systems and educators who are already doing the great work of teaching kids, and particularly our Black and Brown students, to make sure we all learn from each other,” said Simone Gibson, associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Morgan State University and co-director of MILE. Lindsey Allen, who leads technical support efforts for MILE and is the boots on the ground in the schools, emphasized the feedback loop between MILE and district leaders, principals and teachers that will allow for mutual learning. “Staff from MILE will collaborate with the central office in each of the three districts to determine the goals for the year and which schools MILE will work in. They will then speak with the principals and teachers of the schools to find out their needs. MILE will then propose ideas to meet those needs to the district leaders,” she said. The ideas could include evidence-based professional learning for teachers, coaching for school leaders on creating and maintaining systems that support literacy across entire schools, and convening communities of teachers to learn from each other as they test new instructional strategies for adolescent literacy. With feedback from district leadership, MILE will go back to principals and teachers to ensure plans reflect the ideas best suited to each school and classroom. MILE Executive Director Laura Groth emphasizes the complex nature of the pilot program and the all-hands-on-deck effort involved. “This work wouldn't be possible without partners like MR and Ho,” Groth said. “It's not a single white paper that's going to fix everything for everybody. It's partnering with districts to figure out where their expertise is, where their assets are, and how we leverage those into improvements. It's really hands-on and it requires a lot of expert time, and also making sure that the districts are supported and have the resources they need.” Macgill is laser-focused on the practical implications of MILE’s pilot program findings. “My hope for this gift is that we roll out programs in school districts throughout Maryland that improve literacy because lack of literacy is holding our youth back from accessing college, persisting in college and keeping jobs,” she said. She feels a responsibility to her home town because of her success and the advantages she has had that others haven’t. “We have the means. We have the will. Maybe we can't change everything, but maybe we can make enough of a difference for some people that we take that $15,000 number up,” she said. *\*The average is $15,093, according to a 2018 report by the Baltimore Education Research Consortium, a research-to-practice partnership between Morgan State University, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore City Public Schools and other Maryland universities.*