International outreach · Flagship initiative
The Negev Bi-Literacy Initiative: Teaching Negev children to read in Hebrew and English — together, from the very beginning.
One method, two languages, in schools across the Negev and beyond. Launching at Israel EdTech Week in partnership with:
Limited Grants Available — APPLY NOW!
What a school receives
Everything a school needs to teach literacy in two languages well, for every class from kindergarten through grade six, at no cost to the school.
Virtual professional development for all teachers
Continuous Virtual implementation coaching
Progress Monitor and ongoing data reporting
CAPIT Reading in Hebrew and English for every student and educator through our partnership with Capit Learning
School recruitment and on-the-ground support through our partnership with MindCET
We look for two things in a school: a leader with a vision for change, and staff who are excited to try something bold and new to impact student outcomes.
Rolling Review • Limited Grants Available
What if Your Students Aren't Struggling with Reading—But Struggling with the Method?
School spending on literacy increases every year. Teachers are working harder than ever. And yet most students still aren't reading proficiently.
The issue isn't effort. It's the method. Traditional reading programs point to a letter and tell students, "This letter makes the sound…" But letters don't make sounds—people do! CAPIT Reading’s unique approach flips the model: it starts with the speech sounds students already produce every day, then shows them how those sounds are written. With our Linguistic Phonics (Sound-to-Print) method, English stops feeling random and becomes a logical, crackable code. This grant exists to help schools make that switch.
Limited Grants Available — APPLY NOW!
Grant Benefits
The CAPIT Reading Grant provides schools with access to the CAPIT Reading curriculum—an evidence-based, Linguistic Phonics curriculum for grades P–6, built for all three tiers of instruction.
A Complete Solution
One curriculum for core instruction, intervention, and special education—replacing a patchwork of disconnected tools.
Actionable Data
Real-time progress monitoring gives teachers and administrators mastery data, time on task, and student growth—immediately.
Easier to Implement
Teachers are up and running in four hours of training. Scripted lessons and built-in support mean consistency from classroom to classroom.
Prevention, Not Just Intervention.
A multisensory, engaging approach that catches students early, so you spend less time remediating later.
These schools made the switch…
“What sets it apart is how quickly you see results. Most curriculum changes take time. With CAPIT, we see movement in our progress monitoring and NWEA data almost immediately. We haven’t found any other resource that supports true Sound-to-Print instruction the way CAPIT does.”
“It works like magic.”
“Typically, most students enter kindergarten without knowledge of letter sounds. Our students finish kindergarten being able to read. In the Archdiocese of San Antonio — 35 elementary schools — we’ve been the top school in NWEA MAP assessments for four years running.”
Who Should Apply?
Any school ready to move on from a foundational literacy approach that isn't delivering—and to give teachers a system that's both more effective and easier to run. Whether you're rethinking core Tier 1 instruction, strengthening intervention, or supporting special education students, this grant is your funded starting point.
Limited Grants Available — APPLY NOW!
Simple to Apply.
Fast to Launch.
GET STARTED IN 4 STEPS:
Step 1 — Apply for the Grant (5 minutes)
Step 2 — Learn About CAPIT (60-minute overview of the platform and method)
Step 3 — Receive and Accept Your Grant
Step 4 — Roster, Train Teachers (about 4 hours), and Begin
Most schools are up and running in days, not weeks — because Sound-to-Print isn't just more effective, it's easier to implement.
How our grant works
SPARK Funds the Teachers
Our grants cover teacher professional development and implementation coaching.
CAPIT Grants the Curriculum
Capit Learning provides platform access to CAPIT Reading through its own grant program, the CAPIT Reading Grant.
A Single Application
Schools fill out one application through SPARK Literacy Foundation, and it covers licenses, training, and coaching.
SPARK is an independent nonprofit founded by the founders of Capit Learning. Capit Learning grants access to the CAPIT Reading program; SPARK funds the teachers.
Why it matters
Israel's reading scores are falling. In PIRLS 2021, Israel scored 510 — a 20-point fall against a global average decline of 8, leaving it 30th among OECD countries. Among Hebrew-speaking students, the drop was 28 points. The share of children reading at a high level fell by 11%; the share reading at a low level rose by 8%. Israel's Education Ministry put it plainly: reading has returned to where it stood in 2001.
None of that is because Hebrew is hard to read. Pointed Hebrew is one of the most transparent writing systems in the world — the vowel points make sound-to-symbol correspondence almost perfectly regular, far more consistent than English.
This is a method problem, not a language problem.
Israeli schools don't begin teaching children to read English until third grade. Yet English is economic infrastructure in Israel: in 2025, high-tech accounted for 18.3% of GDP and 58% of all exports. In wealthier communities, families fill the gap with private tutors and enrichment programs. In the periphery, most families can't, so their children fall furthest behind. It doesn't have to be this way. Research shows that young children can start reading in English early without hurting their Hebrew. Phonological awareness and decoding transfer between languages, so reading skills built in one language can help build skills in the other. Reading in Hebrew makes English easier, and reading in English strengthens Hebrew. The two languages support each other. They don't compete.
Figures from PIRLS 2021, published by the IEA in May 2023. Hebrew-speaker and achievement-band figures via Ynet; OECD ranking via The Jerusalem Post. Economic figures from the Israel Innovation Authority's 2026 State of High-Tech report. On cross-linguistic transfer: Melby-Lervåg & Lervåg (2011), Journal of Research in Reading 34(1), 114–135.
A pilot in Yerucham
In spring 2026, first graders in a Yerucham elementary school began reading English two years earlier than Israeli schools normally do. In a short pilot, during a war, every child showed growth, and some began reading independently.
They are six-year-olds in a development town in the desert. Most had never seen an English letter. Their teachers had never taught reading this way before, and they learned the method while the country was at war. Within weeks, the children were sounding out words in a language the system says they should not meet until third grade.
That is the whole idea, and it is why we are not waiting. Every year a child spends waiting is a year spent behind.
Hear from the lead teacher implementing CAPIT in Shachar School.
Why the Negev
The Negev holds the widest range of circumstances in Israel — Bedouin, Arab, Gaza-envelope, and Jewish schools across the resource spectrum — at a scale small enough to work with closely. From kibbutz schools to some of the most under-resourced Bedouin communities in the country.
Yerucham | Ramat Negev | Meitar | Tel Sheva | Neve Midbar
We work there with MindCET, an Israeli educational innovation organization based in the Negev, born out of CET. MindCET recruits the schools and is our partner on the ground; its Negev EduLAB is built to run exactly this kind of matched-school, field-measured initiative.
FOR FUNDERS
Adopt a school in the Negev
Every adoption funds teacher training, teacher stipends, and implementation coaching for a school's kindergarten-through-sixth-grade classrooms.
You'll know your school. Every adopter is matched to a school. As schools join the initiative, you can choose yours, or we'll assign you one, and you'll hear what the teachers are teaching and what the children are learning.
While our 501(c)(3) determination is pending, gifts to SPARK Literacy Foundation are received through our fiscal partner, Friendship Circle of Los Angeles, a registered 501(c)(3). Your receipt will come from Friendship Circle of Los Angeles, thanking you for supporting this project. Gifts are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.