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Cornerstone Literacy (initially the “Cornerstone Program”) was established by the New York Institute for Special Education in 1999, in response to the Institute’s expanded mission to help children with learning needs other than blindness and visual impairment and a growing body of evidence that building “basic literacy skills” was the most important goal for education.

Working initially through a partnership with the University of Pennsylvania, Cornerstone began its work in 11 schools in five districts in the 2000-01 school year. To date, Cornerstone has worked in 60 schools in 14 school districts across the country.

The CL model is currently being implemented in 40 elementary schools in two districts (20 each) – Springfield (MA) Public Schools and Muscogee County (GA) School District – with immediate plans for expansion to five additional schools in each district in 2009-10, and complete district-wide scale up within five years.

In 2009, the Institute’s Board of Trustees conducted an international search for new leadership that could help shape the initiative and build it into a sustainable enterprise with far-reaching impacts nationally. Victor Young was hired in July 2009, with a mandate to build an organization that continued to “do good,” but to do so with even greater external validation and efficacy. As he recently explained, "I see my role as helping to transform [Cornerstone Literacy] from an organization that has done classroom and even school-based work well into one that deeply transforms teaching and learning practices at scale, ultimately impacting millions of children across thousands of schools."