Dacia Toll

Dacia Toll is the co-founder and co-CEO of Coursemojo, which has developed a curriculum-aligned, AI-powered teaching assistant that is leading to impressive gains in ELA achievement and teacher retention. What makes Mojo powerful is that Mojo's supports for both students and teachers are embedded in the texts, questions, and writing assignments from many of the top-rated ELA curricula (HQIM). Mojo transforms this content into highly-interactive, differentiated experiences for students (“It’s like the handout is talking to me.”). Mojo embeds many Tier 2 supports in Tier 1 by providing all students with targeted, Socratic, one-on-one and small group support. For teachers, Mojo provides real-time data visibility into every student's level of understanding for every question, class-wide trends in student misconception, suggested discussion questions, and grading/data analysis support. Mojo-supported middle schools demonstrated 5-10% point gains in ELA achievement on state tests with even greater gains for specific sub-populations (students with IEPs, students who qualified for FRL, ELL students). The results were validated in two different independent research studies – both meeting the coveted Tier 2 ESSA evidence of impact standard (which only two AI reading products have achieved). Dacia's leadership in education began in 1999, when she became the founding principal of Amistad Academy in New Haven, CT. Under Dacia's leadership, Amistad Academy posted the greatest achievement gains of any middle school in the state. Dacia then co-founded and co-led Achievement First (AF), which became one of the nation's leading charter school networks with 41 schools across the Northeast and college graduation rates that were five times peer averages. Dacia left Achievement First in July 2021 to launch Coursemojo. Dacia is a founder and current board chair of Relay Graduate School of Education and serves on the board of Teaching Lab Studio. Dacia received a BA from UNC-Chapel Hill, an MA from Oxford University, and a JD and teaching certification from Yale University.