Learning Upgrade is a creative team of teachers, musicians, artists, and programmers based in San Diego, California, USA.  Our goal is to transform lives through innovative online courses featuring songs, video, games, and rewards. Teachers use our courses to accelerate learning and move students up to proficiency in reading and math. Over 2 million students of all ages and from countries across the world have completed Learning Upgrade lessons.

Shortly after our founding in 1998, the team produced the ground-breaking Reading Upgrade online course.  Through step-by-step musical lessons, the course helped a wide range of struggling readers including special needs students and English learners to make breakthroughs. We followed up that course with English Upgrade, Math Upgrade, and GED courses to address all levels from basic to diploma.

The secret to Learning Upgrade courses is a unique mix of the latest in educational research, curriculum standards, pop music and video, gaming, assessment, and progress tracking.

In 2017, we entered the Barbara Bush Foundation Adult Literacy XPRIZE competition to develop an smartphone app for literacy.  The experience transformed the Learning Upgrade program into a smartphone app that is now used by children and adults. Proven effective with thousands of low-literacy learners, the app drives “Binge Learning” where students spend hours on their own phones completing lesson after lesson.