The RSVBee story
RSVBee was a wildcard invitational program that Scripps ran from 2018 to 2019. It was designed to give spellers from unsponsored or highly competitive regions a path to the national bee they otherwise wouldn't have. Independent research confirmed that it worked. Then it was cut, and no replacement has followed. This page tells that story, and what it means for the spellers affected today.
Scripps created the RSVBee program to address these issues. RSVBee was put on hiatus in 2020 when the bee was cancelled and has not returned, and no alternate solution has been put in place. Six years later, every one of the reasons Scripps gave for building it still exists.
The purpose of Every Speller Counts is to inform spellers, their families and educators about the current structural inequities and to implore Scripps to do the long-overdue work of correcting them.
In December 2017, Scripps publicly acknowledged that the path to Bee Week was not consistent or equal across the country. A year later, in its 2018 Fairness Infographic, Scripps named three specific areas of inequity:
“Different numbers of programs per state: Georgia has one sponsored program while Ohio has 18. To make it to the national finals, a speller from Georgia has to be the best of 1,300 schools.”
In 2026, Georgia now serves 1,534 schools and sends two spellers, a ratio of 767 schools per seat. That is an improvement from 1,300:1 in 2018, and still the worst ratio in the country.
“Areas with no sponsor: While many areas have local sponsors who pay for trips to Bee Week, some do not. In California, Glenn County borders Colusa County, but one is sponsored and the other is not.”
In 2026, this is still the case. More than 1,500 schools lack a local sponsor and are routed through Scripps' multi-state catch-all regions.
“Varying levels of competition: Many large cities have increasingly competitive programs. In highly competitive areas, spellers can spend each year of eligibility coming in second place behind the same speller.”
In 2026, more than 20 regional bees still require spellers to compete against 200 or more schools per national seat. Large cities like Charlotte, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, and New York remain among the most crowded.
Scripps National Spelling Bee, RSVBee Fairness infographic (2018)
Scripps' answer to these inequities was the RSVBee program, an alternate path designed to give qualified spellers from underrepresented regions a chance to compete at nationals.
What Scripps said in 2018
We believe the National Finals are as fair as possible, but the path to Bee Week is not a consistent or equal journey. Students in a sponsored county have a shot at advancing to the National Finals while students in a neighboring county without a sponsor have no shot. The sizes of sponsored regions also are not created equal, only one speller in all of Georgia can currently advance to D.C., while Ohio sends 18 spellers.
There are many spellers who have worked diligently and triumphed locally and yet because of the restrictions of the program, they don't get their opportunity on the national stage. RSVBee is a way to bridge the opportunity gap for spellers and more completely fulfill our mission to have a positive impact on the lives of children.
Scripps called it "our sincere effort to take a step toward fairness."
What happened
In 2018, more than 230 spellers competed at the national bee through RSVBee. The champion that year, Karthik Nemani, was an RSVBee speller. He had finished third at his regional bee, the Dallas Sports Commission. The Dallas Sports Commission's two direct qualifiers, Naysa Modi and Abhijay Kodali, finished second and tied for third at the national bee.
The following year, the Dallas Sports Commission sent three spellers to the national bee, one more than the year before.
In 2019, 285 spellers competed at the national bee through RSVBee, 43 more than the previous year.
For 2020, Scripps had planned to make RSVBee meaningfully more accessible. The published 2020 RSVBee fact sheet included up to 18 need-based financial aid packages for families qualifying for free or reduced-price school lunch. Each package would have waived the $1,500 participation fee and covered six nights of hotel, a $500 meal stipend, and a $500 travel stipend. The 2020 bee was cancelled before those packages were awarded.
What the Research Showed
Before RSVBee, the distribution of Scripps National Spelling Bee spellers already tracked the US child population by state at a correlation of around 0.74, a strong statistical relationship. But strong is not the same as proportional. At 0.74, the Kannankeril study found that 10 to 12 state regions were chronically underrepresented every year, sending fewer spellers than their share of the US child population would predict.
When RSVBee was active in 2018 and 2019, that correlation jumped to 0.92. In statistical terms, this is a large improvement: the national field moved from "strongly correlated" to "almost perfectly proportional" to where children actually live. The number of underrepresented regions dropped from 12 to 4 in 2018, and from 10 to 3 in 2019. The change was statistically significant (p = 0.032), meaning it was vanishingly unlikely to have occurred by chance.
Put plainly: RSVBee closed roughly 70 percent of the representation gap. When Scripps paused RSVBee in 2020, the gap came back.
Kannankeril, R. E., & Kannankeril, P. J. (2020). Geographic Distribution of Scripps National Spelling Bee Spellers Resembles Geographic Distribution of Child Population in US States upon Implementation of the RSVBee "Wildcard" Program. Journal of Emerging Investigators, Vol. 2.
What happened next
2020.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In its announcement, Scripps wrote: "It is so unfortunate that eighth graders won't get their final shot at winning because of the pandemic and the difficult decisions it is forcing the Bee to make. Current eighth graders will not be eligible to participate as ninth graders in 2021."
2021.
The bee returned in a limited format. RSVBee was not part of it.
2022 through 2026.
RSVBee has not returned. Scripps has announced no public timeline for a replacement wildcard program.
March 11, 2026.
Every Speller Counts contacted Scripps directly to raise the eighth-grade issue described on this page: four 2025 semifinalists, now in their final year of eligibility, who did not qualify to return despite finishing at levels that would have sent them to nationals in any proportionately allocated region. The outreach asked Scripps to consider a one-time pathway for these spellers before the 2026 bee begins.
April 2026.
With weeks remaining before the 2026 bee, no public action has been taken.
See also: What happens when a sponsor drops out →
Two different years. Two different reasons.
In 2020, eighth graders lost their final chance at the national bee because of a global pandemic. That was unavoidable.
In 2026, four eighth graders who reached the 2025 semifinals will lose their final chance because Scripps has chosen, over the seven weeks since being contacted directly, not to act on a problem the organization publicly described in 2018, already knew how to solve, and had been on a path to solving before COVID intervened.
Eighth graders in 2020 missed their final shot because of a virus no one chose. Eighth graders in 2026 will miss theirs because of an institutional decision that still has days to be reconsidered.
What we're asking for
- Immediate stop-gap for the 2026 bee.
- A one-time pathway to nationals for the eighth-graders whose final year of eligibility ends with this year's bee: at minimum, the four 2025 semifinalists from underserved regions who did not qualify to return, and ideally extending to the quarterfinalists from those same regions.
- A new wildcard program going forward.
- The program does not need to be called RSVBee. It needs to exist. Scripps has demonstrated (in its own public statements, in its own 2018–2019 program, and in peer-reviewed research on the results) that a wildcard pathway closes the geographic gap. The method is known. What's missing is the program.
- Public allocation formula.
- Publish the schools-per-speller formula on Scripps' public site, not only in partner contracts.
- Public regional data.
- Publish every region's schools enrolled and spellers advancing, updated annually, on Scripps' public site.