IERI and Reading Education

Literacy is the cornerstone of academic success. However, the United States has only average reading test scores internationally, while several minority groups within the U.S. have long-standing and persistent gaps in literacy achievement compared with whites. The Interagency Education Research Initiative is helping to improve the literacy skills of all American children by funding 51 projects that focus on reading learning outcomes. This represents 50% of the projects funded to date by this joint effort of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Educational Sciences (IES), and the National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD).

Of these 46 reading-related projects, 22% aim to improve teaching skills, 51% change the way reading is taught, and another 16% do both. Assessing students’ decoding, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency skills is the focus of 11% of projects. Critical areas addressed by these projects include creating foundational skills for very young children; identifying and assisting children who are most at-risk of falling behind; providing resources to underserved communities, children with special needs, or non-native English speakers; and using reading instruction to improve math and science instruction as well. Many projects also use video or digital tools to help automate teacher training or classroom interventions.

More than half (58%) of these IERI-funding reading projects are classified as “scaling” projects. Such projects attempt to determine the effectiveness of interventions beyond the initial “laboratory” or classroom settings. Going to scale for some reading projects means delivering proven interventions to children with learning disabilities or living in poor urban neighborhoods, while other projects are looking to build educational capacity by incorporating instructional technologies that promote the spread and sustainability of an intervention.

More information about the IERI projects that focus on reading learning outcomes can be found by clicking on the project titles below:

• An Evaluation of Teacher Training for Triarchic Instruction and Assessment
• Best Practices - Teacher Preparation - Technology: Connections that Enhance Children's Literacy Acquisition and Reading Achievement
• Breakthrough to Literacy in the Chicago Public Schools: A Large Scale Evaluation of the Effectiveness of a Reading Comprehension Intervention
• Building Bridges to Student and Teacher Learning: Early Literacy Assessment and Intervention Planning Grant
• Classroom use and Efficacy of an Automated Reading Tutor that Listens
• Cognitively-Based, Multimedia Support for a Balanced Approach to the Development of Early Reading in School and Home Contexts
• Developing Measures of Instructional Improvement
• Development and Evaluation of a Technology-Enhanced Success for All Reading Program
• Dick, Jane, & Spot Meet the Information Age: Diversifying Genres Used in Early Literacy Instruction
• Early Development of Reading Skills: A Cognitive Neuroscience Approach
• Early Learning and Technology for At-Risk Children
• Early Reading Intervention: Getting Ready for Scale-Up
• Enhancing Literacy Outcomes for Young Children
• Explicit Explanation of Genre Within Authentic Literacy Activities in Science: Does It Facilitate Development and Achievement?
• Exploring IDEAS: An Integrated Design Enhancing Academic Success in Science, Reading and Mathematics
• Handheld Diagnostics: Enhancing and Scaling Rigorous Observational Reading Assessments through Handheld Computing
• Helping Disadvantaged Students Succeed by Improving Foundational Language and Reading Skills
• High Quality Teaching of Foundational Skills in Mathematics and Reading
• IERI: Collaborative Research I: Automating Early Assessment of Academic Standards for Very Young Native and Non-Native Speakers of American English
• IERI: Collaborative Research II: Automating Early Assessment of Academic Standards for Very Young Native and Non-Native Speakers of American English
• IERI: Collaborative Research III: Automating Early Assessment of Academic Standards for Very Young Native and Non-Native Speakers of American English
• IERI: Integrating Speech and User Modeling in a Reading Tutor that Listens
• IERI: Scaling Up Reading Tutors
• IERI: Teachers' Disciplinary Knowledge of Reading and its Relationship to K-3 Pedagogy and Student Achievement
• Implementation and Effects of Family and Community Involvement on Student Achievement in Reading, Math, and Science
• Implementation and Impact of Reading, Mathematics, and Science Instructional Interventions for Middle and High School Students
• Increasing Reading Comprehension, Motivation and Science Knowledge through Concept Oriented Reading Instruction in a District-Wide Experiment
• Instructional Intervention to Promote Science and Literacy with Linguistically Diverse Elementary Students
• Investigating the Feasibility of Scaling up Effective Reading Comprehension Instruction Using Innovative Video-Case-Based Hypermedia
• Looking Inside the Black Box: Classroom Practice that Supports High Achievement in Both Science and Reading: a Planning Grant
• Preventing Reading Problems in Disadvantaged Children
• Promoting Active Reading Strategies to Improve Students' Understanding of Science
• Reading and Writing About Science: A Design-Experiment Strategy
• Scalable and Sustainable Technologies for Reading Instruction and Assessment
• Scaling Expert Knowledge and Practice for Teaching Elementary School Students to Comprehend Informational Text
• Scaling Up a Language and Literacy Development Program at the Pre-kindergarten Level
• Scaling Up an Assessment-Driven Intervention Using the Internet and Hand-Held Computers
• Scaling Up Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies to Strengthen Reading Achievement
• Scaling-Up Effective Intervention for Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children
• Teaching Phonemic Awareness to Children in Head Start: A Randomized Evaluation of Two Approaches
• Testing a Model of Instructional Strategies to Enhance Prekindergarten Children's Language, Literacy, and Math Skills
• Testing the Effectiveness, Sustainability and Scalability of an Individualized Reading Program for African-American, Latino and Euro-American Inner-City Children
• The Development of Fluent and Automatic Reading: Precursor to Learning from Text
• The Evaluation and Analysis of an Innovative Framework for School Reading
• The New 3R's: Reading, Resilience, and Relationships in After-School Programs
• Using Technology to Support Preschool Teachers' Professional Development