Too often, intervention occurs late, is fragmented, and is not supported by the system as a whole. Using traditional intervention structures, struggling students and the educators who support them are unlikely to achieve long-term success. What results is a precarious outcome--"can't do" students become "won't do" students. By…

The Collaborative Language and Literacy Instruction Project (CLLIP) is a model of professional development designed to help teachers incorporate research-based practices of literacy instruction, support mastery, and sustained use of these practices through coaching, and serve as a foundation for whole-school reform efforts. We describe the model,…

The process of learning to read is difficult for many children, and this is especially true for students with learning disabilities (LD). Reading in English becomes even more difficult when a student's home language is not English. For English language learner (ELL) students with LD, acquiring the necessary skills to read fluently is an even…

This essay raises concerns over the future direction for educational aid designed to promote literacy in developing countries. The essay focuses on the EGRA (Early Grade Reading Assessment) initiative in Africa. At one level, this essay challenges the claims for empirical and research-based support for the EGRA. At a broader level, this essay…

Accurate identification of at-risk kindergarten and 1st-grade students through early reading screening is an essential element of responsiveness to intervention models of reading instruction. The authors consider predictive validity and classification accuracy of early reading screening assessments with attention to sensitivity and specificity.…

In today's educational environment, schools struggle to meet the academic needs of every student. Many schools are challenged by the use of a response-to-intervention framework in which too many students need strong interventions. This article details a data-driven, decision-making response-to-intervention reading team model in which teachers,…

The Texas Literacy Initiative (TLI) was first implemented in Austin Independent School District during the 2012-2013 school. This report summarizes Spring 2014 survey responses from teachers at TLI campuses.

Progress monitoring refers to a system of ongoing data collection on academic skills of interest. Short samples of student performance are collected on a regular basis, and the scores from these short samples of performance are graphed to create a picture of student progress. Teachers can use the graphed student performance as they make…

The Texas Literacy Initiative (TLI) was first implemented in Austin Independent School District during the 2012-2013 school. This report summarizes responses from teachers at TLI campuses.

The Annual Condition of Education Report provides a wide range of state-level data, including shifts in student populations and demographics, teacher salaries and characteristics, student achievement results, and school financial information. The report provides important metrics to the education community about the status of the education system.…