Press Releases

For Immediate Release: 6 APRil 2009

Report Details Adolescent Literacy Programs in Five U.S. States

Boston, Mass. — A new Issues & Answers Report published by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) describes efforts by five states—Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, New Jersey, and Rhode Island—to improve adolescent literacy. Highlighting common challenges and lessons, the report examines how each state has engaged key stakeholders, set rigorous goals and standards, aligned resources to support adolescent literacy goals, built educator capacity, and used data to measure progress.

“Five States’ Efforts to Improve Adolescent Literacy” is based on a Fast Response Project by the Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands (REL-NEI) in response to requests from state education officials for information on how states can support adolescent readers.

In the report, five case studies detail how state educators and policymakers tailored their adolescent literacy policies to the needs of each state. Although a diverse range of policy approaches and programs are described, the report finds all the states used school-based literacy coaches; required schools to provide reading interventions to struggling readers; assigned at least one state education agency staff member to adolescent literacy; aligned their programs with literacy efforts targeting the primary grades; made literacy an instructional priority at all levels; blended state funds with other funding streams; required the collection of screening, diagnostic, and assessment data; and incorporated content-area literacy into their programs.

Following the case studies, a cross-state analysis examines how each state applied five types of strategies for improving adolescent literacy:

• engaging key stakeholders to make adolescent literacy a priority;
• setting rigorous state literacy goals and standards;
• aligning resources to support adolescent literacy goals;
• building educator capacity to support adolescent literacy programs at state, school, and classroom levels; and
• measuring progress and using data to make decisions and provide oversight.

These strategies were identified by the researchers as consistent components of state adolescent literacy policies, based on a review of previous research. The strategies were used as criteria for selecting states for the study and were applied with considerable variation across the five states.

Information for the report was collected from policy documents and through interviews with key staff members at the states’ education agencies. Two research questions guided the data collection:

• What policies and practices have states adopted to promote effective adolescent literacy practices at the school and district level?
• What did state education agency officials learn about developing and putting into practice state policies to support adolescent literacy?

Efforts to improve reading instruction over the past decade have focused largely on early reading skills, but the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that less than 50 percent of eighth-graders read at their grade level.

“There is growing awareness that students require support throughout their academic careers to become proficient readers, and this report provides examples of how five states have developed policy to support students’ literacy beyond elementary school,” said Naomi Hupert, principal investigator and senior research associate at Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), which administers REL-NEI.

The report was written by Hupert, Lauren Bates, and Nicole Breslow, all at EDC. The report does not compare the merits of the five states’ different approaches; nor does it examine the impact of any policy on student outcomes. It is available for download from the IES website and relnei.org.

For more information about this report , e-mail Ashley Gaddis: agaddis@edc.org.

The Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands (REL-NEI) is run by Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), the American Institutes for Research (AIR), and WestEd’s Learning Innovations program. REL-NEI is one of 10 Regional Educational Laboratories funded by the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education. REL-NEI provides rigorous research that is relevant to national education priorities, responsive to local needs, and usable for policy and practice. Visit www.relnei.org.

This project has been funded at least in part with federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education under Contract Number ED-06-CO-0025. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of Education nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) is a global nonprofit organization that develops, delivers, and evaluates innovative programs to address some of the world’s most urgent challenges in education, health, and economic development. Celebrating its 50th year, EDC manages more than 300 projects in 35 countries. Visit www.edc.org.