US Department of Education gives Arizona $11 million for literacy development

PHOENIX – The Arizona Education Foundation (AEF) is receiving an $11.5-million grant from the U.S. Department of Education for a statewide literacy development program.

The program is a five-year initiative that will have AEF partner with the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) program, which works to improve literacy rates by focusing on goal-setting, self-monitoring and collaboration.

AEF CEO Kim Graham explained it will reach more than 75 elementary schools across Arizona.

“It’s basically a really rich way of training teachers on specific literacy strategies, particularly student writing that helps students think holistically about how they’re writing and it uses self-regulation as a unique methodology for helping those literacy skills stick,” Graham said.

SRSD provides a guidebook for teachers to help increase both literacy instruction and results. It does so by laying out the writing process for students using evidence around them to improve reading and writing skills. The program follows a six-step approach that leads students from being teacher-led to being self-monitoring.

April Camping, research director for SRSD, said the program has been used in other states and has resulted in 90% of SRSD participants testing higher in literacy and writing skills than those who did not complete the course.

“Year one will be mostly piloting and development,” Camping said. “Then we’ll do a randomized control trial large scale in year two and year three, get everybody trained and supported and expanded out to hopefully upwards of 75 schools.”

The program will also implement AI instruction for teachers, as Camping explained the programming works to help teachers navigate evolving technology while keeping students on top of critical skills.

“We want to target that specifically in terms of emphasizing the critical thinking skills that students learn just from the act of putting pen to paper or hands to keyboard. That is something we don’t want to lose with AI,” Camping said.

Although the U.S. Department of Education is currently facing department closures, Graham said there are no concerns about the funding going through.

“So far, we’ve not experienced any issues. Communication has been fantastic,” Graham said. “We have a program officer that works out of the Department of Education and everything has been very smooth.”

Funding for this journalism is made possible by the Arizona Local News Foundation.

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