This data asset contains the data from the baseline, midline, and endline data collection for an impact evaluation of the Makhalidwe Athu project (MA), an 18-month intervention aimed at improving the reading skills of 1,200 students in 2nd and 3rd grades in the Chipata and Lundazi districts of Zambia’s Eastern province. Baseline data were collected between November 2015 and January 2016, and endline data collection occurred in January 2017. To collect data, NORC fielded a parent/caregiver survey, a student survey, and an Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) at baseline and endline. In addition, in June 2016 a midline survey on a subsample of treatment caregivers was fielded to document program uptake. To construct the sample frame, Advanced Teams of enumerators were sent to the field to survey all students in 1st and 2nd grades in 80 sampled schools and ask if anyone in their home had a cell phone, which was a requirement to participate in the study. The caregiver survey was developed by NORC and INESOR, and was intended to determine the respondent’s eligibility to participate in the study and to assess the home literacy environment and household assets. The student questionnaire assessed student reading practices at home and in school. The EGRA includes five tasks that measure the following capacities: Orientation to Print, Letter Sound Identification, Non-Word Reading, Oral Reading Passage, Reading Comprehension, and Listening Comprehension. In total 1,942 caregivers, corresponding to 2,019 children, were surveyed at baseline and endline: 965 in the treatment group and 977 in the control group.

The Malawi Early Grade Reading Activity (MEGRA) is a multifaceted educational development approach intended to enable sustained literacy among children, promote a literate community, and help the country increase economic growth and reduce poverty. The USAID/Malawi funded program was implemented starting August of 2013, by RTI (Research Triangle Institute) International. The MEGRA educational program was implemented alongside a Feed the Future project called Integrating Nutrition in Value Chains (INVC) and a Global Health Initiative project called Support for Service Delivery Integration (SSDI), both of which were also expected to affect the success of learners in school. Through this interconnected strategy, USAID/Malawi aimed to have a greater impact on outcomes of interest (such as learning reading scores) than would otherwise be possible through one project alone. The key elements of the MEGRA reading intervention involved: • Conduct teacher training, including practicums • Provide scripted lesson plans to teachers • Provide in-service teacher support and mentoring (or coaching) • Provide rewards for high-performing teachers and schools • Develop and distribute books, story cards, letter cards, and bookshelves • Organize reading fairs and other events to engage parents, caregivers, and the community in learner learning • Invite parents to participate in their learners’ classrooms and/or become engaged in extracurricular activities • Ensure a supportive policy environment by attending the Basic Education Technical Working Group and writing Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) to gain necessary Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology(MoEST) support and buy-in • Facilitate the extension of school instructional time In order to test possible complementary or multiplier effects of the MEGRA reading intervention and the INVC and SSDI activities, all three interventions were implemented in and evaluated for four distinct treatment levels: • Treatment Level 1: Three focus districts (Balaka, Machinga, and Lilongwe Rural) that provide an opportunity to evaluate the impact of a fully-integrated development approach with multiple activities across sectors, including MEGRA, INVC, and SSDI, on early grade reading outcomes. • Treatment Level 2: The district (Salima) where MEGRA overlaps with only the SSDI intervention. This serves as a test ground for the hypothesis that synergies between education and health initiatives catalyze changes that are greater than the sum of their parts. • Treatment Level 3: The district (Ntcheu) where MEGRA overlaps with only the INVC intervention. This serves as a test ground for the development hypothesis that synergies between education and agricultural livelihood and nutrition initiatives catalyze changes that are greater than the sum of their parts. • Treatment Level 4: Five districts (Blantyre Rural, Mzimba North, Ntchisi, Thyolo, and Zomba Rural) that only receive the MEGRA initiative. These districts are used to test the MEGRA theory of change that education support leads to improved literacy and general education outcomes. MEGRA was implemented at the zonal level, at baseline in 2013, where zones were randomly selected in each of the four levels to implement the MEGRA intervention (taking into account areas where INVC and SSDI were already working). However, since INVC and SSDI were not randomly assigned at baseline, the evaluation can only be able to determine whether EGRA is better than no EGRA and whether EGRA plus INVC and SSDI is better than no treatment. While MEGRA expected to include both treatment and comparison schools in each district at each level, at baseline, it was unable to because the SSDI and INVC activities were already underway. As such, the program found that in the Level 2 district, Salima, it was impossible to select comparison zones that were not already contaminated with the SSDI intervention because SSDI was already work

Read Philippines or Basa Pilipinas was a four-year early grade reading project that operated from January 2013 to December 2016 and supported the Philippine Department of Education’s national reading program. Basa assisted the implementation of transformative literacy practices in selected divisions of Regions 1 and 7 by providing teacher and student materials, training teachers and school heads, and providing post-training support for Grade 1, 2 and 3 teachers, as well as providing Early Language, Literacy and Numeracy training to kindergarten teachers. The Basa Pilipinas activity used a quasi-experimental cross-sectional design to evaluate the impact of the treatment in improving reading and comprehension skills. Sampling was conducted at three levels: school, classrooms, and student. The school sample was drawn randomly from the activity’s five provinces. Within each school, one grade 2 classroom was selected randomly for baseline and midline with an additional grade 3 classroom selected during the endline. Within each classroom, students were randomly selected to be administered the assessment. A total of 469 students were sample from 40 schools in two provinces at the baseline (comparison), 1,216 students were sampled from 80 schools in five provinces at the midline (intervention 1), and 1,658 students were sampled from 5 provinces at the endline (intervention 2). The disparity in the number of provinces sampled is due to the expansion of the intervention from two provinces to five provinces starting at the midline to provide a more complete picture of the Basa outcomes. To enable the computation of estimates of literacy skills among students in all schools affected by the Basa intervention, design weights were applied to the analyses of EGRA data. Design weights were applied to compensate for differences in provincial sampling and to ensure an appropriate representation of learners in all provinces in the sample.

This data file contains student, teacher, and headteacher data from the project's 2015 baseline. The Tusome Early Grade Reading Program involves a national effort in Kenya to scale up a proven model for improved results in early grade literacy. Based on positive findings during a rigorous impact evaluation of a pilot test of this intervention, the Government of Kenya (GOK) asked USAID/Kenya to assist with the nationwide rollout of an activity to improve reading skills and increase the capacity of educators and the GOK to deliver and administer early grade reading (EGR) programs modeled on the pilot activity’s success. Tusome, which means “Let’s Read” in Kiswahili, targeted 28,000 formal and nonformal public and low-cost private primary schools in the 47 counties in Kenya (nationwide). About 1,000 of these are informal schools that exist mostly in urban “slums,” while the vast majority of the remaining 27,000 schools are in rural areas. Roughly 5.4 million children who entered primary school between 2014 and 2017 are expected to benefit from this scaling-up initiative. Intermediate beneficiaries include: 1) approximately 60,000 class 1 and 2 teachers, 2) 28,000 primary school head teachers, 3) 1,052 Teacher Advisory Center (TAC) tutors, plus “coaches” for nonformal schools and 4) 300 senior education personnel. Tusome also assisted the GOK at the technical and policy levels to sustainably improve reading skills beyond the span of the activity.

This data asset contains responses from the 2018 baseline early grade reading assessment (EGRA) for USAID Senegal's All Children Reading (Lecture Pour Tous) project. Responses were collected from students, teachers, and head teachers/school directors.

The Malawi Early Grade Reading Improvement Activity (MERIT) is a five-year USAID activity designed to provide technical assistance and resources to the GOM to strengthen the reading performance of Malawian learners in Standards 1–4. Key to the Activity’s design is the USAID/Malawi education strategic plan of 2012 that aims to increase the reading skills of 5.58 million Malawi primary school students through: (i) improving reading instruction in the primary grades; (ii) increasing parental and community support for student reading; and, finally, (iii) improving the policy environment for reading. That strategic plan was the basis for the USAID/Malawi Early Grade Reading Project and the design of MERIT, its current flagship activity in support of early grade reading. MERIT directly supports the CDCS Development Objective 1, Social development improved through enhanced quality and availability of essential social services as indicated by sustained improvement of reading gains of students enrolled in Standards 1 to 4.

The Pakistan Reading Project (PRP) is a $165 million, seven-year initiative launched in July 2013 that aims to improve the quality of early grade reading instruction for 1.3 million public and private primary school students across Pakistan. The PRP implements activities through three main components: (1) improved classroom learning environment for reading, (2) improved policies and systems for reading, and (3) community-based support for reading. This data asset includes evaluation results from PRP activities implemented in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB). The original project design included simultaneous implementation in all schools. However, through contract modifications, the project split its interventions into three cohorts: PRP Cohort 1&2, PRP Cohort 3, and Light Treatment. Datasets with names including "2013-2017 Baseline Midline" include baseline and midline data. For baseline-midline analyses, PRP Cohort 1&2 (2017) compares with Full Treatment (2013) and Light Treatment (2017) compares with Light Treatment (2013). PRP Cohort 3 (2017) is considered a baseline and the dataset's file name includes "2017 Baseline."

The overall aim of the USAID/SA basic education program is to improve primary grade reading outcomes by building teacher effectiveness and strengthening classroom and school management. This is being accomplished through support to innovative, local interventions that have a demonstrated capacity for scale-up. The main USAID/SA program is the School Capacity and Innovation Program (SCIP), which also leverages significant private sector resources, amplifying the impact of USAID’s investment in the South African education system. SCIP is co-funded by The ELMA Foundation and J.P. Morgan and designed in collaboration with the South African Department of Basic Education. SCIP supports local South African models or interventions that work directly with teachers and school management teams in innovative ways in order to improve their practice as instructional leaders and managers. SCIP is aligned to the USAID Global Education Strategy (2011–2015) which supports interventions to improve learning outcomes with a focus on primary grade reading as a measure of performance. In addition to seeking initiatives that demonstrate innovation and impact, sustainability and scalability are key components of the SCIP program. The Strengthening Teaching of Early Language and Literacy (STELLAR) Program improves the language and literacy skills of Grade R children from disadvantaged communities in South Africa by training and supporting Grade R teachers. Grade R (also called the Reception Year) is the year of schooling before Grade 1.

The Pakistan Reading Project (PRP) is a $165 million, seven-year initiative launched in July 2013 that aims to improve the quality of early grade reading instruction for 1.3 million public and private primary school students across Pakistan. The PRP implements activities through three main components: (1) improved classroom learning environment for reading, (2) improved policies and systems for reading, and (3) community-based support for reading.

The Ethiopia TEACH II activity aimed to strengthen the provision of equitable basic education services by implementing alternative basic education for children and youth, functional literacy for adults and improving the capacity of Woreda Education Offices (WEO) to manage non-formal educational programs. The activity operated in eight regions and provided instruction in four languages. The target population of the study were Level II learners from selected woredas in the SNNP, Tigray, Amhara, Benishangul, Oromia, Afar, Gambella, and Somali regions where PACT-Ethiopia and its partners operated. Students were randomly selected to measure basic literacy skills targeted at the Grade 2 level using EGRA assessments in eight different languages. The EGRA assessment sub-tasks measuring basic literacy skills were incremental in their complexity. Each sub-task was presented to the child on a one–to-one basis. Questionnaires were also administered to understand the background of the students. This data file contains the project's 2013 baseline EGRA.