The Early Grade Reading program in Ghana, implemented under the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Partnership for Education Learning Activity, was evaluated with a quasi-experimental impact evaluation between 2017 and 2019. This data asset contains the three waves of data collected in Ghana during this time period.

This dataset contains baseline Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) data conducted under the USAID/Zambia Education Data activity between November – December 2018. Over 15,000 Grade 2 learners were assessed in one of the seven Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ) languages of Instruction (LoI) (Chitonga, Cinyanja, Icibemba, Kiikaonde, Lunda, Luvale or Silozi) as well as in English. The EGRA was conducted in five target provinces (Eastern, Muchinga, North-Western, Southern and Western Provinces). The purpose of the 2018 baseline EGRA is to establish a baseline level from which changes in Grade 2 learners’ performance in the core reading skills can be tracked over time. Each assessment contained seven subtasks, which included; (1) listening comprehension in both the LoI and in English; (2) letter sound identification in the LoI; (3) syllable sound identification in the LoI; (4) non-word reading in the LoI; (5) oral reading fluency in the LoI; (6) reading comprehension in the LoI and; (7) English vocabulary. In addition, assessors also administered a Snapshot of School Management and Effectiveness (SSME), which included head teacher, teacher, and learner questionnaires, along with a school inventory, to establish school characteristics and learner demographics in the sampled schools. The 2018 Baseline EGRA used a stratified sampling methodology to randomly select a representative sample of 816 schools from the five target provinces. Of the 816 schools, 630 were Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ)-run primary schools and 186 were community-run schools.

In September 2017, USAID commissioned RTI and Pratham Education Foundation’s (Pratham) Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Centre to conduct the Analysis of Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) in India activity. Together, RTI and Pratham developed a research plan and modified standard ASER and EGRA instruments to serve the research objective. The five largest education projects from the Mission’s portfolio were selected for inclusion into the assessment. Projects use different approaches and strategies to achieve similar goals – some work through government systems while others are working directly with schools to improve learning outcomes.

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.

Read To Succeed Project (RTS) was a five-year project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in partnership with the Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ). With Zambia exhibiting the lowest student achievement scores among the South African Development Community – SADC, RTS took a “whole school, whole teacher, whole child” approach to ensure that Government Basic Schools become centers of learning, care and support providing children with opportunities to learn and flourish. RTS aimed to improve early grade reading through school effectiveness in Government primary schools in six provinces: Eastern, Luapula, Northern, North Western, Western and the newly-created Muchinga. For each of the baseline, midline and endline evaluations, RTS tested grade 2 and 3 students’ reading ability in the four local languages Icibemba, Chinyanja, Kiikaonde and Silozi in government primary schools. A representative sample of students was randomly selected from schools across 16 districts (12 intervention and 4 control districts) within the 6 provinces. The 4 control districts were selected based on 4 local languages in which EGRA was conducted. The selection of schools was stratified by language and clustered by location, specifically by zone, district, and province.

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 Teacher Assessment Resources for Monitoring and Improving Instruction for Foundation Phase (TARMII-FP) will provide teachers with a computer-based assessment tool that will help teachers to more effectively address individual student learning needs in literacy. TARMII-FP is implemented by the Human Sciences Research Council and is co-funded by USAID, the ELMA Foundation, and J.P. Morgan Chase Foundation, with non-financial support from the South African Department of Basic Education. This $1.5 million project, part of the SCIP, is designed to improve primary grade reading outcomes by building teacher effectiveness and strengthening classroom and school management. Running from July 2012 to June 2015, TARMII-FP will enable teachers to draw upon a database of thousands of reading activities and test items to generate assessments and homework exercises tailored for their students. The tool will allow teachers to record and analyze student results.

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.

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

Strengthening Early Grade Reading (SEGREM) was a three-year USAID Malawi-funded activity aimed at improving literacy levels of learners in Chiradzulu, Dedza, and Mchinji districts. The Program reviewed existing supplementary readers to be used in standards 1-4. It also used literacy instruction, teacher training and community mobilization models that have been tested in Malawi and have helped to improve literacy levels of learners, improve large class management, provide quality and relevant supplementary readers, and ensure community support. In January 2015, a baseline study was conducted to determine the baseline on the student reading abilities. During the reading assessment, learners were asked to name letters of the alphabet, identify initial sounds, read familiar words, read a passage and answer comprehension questions orally; for Chichewa, learners were also asked to read syllables.

Mathematica Policy Research was contracted by USAID to conduct an impact evaluation of the Amazonia Lee (ALEE) program. We partnered with the Grupo de Análisis para el Desarrollo (GRADE) as our local research and data collection partner to conduct a randomized control trial to rigorously estimate the impacts of Amazonía Lee. The main data sources for the impact evaluation are student reading assessments, classroom observations, a teacher survey, and a school infrastructure survey. We collected three rounds of survey data from a sample of program and control schools in two regions: Ucayali and San Martin. Mathematica cleaned the raw survey data collected by GRADE and produced data files for use in the final analysis. The cleaned survey data in these files are part of the deliverables of the Amazonía Lee evaluation. In preparing the cleaned survey data for delivery to USAID, we masked all direct identifiers, such as personally identifiable information (PII) of students and teachers, and randomized numeric identifiers such as student and school codes. However, because other potentially indirect identifiers remain in the data, the data files delivered to USAID are intended for restricted use only and should not be made publicly available.