Aprender a Ler (ApaL) is a four-year USAID-funded program designed to improve student reading outcomes in grades 2 and 3 in selected schools in Nampula and Zambézia Provinces in Mozambique. Managed by World Education, Inc. (WEI), ApaL works closely with the Ministry of Education in Mozambique (MINED) to improve the quality and increase the quantity of reading instruction. The program includes teacher training, coaching and support in improved reading instruction methods, and school management training, coaching and support for school directors. ApaL began with delivery of the program in 35 Zonas de Influencia Pedagogica (ZIPs) in six districts along the economic corridors of the provinces of Nampula and Zambézia. ZIPs are formed by one “head” school and a cluster of five, ten or more schools. The “head” school of a ZIP is usually better organized than the surrounding schools and is tasked with reporting to the district and receiving and distributing teaching material and resources that are sent by the MINED. The “head” of the ZIP schools also serve as an example and a magnet for training and improvement of the surrounding schools. Based on experience during initial implementation, expansion to approximately five hundred schools in the area was anticipated, and in 2015, ApaL expanded to 538 schools. USAID selected these provinces because at the time of program design, they contained 42 percent of the school age population of Mozambique. At the beginning of the 2013 school year, 180 schools clustered around the 35 ZIPs in the two provinces were randomly assigned by the IE to three groups – 60 schools to Full treatment, 60 to Medium treatment, and 60 to a no-treatment or Control group. There have been four stages of reading assessment: (1) Baseline data collection and analysis at the beginning of the 2013 school year prior to program implementation; (2) Midline 1, near the end of the 2013 school year, after two or three months of implementation; (3) Midline 2, after a full year of implementation, 2014; and (4) the 2015 endline study.

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 Reading for Success – Small-Scale Experimentation (RFS-SSE) activity, a component of a broader USAID initiative, was designed to reflect ongoing collaborations between USAID/Morocco and the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (MOEVT) to improve reading instruction in Morocco. Conceived as a learning activity, RFS-SSE developed an evidence base of effective approaches that improve reading skills in targeted primary schools. RFS-SSE began when the MOEVT was developing a 15-year education reform called Vision 2030 as well as a set of medium-term activities for the period 2015-2020. Reform efforts addressed a key weakness in the Moroccan educational system: poor reading skills at the primary level. The RFS-SSE intervention helped to inform the revisions to the existing curriculum and the design of the reformed curriculum by providing data and evidence to support the envisioned changes. To assess the impact of the RFS-SSE reading program, RFS-SSE selected a longitudinal evaluation design which included reading assessments of two cohorts of students. Cohort 1 was assessed at four different times - the middle of Grade 1 and throughout Grade 2: Baseline (January 2016), Midline 1 (May 2016), Midline 2 (September 2016), and Endline (May 2017). Cohort 2 was assessed twice – the beginning and end of Grade 1: Midline 2 (September 2016) and Endline (May 2017). A stratified cluster random sampling method was used to assure that (1) an equal number of boys and girls in urban and rural schools would be assessed and (2) that the results of the study would be generalizable to the entire population of intervention schools in each of the eight delegations selected for intervention. Schools were first stratified by geographic location and urban/rural environment. Within schools, students were stratified by gender. All students in Grades 1 and 2 were assessed with the same EGRA instrument.

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.

The Liberia Teacher Training Program II (LTTP II) is a partnership between FHI 360 and RTI International to provide support to the central Ministry of Education (MOE). The overarching goal of LTTP II is to enhance pupils' learning in general, and reading proficiency in particular; establish a functional teacher professional development (PD) system; and strengthen the MOE’s capacity to manage such a system. The LTTP II was originally designed to work in nine counties: Grand Gedeh, Grand Kru, Lofa, Maryland, Montserrado, Nimba, River Cess, River Gee, and Sinoe. In 2011 and 2012, because of changes in USAID policies, the number of counties was reduced to five (i.e., Bong, Lofa, Margibi, Montserrado, and Nimba), which USAID identifies as a development corridor, containing a majority of the Liberian population. The LTTP II intervention drew on the EGRA Plus model to introduce similarly structured reading and math programs in grades 1, 2, and 3 to approximately 1,020 schools in four counties (i.e., Bong, Lofa, Montserrado, and Nimba) in a phased approach. Cohort 1, the first to receive support, had 792 schools. During the middle of the 2011/2012 school year, the reading program was introduced in all three grades in these schools. During the middle of the 2012/2013 school year, the mathematics program was introduced in all three grades. Cohort 2, consisting of approximately 330 schools, began participating in the program’s reading and mathematics interventions during the 2013/2014 school year and continued during the 2014/2015 school year. Some changes, although not significant, were made to the intervention approach for supporting the Cohort 2 schools. Schools in the four LTTP II counties were randomly assigned to the Cohort 1 and Cohort 2 groupings. These schools were then grouped in clusters of 12 schools based on geographic proximity, which would allow the program to deliver the interventions more efficiently Cohort 1: Schools from the four target counties included in Cohort 1 served as the treatment group for the midterm assessment. These schools stopped receiving LTTP II support after the midterm assessment, but they participated in the endline assessment, as a way to determine whether the gains that were achieved during the treatment were sustained. Cohort 2: Schools included in Cohort 2 in the same four counties began to receive treatment after the midterm assessment—thus, during the final two years of the program. Cohort 2 schools served as a control to which the Cohort 1 results were compared. The performance of Cohort 2 schools were to be compared to that of Cohort 1. The biggest challenge that the program faced regarding the implementation in Cohort 2 schools was the school closings because of the Ebola crisis. Schools were closed between September 2014 and February 2015. Even after the official reopening date, with the gradual actual opening of schools that required LTTP II to wait until schools were safe to open, it took several months to distribute books to schools and to train teachers which in turn severely affected the implementation of the treatment. External Cohort: A randomly selected sample of schools outside the four target counties served as another comparator, especially after Cohort 2 began receiving treatment alongside Cohort 1. Except for a small number of schools associated with the RTTIs, schools outside the four target counties did not participate in the program during the lifetime of LTTP II. This data file contains the 2011 EGRA baseline.

As originally conceived, the Jamaica Basic Education Project aimed to improve student performance in reading and mathematics in grades 1-3, strengthen accountability in the primary education system through use of measurement tools and establishment of standards, and build regional capacity for school management oversight. From early 2010 through spring of 2012, the project was implemented in 250 schools throughout all six Ministry of Education (MOE) regions. Among the schools originally targeted for project intervention were 54 schools in crime-prone communities, which received additional resources through the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI), including books and computers. In contrast to previous USAID-funded projects since 1998, the current project did not have a direct presence in the schools themselves. Rather, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the project and the MOE, as well as terms of reference (TOR) between the project and the Jamaica Teaching Council (JTC), devolved much of the responsibility for teacher training to the JTC, and the responsibility for the monitoring of school-based project implementation to the MOE. Underlying this model—and in line with the current USAID Forward objective of building the capacity of countries to lead their own development—was the logic that the MOE and its associated agencies would be in a position to assume progressively more responsibility for project implementation. In accordance with the project design, project staff collaborated with JTC to train a small group of trainers, made up of retired teachers and other educational specialists. These trainers then trained principals and “resource teachers” in workshops facilitated by regional education officers. Resource teachers then returned to their home schools and trained their colleagues (referred to in this evaluation as “non-resource teachers”), so that all the teachers in the 250 project schools could implement the project-promoted teaching techniques in their classrooms. This model of training, known as the “cascade model,” is intended to build the capacity of the education system at all levels, while also reaching a large number of teachers with a relatively small number of direct, project-run trainings.

The Liberia Teacher Training Program II (LTTP II) is a partnership between FHI 360 and RTI International to provide support to the central Ministry of Education (MOE). The overarching goal of LTTP II is to enhance pupils' learning in general, and reading proficiency in particular; establish a functional teacher professional development (PD) system; and strengthen the MOE's capacity to manage such a system. The LTTP II was originally designed to work in nine counties: Grand Gedeh, Grand Kru, Lofa, Maryland, Montserrado, Nimba, River Cess, River Gee, and Sinoe. In 2011 and 2012, because of changes in USAID policies, the number of counties was reduced to five (i.e., Bong, Lofa, Margibi, Montserrado, and Nimba), which USAID identifies as a development corridor containing a majority of the Liberian population. The LTTP II intervention drew on the EGRA Plus model to introduce similarly structured reading and math programs in grades 1, 2, and 3 to approximately 1,020 schools in four counties (i.e., Bong, Lofa, Montserrado, and Nimba) in a phased approach. Cohort 1, the first to receive support, had 792 schools. During the middle of the 2011/2012 school year, the reading program was introduced in all three grades in these schools. During the middle of the 2012/2013 school year, the mathematics program was introduced in all three grades. Cohort 2, consisting of approximately 330 schools, began participating in the program’s reading and mathematics interventions during the 2013/2014 school year and continued during the 2014/2015 school year. Some changes, although not significant, were made to the intervention approach for supporting the Cohort 2 schools. Schools in the four LTTP II counties were randomly assigned to the Cohort 1 and Cohort 2 groupings. These schools were then grouped in clusters of 12 schools based on geographic proximity, which would allow the program to deliver the interventions more efficiently Cohort 1: Schools from the four target counties included in Cohort 1 served as the treatment group for the midterm assessment. These schools stopped receiving LTTP II support after the midterm assessment, but they participated in the endline assessment, as a way to determine whether the gains that were achieved during the treatment were sustained. Cohort 2: Schools included in Cohort 2 in the same four counties began to receive treatment after the midterm assessment, thus, during the final two years of the program. Cohort 2 schools served as a control to which the Cohort 1 results were compared. The performance of Cohort 2 schools were to be compared to that of Cohort 1. The biggest challenge that the program faced regarding the implementation in Cohort 2 schools was the school closings because of the Ebola crisis. Schools were closed between September 2014 and February 2015. Even after the official reopening date, with the gradual actual opening of schools that required LTTP II to wait until schools were safe to open, it took several months to distribute books to schools and to train teachers which in turn severely affected the implementation of the treatment. External Cohort: A randomly selected sample of schools outside the four target counties served as another comparator, especially after Cohort 2 began receiving treatment alongside Cohort 1. Except for a small number of schools associated with the RTTIs, schools outside the four target counties did not participate in the program during the lifetime of LTTP II. This data file contains the 2013 EGRA midline.

Save the Children is implementing Leer Juntos, a USAID-funded three-year project targeting rural, indigenous communities in Guatemala and Peru with the objective of improving children's early grade mother tongue reading skills. Leer Juntos, Aprender Juntos is part of the LAC READS family of USAID projects that applies rigorous evaluation to glean learning about the best ways to teach children to learn.

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.