Striving Readers Grant

The Kentucky Content Literacy Consortium (KCLC) consists of 23 rural middle and high schools, spanning geographically across the state, which are highly motivated to make changes in day to day teaching strategies and curriculum to improve literacy instruction and performance for adolescent learners. The KCLC Project meets the Absolute Priority 1 that all schools are Title I eligible with the average free and reduced lunch percentage of all 23 schools at 50%. In addition, the KCLC Project meets all three components of Absolute Priority 2. Participating schools will employ full time reading coaches to implement two complementary literacy initiatives, Content Literacy Model and Kansas Learning Strategies Curriculum intervention model, of which the impact of the implementation on student learning and teacher practice will be evaluated. Highly qualified personnel employed by the KCLC Project will ensure meeting project goals and provide reliable data. The goals ofthe project are as follows: o Develop and apply an effective school-wide literacy model designed to increase students' reading achievement by integrating enhanced literacy instruction across the curriculum. o Gather, analyze, and interpret reliable and generalizeable data about that school-wide model to inform the larger community about effective models suitable for replication. o Implement an intensive targeted intervention to specifically enhance the literacy skills of students who are most at risk of failure due to significant literacy deficiencies. o Gather, analyze, and interpret reliable and generalizeable data about that targeted intervention through a rigorous, intensive evaluation process to inform the larger community about effective interventions suitable for replication. o Build the capacity of schools to successfully sustain implementation of the school-wide and targeted literacy initiatives after the research period has ended.