RTI International - News Release - 9.8.2009

RTI International Reading Tools Featured at USAID Literacy Day Panel

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C.—The U.S. Agency for International Development will feature a set of diagnostic tools and interventions created by RTI International to improve reading in low-income countries at a panel on Sept. 9 commemorating International Literacy Day.

With funding from USAID and the World Bank, RTI and a group of international literacy experts designed the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) that evaluates a child's grasp of the foundation skills for reading in 15 minutes.

Luis Crouch, Ph.D., a vice president in RTI's International Development Group who has inspired the development of EGRA under the USAID Education Data for Decision Making II project, will describe the diagnostic tools as part of the panel from 2:30 to 4 p.m. in the Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C., Room M-01-10, Mezzanine Level. The presentation is free and open to the public. No registration is required.

"The ability to read and understand a simple text is one of the most basic skills a child can learn to escape the intergenerational cycle of poverty," Crouch said. "Students who do not learn to read in the early grades of school are more likely to repeat grades and eventually drop out, adding themselves to the more than 780 million men and women around the world who cannot read or write."

Many international paper-and-pencil literacy tests assume the student's ability to read and write, and students in low-income countries score so poorly that the test cannot distinguish whether the child did not know the content or simply could not read the test. In contrast, EGRA is an individual oral assessment that covers the building blocks to literacy, including letter naming, nonsense and familiar words, paragraph reading, comprehension, and even pre-reading skills such as listening comprehension.

Using EGRA as a springboard, RTI has designed and implemented teacher professional development programs for improving reading instruction. These programs have resulted in significant gains in students' reading skills, including comprehension. RTI is also piloting an Early Grade Math Assessment to measure student's acquisition of basic math skills.

USAID administers the U.S. foreign assistance program providing economic and humanitarian assistance in more than 120 countries worldwide.