Funded in part by a $45.6 million federal grant awarded to Ohio State, some Ohio teachers will train for leadership roles in the Reading Recovery program.
The grant, awarded by the U.S. Department of Education, provides money to train more than 3,750 teachers at 15 universities, including OSU. These teachers become “teacher leaders” who go out into communities in 40 states and train elementary teachers to help children who struggle with reading. The teachers work daily with each student in 30-minute sessions.
The grant will more than double the 75,000 students the program serves, said Jerry D’Agostino, program director and associate professor of quantitative methods in the College of Education and Human Ecology at OSU.
The program expansion targets the lowest-achieving schools. Qualifying rural schools and schools with a large population of English-as-a-second-language learners will also be included.
According to the grant proposal, written by three faculty members in the OSU College of Education and Human Ecology, studies demonstrate that the intervention program is effective across ethnic and socioeconomic groups.
Statistics show approximately 75 percent of the students in the program overcome their reading struggles and achieve an average level of reading in 12 to 20 weeks.
“Reading Recovery has a lot of evidence that it’s effective,” D’Agostino said. “The idea is to take this effective intervention and get it out there into the schools.”
Tuition costs and educational supplies for the expansion are the bulk of the grant’s budget. Salaries for teachers and teacher leaders comes from their communities, said Lea McGee, professor of reading and early literature in the College of Education and Human Ecology.
The grant went into effect Oct. 1, but the Department of Education had one stipulation before OSU could receive the funding.
“We needed a 20 percent private donation match in order to get the government funds,” said Tracy Kirby, senior director of development in the College of Education and Human Ecology. “So we had to raise $9.1 million.”
And it had to be raised in about a month, she said.
“When we only had two weeks to go, we only had a million dollars and we didn’t think we would make it,” she said.
They ended up raising more than $10 million from private donors, foundations and corporations, Kirby said.
“It was truly a great opportunity to get behind something that is really meaningful and is going to make a big difference in a lot of children’s lives,” she said, “and hopefully change the path for them.”
