Oct. 14, 2010
Contact:
Elizabeth Klipp, 404-413-1356
University Relations
ATLANTA - Georgia State University's Reading Recovery Training Center in the College of Education will receive $3.6 million over the next five years to improve literacy skills among struggling first graders in underperforming schools.
Georgia State is one of 15 partners with The Ohio State University that was awarded a portion of a $54 million "Investing in Innovation" federal grant, announced by the U.S. Department of Education in late September.
The five-year project will focus on improving literacy among struggling first-grade students in underperforming schools, rural schools or those with high populations of English Language Learners. The grant will support training an additional 250 teachers at Georgia State, as well as 3,750 teachers nationwide.
"The grant provides the resources to train more teachers," said Susan Duncan, director of the Reading Recovery Training Center. "Having more highly qualified teachers will decrease the number of children experiencing literacy failure and the cost of that failure to society."
Reading Recovery is a national intervention program administered at regional universities throughout the country. The goal is to help bring students up to grade level with their peers in 12 to 20 weeks.
As part of the grant, Georgia State will provide full-time professional and academic preparation for new teacher leaders and support training for teachers at existing or new Reading Recovery sites. GSU will also provide ongoing support and professional development for teachers and teacher leaders in scale-up schools.
"Reading Recovery professional development is the best investment for expanding the professional skills and expertise of teachers," said Floretta Thornton-Reid, executive director of the Reading Recovery Training Center at GSU. "If every first-grade child, who was having difficulty learning to read and write, was provided one-on-one instruction with a trained Reading Recovery teacher, literacy achievement could be changed in our state and our nation."
For more than 20 years, Georgia State's Reading Recovery Training Center has partnered with school districts in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Virginia to provide professional development and academic preparation for teachers and teacher leaders. Since 1991, almost 54,000 students have been served by the 1,262 Reading Recovery professionals trained at GSU.
For more information, please visit: http://education.gsu.edu/ece/reading_recovery.htm