The Department of Education awarded Wyoming and Iowa nearly $10 million in grant funding to use an online, data-driven approach to improve reading proficiency for struggling elementary students in rural areas.
The five-year Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grant was awarded to the Wyoming Department of Education and the Iowa Reading Research Center (IRRC) at the University of Iowa to fund their “Project Skyword Literacy: Lifting Decoding and Fluency through Data-Guided Practice.”
The project will use Foundations in Learning’s digital program WordFlight to deliver evidence-based and personalized decoding intervention to improve students’ “silent reading fluency.” While the materials are based online, WordFlight instruction is meant to be delivered by teachers.
Foundations in Learning described its program as a bridge “between phonics and fluency to move 85 percent of struggling students to proficiency in foundational reading skills in one school year.”
“This grant allows us to provide WordFlight to students who need personalized intervention to support their foundations for reading fluency, while testing and expanding models for educators on the ground to sustainably support high-impact interventions,” said Allison Zimmermann, CEO of Foundations in Learning.
“This will allow us to serve more students, especially in rural districts and those with fewer resources,” Zimmermann added.
The Wyoming Department of Education is the project lead. The IRRC will provide coaching support and implementation for the project, and project evaluation will be done by the University of Iowa’s Center for Evaluation and Assessment.
“This project provides an opportunity to examine evidence-based practices across schools in Iowa, Wyoming, and other states,” said Seth King, an IRRC research fellow. “The findings will provide useful guidance for supporting students who struggle with foundational reading skills.”