The United States Department of Education is awarding $6.61 million in grants to eight states to help improving reading achievement among poorer students. The monies will fund a range of programs incorporating research-based methods and tools, including education technologies, to help deal with "the challenges of poverty and reading below grade level."
The grants are being awarded through the federal Striving Readers program, which aims to improve achievement among middle school and high school students in Title I-eligible schools "with significant numbers of students reading below grade-levels." It also seeks to build a research base on techniques for improving reading achievemet for students in these grades.
Projects funded under the Striving Readers program have historically varied widely in both approach and means of assessment. They include targeted intervention, whole-school intervention, and teacher professional development as key components. Detailed, specific examples of such programs can be found here.
"When students enter middle and high school with reading skills that are significantly below grade level, they are at great risk of dropping out," said Arne Duncan, U.S. secretary of education, in a statement released this week. "Programs like Striving Readers give students a chance to improve their reading skills and succeed in school and in life."
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction ($1,286,966).
The department added that, under President Barack Obama's 2010 budget request, funding for Striving Readers would increase to $70.4 million, in addition to $300 million in new early literacy grant funds.
Further information about Striving Readers, including links to project profiles, can be found here.