From the University of Northern Iowa:
CEDAR FALLS – More than 10,000 Iowa first graders who struggle to read, will receive intense literacy assistance in the next five years. A new $45.6 million U.S. Department of Education grant awarded $3,096,000 to UNI’s Reading Recovery Center.
Reading Recovery has been helping first graders who struggle to learn to read for years. The 12- to 20-week program is a highly effective one-to-one literacy intervention that prepares specialized teachers to work with students that fall in the lowest quarter of their class and are having the greatest difficulty learning to read and write.
UNI, along with 14 other colleges and universities with Reading Recovery Training Centers, will be the recipient of the Department of Education’s “Investing in Innovations” (i3) grant, led by Ohio State University. The new grant will allow the partner universities to give more attention to schools with large proportions of English Language Learner (ELL) students, schools that have been identified for Title I corrective action and low-achieving or high poverty rural schools.
“We will now be able to prepare 50 new Reading Recovery teachers and provide the intervention to 2,250 of Iowa’s first graders each year for the next five years,” said Salli Forbes, director of UNI’s Reading Recovery program. “We will also begin preparing one teacher leader this year who has already been identified from the new Reading Recovery site in Ottumwa.”
The funding approach, which brings together government, philanthropy and business, represents a new way to drive innovation in education. The Department of Education requires documentation from the 15 colleges and universities showing a 20 percent private sector match of $9.1 million in order to receive the federal award. The matching funds will go directly to pay for Reading Recovery teacher tuition and direct costs of the participating teachers. The Department of Education is providing $2,446,025 of the grant awarded to UNI, with private funds and in-kind gifts to provide the rest of the grant.
The R.J. McElroy Trust supplied UNI with $150,000 towards its matching funds. “We’re proud that UNI’s expertise and innovation in literacy is putting it in the national spotlight,” said Stacy Van Gorp, executive director of the R.J. McElroy Trust. “The grant was a great opportunity to help UNI leverage public and private resources to make sure every child in Iowa gets off to a strong start in reading.”
“This latest gift is an example of McElroy’s long history of supporting the education of Iowa students,” said Forbes. “We are very thankful for their support of the teachers and students of northeast Iowa.”
According to Forbes, the Reading Recovery Council of Iowa will also be partnering to offer an additional $50,000 grant for teacher leader preparation and may be providing other matching grants for the preparation of Reading Recovery teachers during the next five years. “The Reading Recovery Council of Iowa’s ongoing support of children’s literacy achievement is greatly appreciated,” said Forbes.
UNI’s Reading Recovery Center of Iowa is the only Reading Recovery university training center in Iowa.
