Education

NC State receives record-breaking $12M grant to help teachers improve students' reading skills

A North Carolina State University literacy program has received a three-year, $12.26 million grant from the N.C. Department of Public Instruction to help teachers in high-need school districts teach children to read. It is the largest grant faculty members at N.C. State's College of Education have received since records have been kept, according to the college.

Posted Updated

By
Kelly Hinchcliffe
, WRAL education reporter
RALEIGH, N.C. — A North Carolina State University literacy program has received a three-year, $12.26 million grant from the N.C. Department of Public Instruction to help teachers in high-need school districts teach children to read. It is the largest grant faculty members at N.C. State's College of Education have received since records have been kept, according to the college.
Wolfpack WORKS began in summer 2018 with an initial one-year, $5,894,541 grant from DPI to provide intensive, literacy-specific instruction support to all first- and second-year K-2 teachers in 16 high-need school districts in North Carolina (Anson, Bertie, Caswell, Duplin, Edgecombe, Granville, Greene, Halifax, Kannapolis City, Martin, Nash-Rocky Mount, Northampton, Vance, Warren, Washington and Wilson schools).

The new three-year grant will allow Wolfpack WORKS to expand its support to include all third-year K-2 teachers in partner school districts, in addition to first- and second-year teachers. This will bring the number of beginning teachers the program is expected to serve up from 170 to more than 240. The three-year timeline also includes expanded plans to evaluate the program’s impact on participating teachers’ early literacy knowledge and practice and their students’ reading achievement in the short- and long-term.

“About 60 percent of North Carolina’s fourth graders read at a proficient level; we want all fourth graders reading at a proficient level because we know how important early literacy is to lifelong success and opportunity," Mary Ann Danowitz, dean of the NC State College of Education, said in a statement. "We also know that essential to improving early literacy is improving classroom instruction, which is exactly what Wolfpack WORKS does.”

Under North Carolina's Read to Achieve program, students must be reading at grade level by the end of third grade in order to advance. The latest data show only 56.3 percent of the state's third-graders were proficient in reading last school year. Earlier grades did not perform any better. Only 52 percent of first-graders were reading on grade level last school year, and 56 percent of second-graders did the same.
N.C. State released a study last year showing the state's Read to Achieve program has had no gains for third-graders, with five years of test scores showing little benefit. The state has spent more than $150 million on the program, but researchers found it was too focused on third grade and that having each school district implement the program led to inconsistencies from teacher skills to the type of summer reading camps offered.

The Wolfpack WORKS’ project team is working with colleagues from the N.C. Department of Public Instruction and literacy research and teacher education experts to develop 10 evidence-based literacy practices that guided the development of Wolfpack WORKS. The program incorporates blended professional development, literacy-specific coaching and resources that beginning K-2 teachers need to implement effective literacy instruction in their classrooms.

The team includes principal investigators Jill Grifenhagen, assistant professor of literacy education at NC State, Ann Harrington, teaching associate professor of reading education, and Paola Sztajn, associate dean for research and innovation.

“We want to continue to work with beginning teachers through their third year in a tiered model of support, as our current participants learn to become stronger early literacy educators,” Grifenhagen said. “Through this sustained support, we hope to build a leadership pipeline of teacher leaders that will stay in their districts and become early literacy instructional leaders in their schools and communities.”

Wolfpack WORKS employs 20 literacy coaches who work weekly with the beginning teachers either in-person or online. The program also provides focused professional development workshops online and face-to-face, and reading interventionists help the beginning teachers manage reading assessments and implement reading interventions in classrooms.

“Our Wolfpack WORKS literacy coaches have been accomplishing so much with the beginning teachers with whom they have been working. They are seeing many positive changes in the teachers' classroom literacy instruction,” Harrington said. “The teachers with whom we are working are required to implement a variety of literacy programs in their respective districts. Our coaches have learned ways to help the teachers implement these programs and provide additional instruction designed to meet the literacy needs of the children in these classrooms.”

The $12.26 million grant tops a previous four-year, $10.8 million grant N.C. State's College of Education received last summer from the John M. Belk Endowment to establish the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research.

“Our faculty have now received two grants exceeding $10 million in less than a year to support projects that work to improve educational outcomes for all North Carolinians,” Danowitz said. “These grants are the result of our faculty and staff’s tireless dedication and commitment to our land-grant mission. I also think these grants reflect confidence in the NC State College of Education’s ability to address critical statewide problems like early literacy.”

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