MIT and Harvard join forces to address early childhood literacy
Reach Every Reader aims to end early literacy crisis.
Today, MIT’s Integrated Learning Initiative (MITili), Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), and Florida State University (FSU) announced a collaboration to make sure every child learns to read well enough by the end of third grade to make learning more effective later in their education. This will be achieved through research on how personalized learning and intervention improve early childhood literacy.
Research shows that students who fail to read adequately in first grade have a 90 percent probability of reading poorly in fourth grade, and a 75 percent probability of reading poorly in high school. This compounds the need to level the playing field in literacy early in a child’s education.
This new collaboration, called Reach Every Reader, brings MITili, HGSE, and Florida State University researchers together to work on rigorous scientific approaches to personalized learning for literacy, to develop diagnostic tools and interventions to help young children at risk for literacy before they fail, and to build capacity among educators, caregivers, and policy makers to advance ongoing conversations and instructional strategies around personalized learning. The initiative is supported by a $30 million grant from Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, co-founders of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.