Read Liberia: Institutionalization of the DEMA-GALA

It is essential that the Government of Liberia has the skills and resources to monitor and assess their schools, students, and teachers as part of an evidenced-based education system on the road to self-reliance. Read Liberia maintained a focus on assessment and data use—not only to improve classroom-based instruction and equip school leadership with the knowledge and tools they need to foster quality education, but also to build the capacity of county and district officers in USAID’s six priority counties.

Why Benchmarks Matter

Setting benchmarks or standards that clearly state expectations about how well students or teachers should be performing on various skills at each stage of education and then collecting data to monitor these skills enables governments to see how individuals and education systems overall are progressing toward the goal of improved learning. This information allows governments to identify where improvements are needed and to chart progress year-to-year and against global standards. So how did Read Liberia do it? Read this brief to find out more!

Sustaining and Extending Reading Improvements in Liberia

Read Liberia has had considerable positive impact on students’ reading performance. This success story outlines the key activities Read Liberia has undertaken with the MOE to sustain EGR results beyond the life of the Activity.

Promoting social and emotional learning during school closures: lessons from Read Liberia

How to effectively promote SEL development among children and their parents during school closures was a challenge for Read Liberia and implementing partners across the world. Read this brief to learn about the innovative ways Read Liberia fostered social and emotional development during COVID through its Teach by Radio Program.

Reflections and questions to ask about designing evidence-based practices: Lessons from Liberia:

This brief described how the design of the Read Liberia Activity applied comprehensive supports to help teachers implement sound literacy instruction in the classroom. Insights from Read Liberia's model may have potential implications for the design of education programs targeting large-scale change.

Integrating inclusion and equity into programming: lessons from Read Liberia

In its programs, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) attempts to address inclusion and equality issues that are not limited to education but that relate to all sectors—such as health care, politics, and economic growth—to more systematically resolve those issues in the most effective ways possible. One such cross-cutting issue that Read Liberia explicitly addressed is the need to foster greater inclusion and equality for everyone, including women, girls, and individuals who are historically marginalized, such as individuals with disabilities and individuals from minority social or religious populations. Read this brief to learn how Read Liberia wove gender and inclusion into all aspects of its programming.

Using radio to promote learning in Liberia during COVID-19

Liberian public schools closed in March 2020, and the MOE Teach by Radio program ran from March 30 through June 30, 2020. Drawing upon its existing materials, Read Liberia developed and recorded a series of 30-minutes lessons covering key components of early grade literacy and language arts instruction, including phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and grammar. In response to an MOE initiative to support students’ psychosocial needs during this global pandemic, Read Liberia also wove into these radio lessons opportunities for students to reflect on their feelings and find productive ways to handle them. Read this brief to learn more!

Read Liberia's use of technology

This material discusses the various technological innovations the USAID/Read Liberia Activity employed for data collection, teacher training, assessment, coaching and even virtual support to teachers during COVID.

Anatomy of a Read Liberia Coach

This material highlights the eleven tasks Read Liberia coaches performed to support teachers and schools.

Building blocks for a brighter future: how Read Liberia prepared kindergarten students for school, even during COVID-19

Children with a strong foundation in oral language and emergent literacy skills have a much greater chance of becoming successful readers, and success in reading in early primary grades can predict success in later years of schooling. Read this brief to learn about how Read Liberia partnered with the MOE to improve KG students' emergent literacy skills!

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