The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Read Liberia Activity is working with Liberia’s Ministry of Education (MOE) to gradually institutionalize components and functions of the evidence-based early grade reading (EGR) system.
Only a handful of developing countries have taken on the challenge of setting benchmarks for reading skills in early grades. Mexico did so several years ago. And more recently Kenya and Egypt have defined benchmarks, with Kenya officially adopting a standard for oral reading fluency in both English and Kiswahili. Liberia has the distinct advantage of having a bounty of data to inform the setting of reading skill benchmarks. With assistance from USAID a workshop to address this question took place during the first week of March, 2014.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Read Liberia Activity is a five-year (2017–2022) program that supports the Liberian Ministry of Education (MOE) to improve reading skills for grade 1 and 2 Liberian students in 640 public schools and to develop emergent literacy skills for Liberian students in 60 public kindergarten schools.
This piece describes 10 different ways that the Liberia Read program ensured the success of early grade teaching and learning materials.
