The US Agency for International Development (USAID) Early Grade Reading Project (EGR) cooperated closely with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MOEHE) to provide each student in EGR classrooms with age- and grade-level appropriate reading materials. In March 2018 EGR formed the Materials Development Technical Working Group (TWG) comprised of 10 members from four MOEHE General Directorates: General Education – Kindergarten (KG), Supervision and Educational Qualifications; National Institute of Education and Training (NIET); and Information Technology. The TWG methodically progressed through many stages before the complementary reading materials reached the classrooms: developing a book leveling instrument, inventorying the available books in the schools and in the market, leveling the available books, identifying the gaps, and finally developing and/or purchasing needed reading materials. By project end, EGR had developed or procured over 100,000 titles of leveled readers, decodable readers, big books, and read-aloud books to provide the 104 schools that EGR supports with complementary reading materials for KG-Grade 2 classrooms. EGR, in coordination with a TWG from the MOEHE, developed criteria to determine the grade-level appropriateness of the complementary reading materials. EGR considered two factors in determining a book’s appropriateness: level and readability. Both leveling and readability are necessary for determining the texts that students should be reading.

The purpose of this formative assessment is to contribute to the community outreach component of the EGR program by collecting and analysing information about target audiences, specifically their knowledge, attitudes and behavior. This information will contribute to the design of messages, techniques and tools that will resonate with the target audience. The assessment has collected information and identified current parent and family practices, explored the behaviors of reading in homes and communities in terms of resources available and activities organized, and engaged the targeted group in different aspects of the assessment to develop the correct recommendations enabling EGR to define and implement realistic and concrete community outreach activities.

RTI International and our partner AMIDEAST are pleased to submit this Inventory of Non- Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) to the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) for its Early Grade Reading (EGR) activity. EGR will assist the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MOEHE) to improve early grade reading and writing outcomes. EGR will: • Develop leveled readers, decodables, and supplemental materials and stock these materials in ~3,000 government basic preschool, Grade 1, and Grade 2 classrooms in the West Bank; • Train ~10,000 preschool and Grade 1 and 2 teachers on best practices for literacy instruction; • Mobilize supervisors, coaches, teacher mentors, and school principals to deliver and support early grade teacher coaching and peer learning; and • Foster cooperation of schools, teachers, and communities, drawing on the energy and inspiration from parents, volunteers, and local organizations to support reading enrichment activities.

This paper explores an innovative assessment framework for measuring children’s formal and informal mathematical knowledge. Many existing standardized measures, such as the Early Grade Mathematics Assessment, measure children’s performance in early primary grade skills that have been identified by researchers and policy makers as foundational and predictive of later academic achievement (Platas, Ketterlin-Geller, & Sitabkhan, 2016; RTI International, 2014). However, these standardized assessments only provide information on children’s mathematical ability as it pertains to skills and concepts that are a focus of school instruction, referred to as formal mathematics. While valuable, they leave unmeasured the mathematics that children use and develop as part of their everyday life, such as the strategies they use to solve simple arithmetical problems that arise as they move through their day (Khan, 1999; Saxe, 1991; Taylor, 2009). In this article, we draw from mixed methods studies which focus on capturing the informal mathematical skills that children develop outside of school in various contexts (Guberman, 1996; Nasir, 2000; Sitabkhan, 2009; Sitabkhan, 2015). We describe how the use of observations of children’s mathematical activities in natural settings and in subsequent cognitive interviews using mathematical tasks derived from those observations, can illuminate mathematical knowledge and skills that may otherwise remain hidden. We found that an assessment framework that focuses on both standardized measures of formal mathematical learning and contextualized measures of children’s everyday mathematics can provide a more complete and nuanced picture of children’s knowledge, and taken together can inform the development of curricular materials and teacher training focused on early learning.

This is Part 1 of a four-part comprehensive evaluation of the public textbook procurement system in Morocco. It offers recommendations on how to improve textbook quality, how to strengthen the procurement system --including budgeting and financing--, and developing a policy for digital textbooks.

The USAID/Uganda Literacy Achievement and Retention Activity (LARA) undertook an assessment of an eight-week social and behavior change communication (SBCC) pilot campaign in the Ssekanyonyi Coordinating Center, Mityana district. The purpose of the communication campaign was to improve parent’s engagement in their children’s reading practice at home. To evaluate the campaign’s impact, DLC Consult collected data for the baseline survey in June 2017 and for the endline survey in August 2017. The survey team interviewed 906 parents at baseline and 936 parents at endline.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Peter Muyingo. Education programming worldwide is beginning to include dedicated activities to support a positive school culture. There is evidence, mostly from high income countries, that a positive school climate is associated with improved learning outcomes and attendance, and reduced violence prevalence. In this presentation we will discuss some of the challenges we faced in adapting a school climate survey from the United States for use in an impact study for a program in Uganda that has a dedicated focus on building a positive school climate. The school climate survey was adapted as one of a variety of instruments to be used in the impact evaluation of the USAID/Uganda funded Literacy Achievement and Retention Activity. This Activity, a working partnership with the Uganda Ministry of Education, focuses on improving early grade reading and retention in 28 districts and 2698 schools in Uganda.

The USAID PRIORITAS project began in May 2012 with the aim of achieving expanded access to improved quality basic education (IR1). The intermediate results (IRs) that the project aimed to achieve are as follows: * strengthened instruction in schools in targeted districts (IR1-1) * improved education management and governance in targeted schools (IR1-2) * strengthened coordination between all levels of the Government of Indonesia (GOI) and education institutions (IR1-3). This report covers the duration of the project, from May 2012 to September 2017.

Success story about a recent kindergarten initiative under USAID's Early Grade Reading and Mathematics Project to help children and parents prepare to enter school.

The attached document is a literacy activity titled "Find What's Missing" that was developed and used as part of the social and behavior change communications (SBCC) research pilot in Malawi.