Our approach

How we teach kids to read better.

Two public reading frameworks and one innovative assessment tool.

Aligned with the components

Aligned with the Five Pillars of Reading.

From the National Reading Panel’s 2000 report to U.S. Congress. Federally endorsed components of evidence-based reading instruction.

  1. 01

    Phonemic Awareness

    Hearing and manipulating individual sounds in spoken words. Before kids decode print, they have to hear that “cat” is three sounds.

  2. 02

    Phonics

    Mapping sounds to letters and decoding words. Systematic, explicit phonics is the most studied predictor of early reading success.

  3. 03

    Fluency

    Reading with accuracy, appropriate speed, and expression. Fluency is the bridge between decoding and comprehension.

  4. 04

    Vocabulary

    Knowing what words mean — receptive and expressive. Kids can’t comprehend what they can decode if they don’t know the word.

  5. 05

    Comprehension

    Constructing meaning from text. The reason for the other four. The skill that compounds the most over a lifetime.

Source: National Reading Panel · NICHD · April 2000

Aligned with the policy framework

Aligned with the R.A.P.I.D. framework.

World Bank’s evidence-based menu of policy actions for learning recovery and acceleration in low- and middle-income classrooms.

R

Reach

Reach every child and keep them in school.

A

Assess

Assess learning levels regularly.

P

Prioritize

Prioritize foundational literacy and numeracy.

I

Increase

Increase the efficiency of instruction, including catch-up.

D

Develop

Develop psychosocial health and well-being.

Source: World Bank · 2022

Pillar three — the assessment

R.E.A.L.

A short, multilingual literacy assessment that runs in under twelve minutes — without an in-person specialist.

Built to generate classroom-actionable reading data without the weight of traditional assessment. Based on the Five Pillars and designed for multilingual school settings.

How it started

2022 Tools Competition.

R.E.A.L. was born out of the 2022 Tools Competition, run by The Learning Agency Lab. The brief was simple: build something that could generate classroom-actionable literacy data without the administrative weight that kills most assessment programs.

Seed funding came from a coalition focused on early-grade reading: the Walton Family Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Schmidt Futures, and AlleyCorp.

Cite: Petrilli, M.J. (2018). Big Data Transforms Education Research. Education Next, 18(1).

Next

See where the work is happening.

Or read about the partnerships behind it.

Philippines program Current partners