National Title I Study of Implementation and Outcomes: Early Childhood Language Development

During the past decade, the federal government has funded extensive research into reading comprehension at a variety of grade levels, including the evaluations of Early Reading First and Reading First and innovative studies of high school and middle school interventions targeted on reading comprehension improvement. The results of these tens of millions of dollars of research have not been very good. It is evident from these studies that improving reading comprehension is difficult and the idea of improving reading comprehension on scale is not likely given what we know at this time. Consequently, the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education is funding a large study through Mathematica Policy Research.

Timothy Shanahan of the UIC Center for Literacy is one of the principal investigators of this extensive and important nationwide investigation to identify school programs, policies, and teaching practices that are associated with improvements in language development, background knowledge, and reading comprehension outcomes for children in preschool through third grade.

This project is in its beginning stages and updates will be posted over time. Please check back for more information at a later date.

Contact Info:
Timothy Shanahan
Center for Literacy
1040 W. Harrison
Chicago, IL 60607

Tel: (312) 413-8085
Fax: (312) 413-8082