Website: http://www.myreaditagain.com
PERC is a multisite efficacy trial investigating the impact of a curricular supplement—Read It Again- PreK!—on children’s preschool language and literacy development and kindergarten school readiness. Read It Again-PreK! was developed through a two-year collaborative effort among researchers, early childhood educators, state-level policymakers, and speech-language pathologists. The intent was to create a tool that can be used at scale, with little expert support, to enhance the instructional quality of preschool classrooms serving at-risk children, particularly those in rural areas where access to many existing programs are limited due to lack of expert resources, funding, or technology infrastructure. This study builds upon pilot work to better understand how, for whom, and under what conditions RIA-PreK! works best.
The study involves a randomized clinical trial to test the short- and long-term impacts associated with implementing of Read It Again-PreK! in rural classrooms within a three-state Appalachian region. In this study, 90 teachers working in targeted enrollment preschool classrooms are implementing a 30-week supplemental classroom curriculum featuring two lessons per week. Some teachers are completing a supplemental professional development experience to assess its influence on the quality of Read It Again-PreK! implementation. In total, about 450 preschool-aged children are participating in periodic assessments to study the relations between exposure to Read It Again-PreK! and their language and literacy development over time. Curriculum materials are available for download at myreaditagain.com.
Funding Source: U.S. Department of Education Institute for Education Sciences
Start/End Dates: 2008 through 2011
