Introduction: Acknowledgments, Housekeeping, Objectives, Agenda Luis Crouch RTI International All Children Reading by 2015: From Assessment to Action April 12-14, 2010 Washington, DC

EGRA Your logo here!!!! Plenty of room!! Sign up early!! Acknowledgements

Financial and technical collaboration: Technical origination and collaboration:

Acknowledgements May the collaboration continue! May more partners join! I will not make fun of logos!

Housekeeping  Introduce logistics team  CD with PPTs will be available at the end since not everyone has submitted them ahead of time  Any outstanding bios: please give to Jessica  Will circulate a contact points list; please ensure to fill it out  Evaluation form will be circulated if you do not fill it out, you will be detained at the airport.  Note that tomorrow will be at Preston Auditorium (Main WB building, 3 blocks from here or so)

Objective: All kids reading-end of grade 2  Who has said this? Most countries, on their own, explicitly or implicitly  (It is in their curricula, but not achieved) Plus at least one international organization, FTI  Precise wording: FTI: Proportion of students who, after two years of primary schooling, demonstrate sufficient reading fluency and comprehension to ‘read to learn’ : eventual goal: 100% Countries themselves. Typical example for grade 2: “read words, sentences, and books accurately and fluently… read a range of materials with some independence, fluency, accuracy and understanding.” Another: “Recognises and makes meaning of letters and words in longer texts, reads with increasing speed and fluency, reads aloud and uses correct pronunciation andappropriate stress, uses phonic and other word recognition and comprehension skills such as phonics, context, clues, and making predictions in order to make sense of text”  Almost universal in all countries anyway  No one is proposing anything revolutionary! (Does make one wonder: if countries themselves have pretty clear goals, why so hard for international community to adopt similarly clear ones)

But what is the situation?  Are countries even close?  The experience is highly varied  But in the poorer countries, the answer is clearly not  And the gap is not just a little; it is huge

Nicaragua, Spanish Senegal, French Rural Honduras, Spanish Kenya, Kiswahili Kenya, English Guyana, English The Gambia, English Mali, Bamanankan Mali, French % of children unable to read a single word in grade 2 Note: samples not always national

What to do?  Blah, blah is a definite possibility: Spend a few years testing more? Testing experts will get rich! Spend a few years talking about “the meaning of reading” or “the meaning of meaning” so we can figure out “the meaning of reading”? Spend a few years fighting about what the data really show; whether it is 50% or 80% or 30% that can’t read?  But the goal is for all to read  Debate is often an excuse for inaction  We don’t know everything, but we know enough to act  And there is moral compulsion  So, alternatively, we could take action  Let’s get the children reading  Later we will come back to some of the finer issues  For now, let’s consider ourselves justified in the objectives of the meeting: how to act.

Agenda for the 3 days  Background to the issue: what is the situation, how did we get here  Some interesting country experiences How a few countries have become interested in action How they have asked: how can we go to scale? Some have started Responsibility of international community: assist in whatever way we can  What is international community doing at a macro level?

Agenda for the 3 days  “Big picture of issues to consider in going to scale with “all kids reading” Curriculum and teacher training Reading materials Language of instruction Logistics, supervision, deployment Technologies Community mobilization  We don’t know 100% of what we need to know, but we know enough to start acting  Then the next 2 days:  Detailed presentation on each issue  Detailed country discussion/planning on each issue: what are they doing, what else could they do  Countries share with each other what they are already doing, what they’d like to do

Final goal of 3 days:  Not so ambitious as for each country to have a plan, after only 3 days  But, focus on key considerations they need to take home and plan if they want “all kids reading”  Network countries with some key international agencies Increase agencies’ awareness of the issues, and countries’ readiness to take forward  Learn and share some practical solutions  Put on agenda issues that are unresolved and can be worked on over time

Apologies for crowded agenda  Initial goal: intimate meeting with 3-4 countries that have ‘stepped forward’ the most  But it all grew, and grew There seems to be considerable demand for all this  Now there is almost no time for discussion  If every speaker is very disciplined there will be time for 1-2 questions per presentation!