The Tusome Early Grade Reading Program involves a national effort in Kenya to scale up a proven model for improved results in early grade literacy. Based on positive findings during a rigorous impact evaluation of a pilot test of this intervention, the Government of Kenya (GOK) asked USAID/Kenya to assist with the nationwide rollout of an activity to improve reading skills and increase the capacity of educators and the GOK to deliver and administer early grade reading (EGR) programs modeled on the pilot activity’s success. Tusome, which means “Let’s Read” in Kiswahili, targeted 28,000 formal and nonformal public and low-cost private primary schools in the 47 counties in Kenya (nationwide). About 1,000 of these are informal schools that exist mostly in urban “slums,” while the vast majority of the remaining 27,000 schools are in rural areas. Roughly 5.4 million children who entered primary school between 2014 and 2017 are expected to benefit from this scaling-up initiative. Intermediate beneficiaries include: 1) approximately 60,000 class 1 and 2 teachers, 2) 28,000 primary school head teachers, 3) 1,052 Teacher Advisory Center (TAC) tutors, plus “coaches” for nonformal schools and 4) 300 senior education personnel. Tusome also assisted the GOK at the technical and policy levels to sustainably improve reading skills beyond the span of the activity.

This dataset contains baseline Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) data conducted under the USAID/Zambia Education Data activity between November – December 2018. Over 15,000 Grade 2 learners were assessed in one of the seven Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ) languages of Instruction (LoI) (Chitonga, Cinyanja, Icibemba, Kiikaonde, Lunda, Luvale or Silozi) as well as in English. The EGRA was conducted in five target provinces (Eastern, Muchinga, North-Western, Southern and Western Provinces). The purpose of the 2018 baseline EGRA is to establish a baseline level from which changes in Grade 2 learners’ performance in the core reading skills can be tracked over time. Each assessment contained seven subtasks, which included; (1) listening comprehension in both the LoI and in English; (2) letter sound identification in the LoI; (3) syllable sound identification in the LoI; (4) non-word reading in the LoI; (5) oral reading fluency in the LoI; (6) reading comprehension in the LoI and; (7) English vocabulary. In addition, assessors also administered a Snapshot of School Management and Effectiveness (SSME), which included head teacher, teacher, and learner questionnaires, along with a school inventory, to establish school characteristics and learner demographics in the sampled schools. The 2018 Baseline EGRA used a stratified sampling methodology to randomly select a representative sample of 816 schools from the five target provinces. Of the 816 schools, 630 were Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ)-run primary schools and 186 were community-run schools.

A USAID-supported, nationally representative EGRA conducted in Nepal in 2014 found that 34 percent of second graders and 19 percent of third graders could not read a single world of Nepali. Moreover, the assessment showed significant regional disparities, as well as larger deficiencies among students who spoke a language other than Nepali at home. USAID’s EGRP in Nepal is being implemented by RTI International and supports the MoEST and its CLAs—the Curriculum Development Center, Department of Education, Education Review Office, National Center for Educational Development, and Non-Formal Education Center—to develop and test an early grade reading program that is effective, replicable, cost-efficient, and sustainable. The EGRP has two principal goals: 1) To improve early grade reading performance of students in Grades 1-3; and 2) To build the GoN’s capacity to deliver an early grade reading program that can be replicated nationwide. This Data asset contains all data collected to assess the impact of the program.

Read To Succeed Project (RTS) was a five-year project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in partnership with the Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ). With Zambia exhibiting the lowest student achievement scores among the South African Development Community – SADC, RTS took a “whole school, whole teacher, whole child” approach to ensure that Government Basic Schools become centers of learning, care and support providing children with opportunities to learn and flourish. RTS aimed to improve early grade reading through school effectiveness in Government primary schools in six provinces: Eastern, Luapula, Northern, North Western, Western and the newly-created Muchinga. For each of the baseline, midline and endline evaluations, RTS tested grade 2 and 3 students’ reading ability in the four local languages Icibemba, Chinyanja, Kiikaonde and Silozi in government primary schools. A representative sample of students was randomly selected from schools across 16 districts (12 intervention and 4 control districts) within the 6 provinces. The 4 control districts were selected based on 4 local languages in which EGRA was conducted. The selection of schools was stratified by language and clustered by location, specifically by zone, district, and province.

The Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY) is a project that was funded by the National Science Foundation in 1985 and was designed to examine the development of: (1) student attitudes toward and achievement in science, (2) student attitudes toward and achievement in mathematics, and (3) student interest in and plans for a career in science, mathematics, or engineering, during middle school, high school, and the first four years post-high school. The relative influence parents, home, teachers, school, peers, media, and selected informal learning experiences had on these developmental patterns was considered as well. The older LSAY cohort, Cohort One, consisted of a national sample of 2,829 tenth-grade students in public high schools throughout the United States. These students were followed for an initial period of seven years, ending four years after high school in 1994. Cohort Two, consisted of a national sample of 3,116 seventh-grade students in public schools that served as feeder schools to the same high schools in which the older cohort was enrolled. These students were followed for an initial period of seven years, concluding with a telephone interview approximately one year after the end of high school in 1994. Beginning in the fall of 1987, the LSAY collected a wide array of information including: (1) a science achievement test and a mathematics achievement test each fall, (2) an attitudinal and experience questionnaire at the beginning and end of each school year, (3) reports about education and experience from all science and math teachers in each school, (4) reports on classroom practice by each science and math teacher serving a LSAY student, (5) an annual 25-minute telephone interview with one parent of each student, and (6) extensive school-level information from the principal of each study school. In 2006, the NSF funded a proposal to re-contact the original LSAY students (then in their mid-30's) to resume data collection to determine their educational and occupational outcomes. Through an extensive tracking activity which involved: (1) online tracking, (2) newsletter mailing, (3) calls to parents and other relatives, (4) use of alternative online search methods, and (5) questionnaire mailing, more than 95 percent of the original sample of 5,945 LSAY students were located or accounted for. In addition to re-contacting the students, the proposal defined a new eligible sample of approximately 5,000 students and these young adults were asked to complete a survey in 2007. A second survey was conducted in the fall of 2008 that sought to gather updated information about occupational and education outcomes and to measure the civic scientific literacy of these young adults, in which to date more than 3,200 participants have responded. A third survey was conducted in the fall of 2009 that sought to gather updated information about occupational and education outcomes and to measure the participants' use of selected informal science education resources, in which to date more than 3,200 participants have responded. A fourth survey was conducted in the fall of 2010 that sought to gather updated information about occupational and education outcomes, as well as provided questions about the participants' interactions with their children, in which to date more than 3,200 participants have responded. Finally, a fifth survey was conducted in the fall of 2011 that sought to gather updated information about education outcomes and included an expanded occupation battery for all participants, as well as an expanded spousal information battery for all participants. The 2011 questionnaire also included items about the 2011 Fukushima incident in Japan along with attitudinal items about nuclear power and global climate change. To date approximately 3,200 participants responded to the 2011 survey. There were no surveys conducted in 2012 or 2013. Beginning in 2014 the LSAY was funded by the National Institute on Aging for five years. This data release adds the 2017 data to the previous data release that included data through 2016. The public release data files include information collected from the national probability sample students, their parents, and the science and mathematics teachers in the students' schools. The data covers the initial seven years, beginning in the fall of 1987, as well as the data collected in the

Abstract

To improve quality of primary education in Liberia after devastating civil war, Liberian Ministry of Education, World Bank and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) launched the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) Plus: Liberia program. The research was an experimental intervention, evaluating how reading assessment in grades 2 and 3, teacher training and community involvement relate with improved education outcomes.

World Bank and USAID funded EGRA Plus: Liberia program. U.S.-based research company RTI International and its local sub-contractor the Liberian Education Trust implemented and evaluated the project.

Baseline, midterm, and final assessments were conducted in 2008-2010 and the results were judged against agreed-upon targets for improved student performance. The baseline test was carried out in November 2008, the midterm assessment was conducted in June 2009, and the final evaluation took place in June 2010.

Preceding this impact evaluation research, the pilot Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) study was done in Liberia in June 2008.

EGRA Plus experiment was applied in 180 schools across Bomi, Bong, Gbapolu, Lofa, Margibi, Monteserrado, and Nimba counties. The sampled schools were randomly assigned to three different groups (60 schools in each group).

The first was a control group that received no program interventions, but whose performance was measured (without alerting there would be repeated measurement). The second, a light intervention group was a set of schools where parents and community members were provided student achievement data in the area of literacy; they were made aware that there would be testing again. Light intervention teachers were trained in the development of a student reading report card, which they issued four times a year. The final, a full intervention group received intensive teacher training, targeting reading instructional strategies. In addition, the full treatment group had the same student achievement information sharing that was provided to parents and communities in light treatment schools.

As part of the June 2010 final assessment, the World Bank through the Spanish Trust Fund for Impact Evaluation (SIEF) sponsored an implementation of the Early Grade Mathematics Assessment (EGMA). The test had two main goals: first, establish a baseline in mathematics that can be used for future efforts, and second, determine if EGRA Plus intervention that was focused on improvements of reading had any secondary impact on improvement of student performance in mathematics.

Overall, 2,988 students were tested during the baseline assessment, 2,882 - during the midterm evaluation and 2,688 - during the final test.

Geographic coverage

Bomi, Bong, Gbapolu, Lofa, Margibi, Monteserrado, and Nimba counties.

Analysis unit

• grade 2 and 3 students;
• teachers;
• head teachers (principals).

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

The sampling procedure focused only on Liberian public schools. First, 15 districts were selected in a manner proportional to population. Then, a cluster of four schools was selected in each district.

For the selected districts, researches created a distance matrix of all schools i to all other schools j, calculating the length of the hypotenuse between x(i), y(i) and x(j) and y(j). One school was selected at random in a district. This school was considered the centroid of that district's cluster. After that three closest to it schools were selected.

The sampled schools were randomly assigned to control, light treatment and full treatment groups with the goal to have 60 schools in each group.

During November 2008, a national baseline assessment of early grade literacy skills was performed in 176 schools with 2,988 students. The sample size had to be 180 schools; the four missing schools were assessed in January and February 2009. In each school, either 10 or 20 students were assessed, depending on the size of the school and number of teachers.

The June 2009 midterm assessment was conducted in the same EGRA schools. A total of 175 schools and 2,882 students were included in this survey. The June 2010 final assessment was conducted in 175 schools with 2,688 children. As was the case with the baseline and midterm assessment, either 10 or 20 students were assessed, with the target to have at minimum 10 students from grade 2 and 10 students from grade 3, depending on the size of the school. For all three assessments, students were randomly selected from a school register using a systematic sampling procedure implemented by assessors, rather than teachers, in order to prevent teachers from selecting only the best students. The sampling was done from the students in attendance during the day of the test.

The achieved sample at the final assessment was smaller for control and full intervention schools, but near the target for the light intervention schools. The sampling procedures for each assessment were done randomly and independently of each other. No attempt was made to resample children assessed in a previous assessment. Children from the baseline assessment may also have taken part in the midterm assessment, but because children's names were not used, it is impossible to tell with any certainty.

Detailed information about sampling is provided in "Description of Sampling Procedure for EGRA Plus: Liberia" in external resources.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The following survey instruments are available:

• EGRA Testing Tool and Student Questionnaire for baseline and midterm assessments;
• EGRA and EGMA Testing Tools and Student Questionnaire for final assessment;
• Teacher Questionnaire for baseline, midterm and final assessments;
• Principal Questionnaire for baseline, midterm and final assessments.

1) Liberia Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) tool assessed the following set of skills: - Orientation to print; - Letter naming fluency; - Phonemic awareness; - Familiar word fluency; - Unfamiliar (or nonsense) word fluency; - Oral reading (connected text) fluency; - Reading comprehension; - Listening comprehension.

In order to prevent "teaching to the test," or memorization, the three assessments (baseline, midterm, final) used different passages and reading comprehension questions.

2) Liberia Early Grade Mathematics Assessment (EGMA) tool had the following sections: - Number identification; - Quantity discrimination; - Missing number; - Addition; - Subtraction; - Multiplication; - Fractions.

Cleaning operations

An EGRA data entry application was developed in June 2008 by Mr. Farwenee Dormu of the Liberian Ministry of Education (MOE), with guidance and support from RTI International. According to Mr. Dormu, the EGRA database was the first database that the MOE had developed since the end of the conflict in Liberia.

Lessons learned from the November 2008 baseline assessment were used to develop a brief manual for data entry. Entry of the baseline EGRA data was completed at the end of January 2009.

For the midterm assessment, RTI International developed a data entry application using Visual Basic that reduced the time for data entry to a third of what would have been needed previously.

For the final assessment, RTI has been working with a Nicaraguan company Centro de Investigación y Acción Educativa Social (CIASES) to develop an efficient and user-friendly data entry system. The EGRA data entry system developed by CIASES offers a low-cost, sustainable solution for minimizing errors.