The Advanced Education Research & Development Fund has announced the launch of Reading Reimagined, a research initiative aimed at increasing reading fluency and comprehension for all students, with a focus on Black and Latinx students and those experiencing poverty.

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only a third of American students read at grade level, with only one in seven Black students and one in five Hispanic/Latinx and Native American students reading at grade level. To tackle critical questions and support coordination of curriculum, intervention, assessment, and supplemental literacy support for elementary and middle school students, Reading Reimagined will form an educator advisory council, which will partner with the team in designing and learning from the research and development projects; recruit school communities to participate in the R&D cycles and center the voices of students and educators; and release a paper summarizing the foundational research available and areas where more evidence is needed, which together will sharpen programmatic focus areas and allocation of resources. The initiative's inclusive R&D efforts will focus on three areas: what elements of student identity and self-efficacy most influence a reader's success, and what instructional strategies are needed to ensure a successful reading experience for targeted student populations; how best to build a diverse knowledge base that contributes to a student's reading success; and what the most efficient approach is for teaching older learners who have not yet mastered foundational reading skills in a way that honors their identity, dialect, and intellect while building their skills and confidence.

Reading Reimagined is the third initiative of AERDF, which was launched in 2018 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative with the aim of supporting improved outcomes in student learning, well-being, and opportunity through research and development. The two other initiatives are EF+Math, a five-year initiative to boost students' ability to learn math content by strengthening their executive function skills, created in 2019, and Assessment for Good, an "Inclusive R&D" program focused on significantly improving conditions for the social and emotional health and positive academic outcomes of learners ages 8 through 13, launched in July 2021.

"We believe it is possible to live in a world where every student can read texts that excite them, that help them prepare for the world they live in," said Reading Reimagined program director Rebecca Kockler. "We're a team of literacy curriculum experts and former practitioners who are not daunted by a challenge of this magnitude. In our systems we were frustrated by how hard it was to tackle these issues and just how many questions still existed about how to do this well, especially for Black, Latino, and Native American children and those experiencing poverty. We plan to build on the research that exists and then partner with students, their teachers and communities, and researchers to find practical, breakthrough approaches for teaching reading grounded in evidence and tested in classrooms."