Every Child Can Read: UA Launches Project LIFT

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. - When a child struggles to read as classmates pull ahead, dominoes begin to fall.

"It's a fulcrum skill," said Dr. Greg Benner, the Helen and Pat O'Sullivan Professor of special education at The University of Alabama. "If a child can't read successfully, they can't access the world around them. They can't read to learn and experience all the incredible things that come from that: workforce development, confidence and social skills."

Project LIFT for students with disabilities

"For too long, some students with intellectual and developmental disabilities have been given less because people expected less," Benner said. When traditional reading interventions fail, students are often shifted into a "life skills" track for instruction.

Every child can read

According to Benner, Alabama is one of a handful of Southern states that have made great strides in advancing childhood literacy. Some in the field have dubbed it the "Southern Surge."

But some students still struggle after the interventions that schools have to offer.

"It is absolutely devastating to be in a classroom of 20 or 25 students and be one of the few students in that class who cannot read," Benner said.

Reading struggles affect a student's confidence, attendance and behavior in school. That effect lasts ­- research shows a correlation between poor literacy skills and incarceration both in juvenile offenders and adults.

"We built this grant for those students who are truly struggling to crack the code of reading," Benner said. "The science is clear. We want to bring these methods to schools and build their capacity."

The proof is in the randomized controlled trial

UA became involved with the direct instruction program Friends on the Block when its creators at Southern Methodist University asked UA's College of Education to lead an independent evaluation. The randomized controlled trial, funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, ran for five years. The participants were predominantly students with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

"What we learned is that IQ doesn't matter," Benner said. "If they get the instruction they need, they're going to become readers."

After the first year of the trial, he realized something special was happening.

The improvement they saw, even after one year, was "not typical." Among students with widely varying kinds and levels of ability, they saw steady progress. The students moved at different speeds, but the same program worked across the board.

"That's when things really connected for me," he said.

A follow-up study one year later found students had kept the gains they made during the program.

Project LIFT for rural Alabama schools

Over the next five years, Project LIFT will train teachers in 75 rural schools to use the Friends on the Block program. In the first year, the team will learn directly from teachers and rural schools how implementation would work best for them.

"We are building Project LIFT with rural schools, not around them," Benner said.

The program itself takes 25 minutes, three times a week. The phonics-based program emphasizes repetition and fun. Each lesson wraps up with a game that applies the skill learned in the lesson, so the students always end on a positive note.

The grant will target students in kindergarten through second grade, a window to catch struggling readers before the gap with classmates widens.

A lasting benefit

Sustainability will be a key measure of Project LIFT's success. The goal is to build expertise that stays in the schools after the grant ends.

"It's hard to describe the joy these students feel," Benner said. "It's hard to describe the joy their parents feel."

When a student has believed that reading was out of reach and instead begins to read with fluency and comprehension, an entirely new future opens up for them.

For Benner, Project LIFT is about doing right by Alabama's students, schools and communities in a way that lasts.