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Kim Wins $15.5 Million i3 Grant

Harvard Graduate School of Education Assistant Professor James Kim has received a $12.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation (i3) program to conduct research on Project READS, a summer reading program model for low-income children in North Carolina. The U.S. Department of Education, which funds 80 percent of the grant, announced the award in September and required Kim to secure an additional $2.8 million or a 20 percent private sector match, which he has met.

"I am grateful and excited to work on the i3 project with a talented team of researchers, policymakers, educators, and foundation leaders," Kim said. "Working together, we will validate a cost-effective intervention that promotes summer reading and aims to close the achievement gap in reading in North Carolina public schools."

Over the next five years, Kim will work with a team of researchers including Thomas White, senior research scientist at the University of Virginia Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning; and Jonathan Guryan, associate professor at Institute for Policy Research of Northwestern University, along with Communities In Schools of North Carolina and Durham Public Schools to implement, validate, and scale up an innovative approach to combat summer reading loss among low-income children.

Project READS (Reading Enhances Achievement During the Summer) is designed to improve reading comprehension by providing children with books and promoting summer reading with teachers and parents. Kim and his team will evaluate the program through a series of randomized experiments involving up to 10 districts and 10,000 students. In the final year of the project, Kim will use data from the experiments to scale-up the most cost-effective version of the Project READS program.

"Project READS is a perfect combination of research, innovation, and the belief that every child can achieve with the right academic and personal support," said Linda Harrill, president and CEO of Communities In Schools of North Carolina. "We know that the children of families who cannot access books easily will fall behind their peers during the summer months. Through our partnership with Harvard University, more students in Durham and in North Carolina will start the school year off on an equal footing with their peers."

"Jimmy's book on the early implementation of NCLB (with Gail Sunderman and Gary Orfield) led him to conclude that we must seek practical, low-cost interventions to address the problems of struggling readers and to close the achievement gap. With this goal, he designed the first iteration of Project READS. I am thrilled that the Department of Education has recognized Jimmy's work with this i3 grant," said Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean Kathleen McCartney. "The intervention is a rigorously-designed study that will lead to evidence-based decision making in support of North Carolina public school children."

Funding for the Project READS i3 grant is a unique partnership between the U.S. Department of Education and nonprofit organizations and for-profit ventures including lead matching sponsor The Wallace Foundation.

"We are excited about the potential contribution the Project READS program will make to our knowledge about how to reduce summer learning loss, which we know all children experience but which we also know affects low-income children more dramatically," said Christina DeVita, president of The Wallace Foundation. "This is particularly important because summer learning loss is cumulative and accounts for a significant percentage of the achievement gap."

Additional support for the study will also be provided by Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, Healy Family Foundation, and William E. Simon Foundation, as well as Scholastic Books, Metametric, Inc., and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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