Reading First is funded through the federal No Child Left Behind legislation.
Kansas Reading First is implemented in two important ways:
- Districts and individual schools across the state received grants to improve their K-3 reading programs.
- State-wide professional development in five core reading areas will be provided to K-3, Title I, ESL, and Special Education teachers.
This is an effort to impact literacy improvement state-wide. The Institute for Educational Research and Public Service at the University of Kansas and The Jones Institute for Educational Excellence at Emporia State University have developed and will provide this statewide professional development initiative over the next six years beginning in 2004.
The Kansas Reading Academy is part of the Kansas Reading First initiative developed to provide teachers with research-based instructional techniques and academic achievement monitoring tools in the five core areas of reading identified by the National Reading Panel. The Academy is a five-day professional development opportunity during the summer that provides research-based instruction about teaching phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension in a way that is generalizable to many different instructional settings and programs.