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The Coach's Learning Community

Standards-based program develops schoolwide literacy capacity

By Diane Reitz and Gene E. Hall

February 2017

Vol. 38 No. 1

The challenges inherent in increasing student literacy outcomes are well-documented, especially in underperforming schools. These challenges are made greater in schools that have high turnover in staff and in those communities with high populations of English language learners and greater poverty. Improving student learning in schools with these challenges requires more than simply changing textbooks, replacing staff, or offering more one-shot teacher workshops. There has to be a comprehensive approach that includes strategies to facilitate individual teacher learning, schoolwide implementation of effective literacy strategies, and investment in ongoing internal and external resources and supports. Through a federal literacy grant, the Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy Program aims to improve literacy achievement in pre-K-12 classrooms through implementing the use of full-time school-based literacy coaches. These coaches are

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Diane Reitz is the former director of the K-12 Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy Grant in Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada. Gene E. Hall (gene.hall@unlv.edu) is a professor of educational policy and leadership at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

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