• Funding Via a Three-Year Federal Grant
• 95% of Funds Will Be Distributed to Local School Systems

The Maryland State Department of Education has been awarded a three-year, $45 million federal grant to help advance student literacy. The grant is MSDE’s largest competitive grant in nearly three years.

According to a press release:

The Striving Readers’ Comprehensive Literacy Grant, awarded by the US Department of Education, will support the State’s Comprehensive Literacy Plan (CLP), including pre-literacy skills, reading and writing. The grant will be awarded in three increments, $15 million each, contingent on funding.

The State CLP is based upon five keys: educational leadership; strategic professional learning; continuity of standards’ based instruction; comprehensive series of assessments; and tiered instruction and intervention. A state-wide workgroup consisting of local system experts and other stakeholders will provide additional input on the Maryland CLP. Its first meeting is October 5.

Maryland’s local school systems will benefit from the grant, as 95 percent of the funds will be passed to local systems to support their literacy work. Each system interested in the special funding will implement a district CLP, aligned to Maryland’s literacy plan but based on local needs. For example, a system might need early literacy programs in PreK or specialized professional development at the secondary level.

Maryland’s new grant places special emphasis on disadvantaged children, including those living in poverty, English learners, and children with disabilities. The State’s plan targets evidence-based strategies and interventions, and alignment of State literacy plans between learning and literacy for birth to age 5 with kindergarten through grade 12.

Read the full press release for more information.