School of Communication Science and Disorders Director and Professor, Hugh Catts, Ph.D., joins Yaacov Petscher at the Florida Center for Reading Research to partner with the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Integrated Learning Initiative on a five-year, $30 million Reach Every Reader project.

Through individualized assessment and interventions, the project aims to improve early childhood literacy by ensuring that every child is reading on grade level by the end of third grade. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), cofounded by Dr. Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, is supporting the project.

“We are very excited to be working with researchers from Harvard and MIT on this CZI-funded project,” Catts said. “We know that reading and language disabilities can have a significant negative impact on children’s academic achievement, psychosocial well-being and future employment opportunities. So it is crucial that we identify children who are at risk early and provide them with appropriate intervention. In this collaboration, we are developing and evaluating screening tools for this identification.”

Read the full news release about Catts’s contributions to Reach Every Reader here, and click here to learn more about this impactful project.