This space will highlight current NASBE projects on a rotating basis. [Last updated on 09.03.08]

Organized to respond to the crisis of low adolescent literacy levels, NASBE launched the State Adolescent Literacy Network to help states craft strategies to improve literacy instruction and achievement in the upper grades.

Beginning in 2007 with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, five states—Connecticut, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Utah, and West Virginia—each developed signature plans grounded in collaborative processes, aligned structures, joint problem-solving and collective accountability.

• West Virginia embedded literacy instruction into its major improvement initiative, The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and created the Teach 21 website as a repository for content-area literacy resources;
• Utah, West Virginia, Kentucky, and New Hampshire developed blueprints for school-wide implementation of tiered models of literacy instruction in collaboration with special education and Title I;
• Connecticut developed a pilot instructional model to shape higher education pre-service programs and provide literacy-based instructional support for school districts;
• Kentucky established the Adolescent Literacy Task Force and forged a set of recommendations informed by lessons learned from locally implemented literacy initiatives. 

See full brief:

State Innovations: Kentucky’s Plan for Improving Adolescent Literacy.

Visit NASBE’s State Adolescent Literacy Network Project Site