Literacy skills are essential building blocks for success in primary education and advancement to secondary schooling. Yet schools in the Dominican Republic still struggle to impart basic literacy skills to their students, despite institutional and policy reforms. To address this issue, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Read Program created an approach for primary students in the Dominican Republic’s public schools, successfully combining teacher training and mentoring with tailored practice materials designed to meet children at their individual reading levels. Not only did students’ reading precursor skills improve within two years, but a subsequent national evaluation of sixth graders showed that students with the highest reading comprehension levels were more likely to have participated in the USAID Read Program.

This factsheet, available in English and Spanish, shares the approach and success of the literacy intervention and provides recommendations to take the program’s success nationwide in the Dominican Republic.