This is about more than test scores. When students lack strong literacy skills, they face barriers to learning across subjects and have fewer opportunities after graduation. To improve outcomes, education leaders need to replace inaccurate assumptions with evidence-based literacy assessment and intervention, especially for older students.

To support district and school leaders working on adolescent literacy, Reading Reimagined, an AERDF R&D program, released a new whitepaper outlining an evidence-backed approach to literacy assessment for older students and targeted intervention. The paper synthesizes current research on what contributes to reading difficulties in upper elementary, middle, and high school and explains why many existing assessment approaches fail to surface the skills students most need to strengthen.

Download the ROAR Whitepaper

One key challenge: older students are often assessed primarily on reading comprehension, not on the underlying skills that enable comprehension. And when older readers’ underlying skills are assessed, it is typically with tests that are designed to measure the early foundational literacy skills that are associated with early elementary grades, rather than the advanced skills like multisyllabic decoding and morphology that more sophisticated texts require. Without assessment data that pinpoints specific reading needs, educators and district teams may struggle to select timely, effective reading interventions for older students, or they may apply supports that do not match the root barriers.

The whitepaper highlights a promising tool: the Rapid Online Assessment of Reading (ROAR), created by Dr. Jason Yeatman from Stanford University. ROAR can help identify strengths and needs across key dimensions of literacy, including decoding, phonological awareness, reading fluency, morphology, and comprehension. Designed for efficient implementation, ROAR can be administered online in a silent, group setting without teacher administration. In about 30 minutes, it can provide information that helps teams understand student reading profiles and better align instruction and intervention.

Explore five big ideas for strengthening literacy outcomes across grade levels, along with practical implementation steps district leaders can use to make assessment and intervention more actionable. If you’re planning next steps for adolescent literacy support, screening, or intervention decision-making, this resource is built to help. Read the whitepaper.

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Our experts share evidence-based practices that integrate planning, focus, and persistence directly into rigorous math instruction. Listen to the full conversation to learn how we can help students understand their executive function skills as strengths, increasing their confidence as math learners and problem solvers.

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SRI International and Reading Reimagined have trialed a promising approach that can minimize that confusion. Also referred to as speech-to-print, SLP begins with students’ oral language: students learn how their own speech sounds are represented in print through letters and letter combinations. From the start, SLP explicitly teaches that English sounds can be spelled in more than one way and sometimes with more than one letter, so that students aren’t taught a confusing labyrinth of rules and exceptions.

Eighteen teachers in two U.S. school districts were trained to use SLP instruction with promising preliminary results:

• Teachers who used SLP instruction in their classrooms reported an improved understanding of how phonemic awareness, phonics knowledge, and fluency help their students’ reading proficiency, confirming successful instructional change.
• Student focus groups also revealed improvements in pronunciation, decoding, spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension, with multilingual learners particularly benefiting from the approach.

Learn more about the promise of SLP methods to improve foundational literacy skill instruction for students in grades K-8 in our new report.

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The announcement comes as executive functioning (EF) skills – including working memory, planning, cognitive flexibility, and metacognition – are increasingly recognized as critical to helping K–12 students tackle rigorous math concepts. In fact, 88% of teachers report wanting sustained, actionable professional development on EF skills to better support students in learning challenging math concepts.

AERDF’s new EF+Math Resource Library showcases the impact of AERDF’s approach to education R&D. It includes evidence-based math products; insights and tools for educators, researchers, and developers to support students in leveraging their EF skills in math; and research findings for others to use to improve math education. The comprehensive public repository ensures that the innovations developed and the knowledge generated through the EF+Math program continue to have an impact long into the future.

The EF+Math program was created to examine whether strengthening students’ executive functioning skills, skills that help students manage their thoughts, emotions, attention, and behavior, could dramatically improve student math outcomes. It is the first R&D program that AERDF invested in, and it will be completing its five-year funding cycle this spring.

“The EF+Math program was designed from the start to create a lasting impact beyond its planned five-year funding cycle.” said Auditi Chakravarty, AERDF CEO. “EF+Math developed research publications that provide blueprints for the field, a research community advancing these ideas, and methodologies so others can build upon this foundation. The EF+Math Resource Library is a dynamic hub that ensures the program’s evidence, tools, and equity-centered practices will continue to guide innovation and reach math classrooms across the country.”

The program brought together educators, researchers, and developers to simultaneously create evidence-based math learning products and to deepen the field’s understanding of the relationship between students’ EF skills and math learning.

“We believe that all students, and especially Black and Latino students and students experiencing poverty, bring mathematical brilliance to the classroom and are capable of learning challenging math,” said Michelle Tiu, Co-Executive Director of AERDF’s EF+Math Program. “EF+Math’s goal was to dramatically improve math outcomes by strengthening executive function skills and creating equitable math learning experiences for students in grades 3-8.”

Throughout the process, educators’ and students’ voices were centered, allowing real-world classrooms to shape the work.

“This inclusive, coordinated approach to R&D made this program more effective,” said Aubrey Francisco, Co-Executive Director of AERDF’s EF+Math Program. “Often, solutions are developed based on assumptions about what teachers and students need. At EF+Math, we intentionally brought together educators, researchers, and developers to co-create tools grounded in both classroom wisdom and learning science. That collaboration resulted in both products that are supporting students’ EF and math learning in classrooms, and new insights that can guide future R&D.”

Highlights from AERDF’s EF+Math program include:

• New Math Learning Products that integrate EF skill development with mathematics instruction, affirm student identities, and deliver measurable learning improvements. New products have been supported by the R&D investment, such as CueThinkEF+, a problem-solving program that has been acquired and scaled commercially; Fraction Ball, a basketball-inspired game to help students learn fractions; and MIND Education’s MathFluency+ and InsightMath, a novel approach and core curriculum designed to maximize student’s cognitive capacity for math learning.
• New Research Insights & Tools, including peer-reviewed studies, culturally responsive assessment measures, and research instruments that deepen scientific understanding of how EF skills, equity, and math learning intersect.
• New Framework and Toolkit for Conducting Inclusive R&D that includes lessons learned from the EF+Math Community’s approach to centering educator and student voices, practical tools for conducting inclusive R&D, and candid reflections on building collaborative research teams.
• New Professional Learning for Educators offering flexible resources for teachers and coaches to implement equitable, evidence-based math instruction. These ready-to-use professional development modules will help teachers support students in leveraging their EF skills to learn math.
• EF+Math Community Stories featuring the voices of educators, researchers, students, and partners who co-created this work and are now carrying it forward.

Learn more: The program’s new website with resources for researchers, educators, and developers on EF skills and math education is available at: efmathprogram.org.

Join our webinar: AERDF will host an EF+Math webinar, “Collective Learning, Lasting Impact: The EF+Math Resource Library,” on March 3 at 1 p.m. PT to share highlights of the work, findings, and resources on EF skills and math education. Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/efmath-resource-library-launch-webinar-tickets-1981873153954

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From Demonstration Program to Lasting Field Change

EF+Math set out with an ambitious goal: to dramatically improve math learning outcomes for students in grades 3–8, with particular focus on Black and Latino students and students of all races experiencing poverty. The program’s innovative approach centered on strengthening executive function (EF) skills—the core cognitive assets every student possesses.

As EF+Math sunsets this spring after completing its planned five-year R&D cycle, the program’s legacy will live on through the Resource Library. This isn’t simply an archive—it’s a dynamic resource designed to guide continued innovation and bring research-backed, equity-centered products and practices into classrooms and schools across the country.

What Awaits in the Resource Library

The EF+Math Resource Library will offer four key resource areas:

1. Math Learning Products that integrate executive function skill development with mathematics instruction, affirm student identities, and deliver measurable improvements in learning outcomes.
2. Research Insights & Tools including peer-reviewed studies, culturally responsive assessment measures, and research instruments that deepen our scientific understanding of how EF skills, equity, and math learning intersect.
3. Inclusive R&D Process Learnings that document how EF+Math centered equity and elevated educator and student voice throughout the R&D process. These resources include practical tools for conducting inclusive R&D and insights from our experience building truly collaborative research teams.
4. Professional Learning for Educators (coming soon) offering flexible resources for teachers and coaches to implement equitable, evidence-based math instruction. These ready-to-use professional development modules can help teachers support students in leveraging their existing assets, including their EF skills, to learn challenging math.

Woven throughout the Resource Library, in the form of videos and quotes, are EF+Math Community Stories featuring the voices of educators, researchers, students, and partners who co-created this work and are now carrying it forward.

Collective Learning, Lasting Impact

The EF+Math Resource Library represents more than the culmination of one program—it’s a bridge connecting research, product development, and practice in service of equitable mathematics education. By making these resources widely available, EF+Math ensures that the insights gained and tools developed over five years of intensive R&D can continue to evolve and create impact in new settings.

Learn From the EF+Math Team

Join us for a webinar on March 3, 2026 at 1 pm PT to explore the EF+Math Resource Library, and follow along on AERDF’s LinkedIn page as we highlight specific resources for educators, researchers, product developers, and funders.

For questions about the Resource Library or EF+Math resources, contact the team at [email protected].

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Other sectors, like defense and healthcare, have relied on an agile and well-resourced R&D infrastructure to introduce groundbreaking innovations in only a few years — taking us to space and saving lives. Education deserves the same resources and investment to meet the moment we’re in.

If we want responsible AI in classrooms, we need modern R&D behind it.

In a new piece for the Center on Reinventing Public Education, AERDF CEO Auditi Chakravarty speaks to the urgency of this moment and how we are reimagining education R&D to enable innovation and speed while prioritizing safety, efficacy, and equity.

But without federal backing and cross-sector collaboration to build an education R&D infrastructure, we risk:

• Markets shaping education technology. The best-funded companies, not the most effective, will dominate classrooms.
• Leaving the future of AI in education up to chance. Properly designed, science-based AI tools can support personalization and free up teachers to guide, mentor, and motivate — but only if we shape those tools with research.

AERDF’s model is built to scale. Read the full article for Auditi’s recommendations on what it will take to build the robust education R&D infrastructure students deserve.

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On a recent episode of the Evidence in the Wild podcast, Aubrey Francisco, Co-Executive Director of AERDF’s EF+Math program talks about what it takes to reimagine research and development in education.

“We wanted to go about creating interventions that are developed in classrooms, with educators, with students, not in a lab. That’s the heart of EF+Math,” says Aubrey.

Listen to the full conversation on the Evidence in the Wild podcast from Rocky Mountain Research.

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For too long, foundational reading skills have been assessed almost exclusively in early elementary grades. Yet research shows that older students’ reading comprehension depends on their ability to decode above a critical threshold, and many secondary educators lack the tools or training to identify these gaps. The ROAR assessment changes that.

This new guide draws on real implementation experiences from professional learning partners and their district collaborators, surfacing what it takes to:

• Prepare educators to teach foundational skills in secondary settings
• Build buy-in and shared vision across leadership and school teams
• Analyze ROAR data effectively and integrate it with existing systems
• Design intervention pathways that honor students’ skills, languages, and identities
• Support older striving readers with instruction that’s rigorous, age-appropriate, and motivating

This is both a technical resource and a roadmap for shifting how we understand, measure, and support reading development beyond grade 3.

Read the guide and explore what’s possible when research, expertise, and district partnership come together to advance literacy for all learners.

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In the latest episode of NPR’s Teaching Matters series, Rebecca Kockler, Executive Director of Reading Reimagined, joins the conversation to explore what the evidence shows about why students struggle with reading comprehension and what it takes to support learners over time.

The discussion examines:

• Why reading challenges persist for older elementary and middle-grade students
• Why sustained, tailored interventions matter
• How research, technology, and inclusive R&D can inform better literacy solutions

Drawing on Reading Reimagined’s work, Rebecca highlights how evidence-backed, collaborative approaches can help ensure more students can engage meaningfully with grade-level content and focus on richer learning experiences.

Listen to the episode and learn more about Reading Reimagined.

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AERDF, Education First, and the Alliance for Learning Innovation have taken the first step to outlining effective guidelines for coherent and equitable AI adoption in the classroom. They have published “Proof Before Hype: A New R&D Playbook for Coherent AI in K-12,” taking insights from fellow education leaders and transforming them into practical recommendations and calls to action.

This playbook highlights clear priorities for AI integration in education. Key recommendations include:

• Coherence beats novelty: districts prefer customizable AI solutions that integrate with their existing tech infrastructure rather than adopting new, one-off products
• Identify the use cases before introducing tools: a clearly defined use case that articulates a real problem and explicitly names and tracks intended outcomes quickly filters out
• Start with trust: in a world increasingly skeptical of the role of tech in schools, decisions are more likely to stick when educators, students, and community members help define the problem and have a say in how technology helps solve it

Whether you’re an education leader, developer, funder, practitioner, or policy maker, review the playbook for yourself and learn what role you can play in supporting AI adoption that strengthens teaching and learning rather than fragments it.

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