Reading Horizons Funding
Reading Horizons Wants to HelpFederal funding is distributed to high-need, high-poverty schools through several different programs, including the ones outlined below. Each program has its own purpose and targeted group of students, which determines how the funds can be used. And here’s some great news–the president’s budget for 2022 seeks to reverse years of underinvestment in federal education programs to begin to address the significant inequities that millions of students—primarily students of color—and teachers confront every day in underserved schools across America.
Click on a tab below to see more details and how Reading Horizons can help.
Title I, Part A
Title I is the largest source of federal funding for schools. This funding source currently provides more than $16 billion dollars to schools that serve a high number or high percentage of children from low-income families. Title I funding helps to ensure children living in poverty can meet challenging academic standards set by the state. The president’s new budget requests a $20 billion increase to Title I, bringing total investment to $36 billion for public elementary and secondary schools in the most underserved communities.
How Can My District Use Title I Funding?
Your district can use any Title I funding it receives to help your students meet your state’s academic standards by supplementing existing programs and accountability systems that incorporate various measures of school success. Among other expenses, you may use your Title I funding to provide extra teachers, intervention programs, supplemental materials, technology, professional development, or other programs to help create a well-rounded education for disadvantaged students.
How Can Reading Horizons Help Your Disadvantaged Students Meet State Academic Standards?
Reading Horizons Discovery® for K–3 Tier I Instruction
- Schools across the country use Reading Horizons Discovery® Structured Literacy curriculum in their mainstream K–3 classrooms for explicit phonics instruction. Teachers use our direct instruction materials during daily phonics lessons, and students use the accompanying software to review and reinforce skills. Teachers can review software data to more effectively target their instruction to the needs of their students. Administrators can review school/district software data to assess and assist in implementation.
- RH Discovery delivers high-quality content, multisensory practice, and transfer and application activities through direct instruction, allowing for targeted, high-quality intervention.
- RH Discovery employs a Structured Literacy approach that integrates listening, speaking, reading, and writing to raise student achievement.
Reading Horizons for Tiers II and III Intervention
- RH Discovery can also be used as a Tier II remediation program in grades K–3 for small-group instruction, or for Tier III intensive intervention, especially with ELL students and students with disabilities (e.g., dyslexia) to ensure that all children meet challenging state academic standards.
- Reading Horizons Elevate® is an intervention program designed for older students who have reading difficulties. It helps students fill in foundational decoding skill gaps with assessment-driven explicit phonics instruction based on the principles of reading science.
- RH Elevate is software-led and reinforced with direct instruction, following the same method and progression of skill lessons as the RH Discovery program.
- RH Elevate provides students with independent, competency-based learning that addresses their unique needs, adjusts to their pace, and gives them the privacy to struggle without shame.
Title II
Title II funding can be used to prepare, train, and recruit high-quality teachers and leaders. With a focus on increasing student academic achievement through strategies, such as improving teacher quality, Title II funds can be used for professional development activities that are sustainable, intensive, collaborative, job-embedded, data-driven, and classroom-focused.
The president’s new budget requests $1.6 billion to support additional certifications for more than 100,000 educators in high-demand areas like special education, bilingual education, career and technical education, and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and $30 million to recruit and train school leaders.
How Can My District Use Title II Funding?
Most districts use their Title II funds to provide professional development. In particular, funds are used to provide continuous, ongoing training that helps teachers understand academic subjects and learn strategies to help students meet high academic standards.
How Can Reading Horizons Help You Prepare and Train Teachers and Leaders?
- Part of the purpose and mission of Reading Horizons is to expand teacher education in foundational literacy instruction, thereby increasing the potential of their students. Effective implementation begins with classroom-focused professional learning for every educator and paraprofessional who will be providing literacy instruction to increase student academic achievement.
- Reading Horizons Professional Learning increases teacher knowledge and skills while building district capacity and sustainability.
- Reading Horizons Professional Learning is collaborative and interactive. It begins with a kickoff training where teachers receive a complete overview of the Reading Horizons method, are given a background in the science of reading and the elements and principles of Structured Literacy, an orientation to all materials, and practice in successfully implementing direct instruction.
- Reading Horizons Professional Learning is sustained through the web-based Reading Horizons Online Professional Development Course™.
Title III
The purpose of Title III is to help ensure that English language learners (ELLs) attain English language proficiency and meet state academic standards. Title III funds may be used to provide supplemental services that improve the English language proficiency and academic achievement of ELLs.
How Can My District Use Title III Funding?
Districts use Title III funds to provide supplemental services that improve the English language proficiency and academic achievement of ELLs and professional development to increase the knowledge and skills of teachers who serve ELLs.
How Can Reading Horizons Help Ensure That ELLs Attain English Language Proficiency?
- Reading Horizons improves the English language proficiency of ELLs with a step-by-step process that shows ELL students exactly what they need to do to learn to read, write, and communicate, developing high levels of academic achievement in reading English.
- Activities throughout the Reading Horizons curriculum promote pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and comprehension development to ensure ELLs have sufficient practice to master the skills they are being taught.
- Reading Horizons logically and sequentially teaches the framework of English phonics and an understandable foundation for reading, writing, and pronunciation.
- While fully comprehensive, the number of decoding rules within Reading Horizons is significantly lower than even the closest competitive product—making it the most accessible for at-risk students and those who are learning English.
- The multisensory nature of the Reading Horizons program is the reason ELLs can grasp the program more readily than alternative interventions and achieve at high levels.
- For more information on how Reading Horizons aligns with Title III objectives, see our ELL Reading Program Page.
Title IV
Title IV is a block grant that provides over $1 billion in funding for school safety, well-rounded education, and educational technology initiatives. Under the CARES Act, these funds can now be used to fund any of these three priorities:
- providing students a well-rounded education
- maintaining student health and safety
- purchasing and implementing education technology and systems
How Can My District Use Title IV Funding?
21st Century Community Learning Centers programs can provide a wide variety of enrichment activities, including academic remediation, tutoring, music, art, technology, health, counseling, and recreation.
How Can Reading Horizons Help Ensure a Well-Rounded Education?
- Reading Horizons Discovery® and Reading Horizons Elevate® Software are powerful education technology solutions that provide students with highly differentiated instruction, adapted to the individual student, and can be used to pre-teach or reinforce concepts taught in the corresponding direct instruction materials. The system is designed to do the following:
- Assess a range of reading and spelling skills that will customize instruction to match student needs.
- Assess initial reading level to provide a Lexile® measure.
- Address a full range of foundational reading skills.
- Deliver high-quality reading instruction to each student
- Provide customized lesson options to target specific student needs.
- Ensure students learn at their own pace.
- Engage grade K–12 students with visuals, games, and decodable text.
- Provide progress monitoring for teachers and administrators.
- For more information on how Reading Horizons aligns with Title IV objectives, see our Reading Horizons Curriculum page.
IDEA
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a federal law ensuring students with disabilities receive a free and appropriate public education. IDEA governs how states and public agencies provide early intervention, special education and related services to eligible infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities. Second only in size to Title I funds, school districts receive IDEA funds to help pay for the cost of providing services and education to children with disabilities.
The president’s new budget requests $17.5 billion for special education programs, with $15.5 billion for IDEA, a $2.6 billion increase over FY 21 and the largest increase to the program in two decades.
How Can My District Use IDEA Funding?
IDEA funds are used to provide early intervention, special education, and related services, including assistive technology. Up to 15 percent of IDEA funds can be used to implement a response to intervention (RTI) program, which provides supplemental instruction to assist students before they are given an individualized education plan.
How Can Reading Horizons Help Students with Disabilities?
- While fully comprehensive, the number of decoding rules within Reading Horizons is significantly lower than even the closest competitive product—making it the most accessible for at-risk students and those who are learning English.
- The program’s multisensory nature is why students with learning disabilities can grasp the program more readily than alternative interventions.
- Evidence is strong that the majority of students better learn to read with structured teaching of basic language skills and that the components and methods of Structured Literacy are critical for students with reading disabilities, including dyslexia. Reading Horizons employs a structured approach to provide systematic, explicit instruction that integrates listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
- RH Discovery and RH Elevate are explicit, systematic reading programs employing a multisensory approach for teaching basic reading skills. Based on the Orton-Gillingham principles of instruction, RH Discovery is engaging and flexible in its presentation.
Emergency Funding: ESSER I, II, III
What is ESSER Funding?
In response to the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), the U.S. Congress passed the CARES Act, the CRRSA Act, and the ARP Act that include relief packages designed in part to provide states with both funding and streamlined waivers to give state departments of education necessary flexibilities to respond to the pandemic. The relief packages include almost $200 billion in emergency education funding, channeled for public schools mainly through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund.
How Can My District Use ESSER Funding?
States and school districts must implement evidence-based strategies to address the academic impact of lost instructional time. Many parents and educators are especially concerned about the loss of in-person instructional time on students’ early literacy skills. Emergency funding may be used to support comprehensive state and local literacy programs that are needed due to the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., to address the loss of literacy skills as a result of the pandemic). It is important that school districts invest in evidence-based practices to support learners, including in early literacy, whether they are learning remotely or in person.
States and school districts may also use emergency funding for multitiered support systems for ELLs and to provide specially designed instruction for students with disabilities for literacy development and language acquisition. Funds may also be used for parent training and family literacy services in the use of early learning strategies that bring in the child’s environment and experiences to promote literacy skills.
How Much ESSER Funding Will States Receive?
State awards for the ESSER Funds are distributed in the same proportion that each state received under Title I, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended, in fiscal year (FY) 2019–20. Each state must use no less than 90 percent of its allocation to make subgrants to school districts within the state, based on each district’s share of funds received under Title I, Part A in the fiscal year 2019–20.
How Reading Horizons Aligns with ESSER Funding
- All of the Reading Horizons programs are authorized under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and IDEA, as outlined above in funding descriptions for Title I, II, III, IV and IDEA.
- Reading Horizons directly addresses the unique needs of low-income children or students, children with disabilities, ELLs, and racial and ethnic minorities with its comprehensive core reading curriculum.
- Reading Horizons provides web-based asynchronous training through the Reading Horizons Online Professional Development Course™, allowing schools to prepare their teachers, even remotely, to address learning gaps in reading.
- Reading Horizons’ products universally address unfinished learning, especially through the targeted interventions of RH Elevate.