"In support of President Bush's and Secretary Paige's continued efforts to supply American adults with the literacy skills needed for better jobs and opportunities, I am pleased to announce the Office of Vocational and Adult Education's (OVAE) new partnership with the National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to research the best practices for teaching reading to low-literate adults," stated Carol D'Amico, Assistant Secretary, Office of Vocational and Adult Education.

This new research network, charged to determine scientifically-based reading instructional methods, received $18.5 million in grants from OVAE at the U.S. Department of Education, NIFL and NICHD at the National Institutes of Health. The funds, to be used over a five-year period, will fund six individual projects for research efforts focused on a specific area of adult literacy instruction.

The projects within the network will design, develop, implement and study the effectiveness of adult literacy interventions for low-literate adults, including the role of decoding, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension instruction and explicitness of instruction.

For more information, please see NIFL or NICHD.