Hello, and welcome to my new blog for the Collaborative Center for Literacy Development (CCLD). I’m Dr. George Hruby, executive director of CCLD.
The Collaborative Center for Literacy Development was created by the Kentucky General Assembly in 1998. Our mission is to provide high quality literacy education professional development and literacy program evaluation research to insure that Kentucky’s future will be literate, well-educated, and productive.
CCLD is housed at the University of Kentucky’s College of Education, but our efforts rely on the collaboration of the literacy education faculty at all 8 of our state universities, and the National Center for Family Literacy in Louisville. Together, we foster superior literacy education through the rigorous training and professionalization of the commonwealth’s teachers.
Over the past 13 years, CCLD has provided literacy education professional development, early childhood through adulthood, to schools and school districts in all of Kentucky’s 120 counties. Typically, we reach all but a handful of counties in any given year, often running as many as four different programs at once in any given county.
CCLD is home to the Kentucky Reading Project, Kentucky Reading Recovery, Kentucky’s new Adolescent Literacy and Learning Initiative, and the Adult Literacy Education Program. Over the years we have pioneered early childhood training academies, adult computer-assisted learning for literacy, and the Striving Readers program. And our Research Office provides high caliber evaluation reports for Read To Achieve and Kentucky’s other literacy education programs.
Most recently, CCLD has been instrumental in designing and conducting workshops across the state for university faculty on Senate Bill 1, and the newly revised Kentucky core academic standards and assessments. We’re gratified to play this productive role in the new standards-based reforms.
CCLD takes great pride in the long-term correlation between our efforts, and Kentucky’s scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. Kentucky has significantly surpassed the national average 4th and 8th grade scores every testing year since 2002. In fact, in the last testing year, 2009, Kentucky was the only state in the union to demonstrate statistically significant increases at both the 4th and 8th grade reading measures, in spite of already being significantly above the national average.
Although correlation is not causation, strong and persistent correlations such as this, particularly in the absence of counter-indicators, do suggest that CCLD’s professional development efforts are having a positive impact, are an important part of Kentucky’s literacy education success, and show our funding is being well used.
CCLD is committed to ensuring that Kentucky continues on the cutting edge of literacy and educational advantage, that our children continue to improve on behalf of college and career readiness, and that Kentucky’s future will be productive, informed, and well-expressed, thanks to the power of literacy education.
I invite you to explore our new web site and enjoy its resources and information.
