As Arizona grapples with an ongoing literacy crisis, a new initiative is on the rise. Pathways to Evidence-Based Literacy, a statewide project led by the Arizona Educational Foundation (AEF), is launching with $11.5 million in federal funding to expand evidence-based writing instruction in elementary schools.
The Arizona Educational Foundation, along with partners SRSD Online and the American Institutes for Research, received the grant from the U.S. Department of Education through its Education Innovation and Research expansion initiative. The funding will support expanded use of self-regulated strategy development (SRSD), a writing instruction model backed by decades of research.
The Pathways project aims to help teachers successfully integrate evidence-based literacy practices into real-world classroom schedules and curricula, something officials say has been a longstanding challenge in Arizona.
“A lot of that is just, how does it fit into the classroom culture or into the system?” said April Camping, research director at SRSD Online. “We know a lot about the system-level issues now, so that’s what we’re trying to address…There have to be resources, there have to be point people, and there has to be a way that this fits in so teachers have time.”
Planning to reach more than 75 schools over five years, the Pathways program will provide instructional coaches and teachers with professional development training in self-regulated strategy development.
Self-regulated strategy development is an intervention designed to improve students’ academic skills through a six-step process that teaches specific academic strategies and self-regulation skills. The process starts with teacher instruction and guidance, and gradually moves toward students applying the strategy on their own — for example, planning and organizing ideas before writing an essay.
The six steps guide students from initial instruction to independent use: teachers provide background knowledge, discuss and model the strategy, support student practice and memorization, and finally observe students as they apply it on their own.
A central part of self-regulated strategy development is teaching students self-regulation skills, such as goal setting and self-monitoring, so they can apply strategies confidently and effectively without direct teacher support. Teaching self-regulation skills can have long-term impact, as Camping notes they are transferable across academic, social and career life.
“That’s kind of the key difference maker, and why it works so well as a strategies instruction approach,” Camping said. “Kids learn how to give themselves instructions, how to give themselves reinforcement, how to monitor their progress and how to self evaluate.”
Developed in the 1980s by Dr. Karen Harris, self-regulated strategy development has more than 40 years of research supporting its effectiveness. The first study, published in 1985 by Dr. Harris and Dr. Steve Graham, tested the model by teaching students with learning disabilities how to use effective vocabulary in story writing. Since then, SRSD has been the subject of more than 200 research studies.
Decades of research behind self-regulated strategy development have positioned it as one of the most thoroughly researched and evidence-based writing instructional models available, with the Institute of Education Sciences regarding the model as “especially appropriate for students with learning disabilities.”
Instructional coaches are seasoned educators who work alongside teachers to improve teaching practices and student outcomes. They provide guidance, support and training, helping teachers use strategies, technology and data effectively to improve lessons and build professional skills.
In addition to providing professional development in self-regulated strategy development, the project team will work over the course of the grant to develop an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered integration course. The course will be designed to help teachers more easily embed SRSD into daily instruction and overcome common implementation barriers.
“The goal there is to have AI as kind of a thought partner,” Camping said. “So we’d like to be able to upload schedules, upload key curricular units — things like that — and have AI support in ways that make SRSD fit into those schedules or work alongside content.”
The Arizona Educational Foundation is a founding member of the Arizona AI Alliance, a collective of education organizations committed to the responsible, ethical, and effective implementation of artificial intelligence in Arizona’s K-12 schools. Arizona Educational Foundation Chief Executive Officer Kim Graham said the Foundation was one of the first organizations in the state to provide AI training for teachers and principals, a role it will continue to play as part of the Pathways project.
“We know back in 2024 when we started to see AI technology really take hold, we looked at what school districts across Arizona were doing in terms of teacher support for AI training, and at that time, we found that less than 30% of districts had any planned training in AI for teachers,” Graham said.
“…AI is ever evolving, so we provide AI training to teachers and principals just about every few months because things are so rapidly evolving. There are a ton of tools through AI that teachers can use to supplement reading and writing instruction as well as improve on efficiencies.”
Each partner in the Pathways to Evidence-Based Literacy project plays a specific role. Arizona Educational Foundation serves as the project manager, SRSD Online serves as the implementation and development lead, and American Institutes for Research will serve as the independent evaluator.
The Pathways project will be evaluated through a large-scale randomized controlled trial conducted by the American Institutes for Research, comparing outcomes in participating schools with those in a control group receiving standard literacy instruction.
“We’re going to measure some teacher outcomes,” Camping said. “We’re going to look at social validity — do the teachers find this valuable, do they find it effective? But we’re also going to make sure it transfers to students, so we’re going to look at literacy outcomes like writing quality and we’ll probably look at reading comprehension.”
To tie effective practices together and spread them farther across Arizona, the Pathways project will generate open-access tools, policy briefs and professional learning resources to support replication across districts.
The Pathways to Evidence-Based Literacy team will hit the ground running on Jan. 1, getting to work on developing and piloting the integration course during year one of the project.
Camping said for this pilot, they are aiming for five schools and about 10 instructional coaches and their teachers. Those coaches and teachers will return feedback on the course, and it will expand from there.
“We’d really like Arizona to be a model for how to integrate evidence-based practices,” Camping said. “We have research, we know what works, but it’s that research-to-practice gap that we’re trying to address. So we’d really like to lay out a template for that, pilot it here in Arizona and get it working, and then expand beyond.”
“AEF is very excited to be working with SRSD (Online) and the American Institutes for Research. It’s going to be an amazing five years with these two partners,” Graham said. “Our hope is that we will see visible, impactful change in student writing achievement scores and also see a corollary impact on reading as well.