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Project LEARN is a partnership between the ²ÝÝ®´«Ã½, College Park (UMD) and Anne Arundel County Public Schools (AACPS).  This longitudinal study seeks to explore the skills that contribute to students²ÝÝ®´«Ã½™ reading comprehension achievement and how these skills may differ for English Learners (ELs) and English Monolingual students (EMs). The goal of Project LEARN is to study whether ELs²ÝÝ®´«Ã½™ reading comprehension is rooted in standard language-related skills like vocabulary and inference-making, or other factors such as motivation and executive function (EF) skills to determine effective targets for intervention for students in Grades 1 to 4. In order to study the relationships among language, EF skills, reading motivation and reading comprehension a series of assessments are administered to approximately 1,200 students in the fall and spring each academic year.

Time Frame: Three years 

Principal Investigator: Dr. Ana Taboada Barber, Professor of Special Education and Co-Director of the Language and Literacy Research Center

Co-Principal Investigator: , Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Teacher Preparation at Christopher Newport University 

Co-Principal Investigator: Dr. Laura Stapleton, Professor of Measurement, Statistics, and Evaluation

Project Manager: Peet Smith, Fourth-year doctoral student in the Special Education program in the department of Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education (CHSE) at UMD. 

Project Manager: Casey Archer, Third-year doctoral student in Education Policy program in the department of Teaching, Learning, Policy and Leadership (TLPL) at UMD.