Child Language & Literacy Translational Team (CLL TT)

This translational team is focused on decreasing literacy disparities in children at risk for school failure.

Only 62 percent of students with learning disabilities graduate from high school in the U.S., with rates as low as 23 percent in some states (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013). The long-term effects of dropping out of school include limited employment opportunities linked to poor health outcomes (Egerter et al., 2009) and lower life expectancy (Begier, Li, and Meduro, 2013). Individuals with low literacy have marked difficulty understanding medical brochures, prescription drug information and informed consent for medical procedures. The Child Language and Literacy Translational Team’s approach to this pressing problem is to intervene when children are very young before they fail in school. The team developed and is testing the efficacy of a preschool curriculum shown to improve the early literacy and oral language skills of young children with disabilities or children from low-income homes. A key challenge is to deliver the necessary professional development training to teachers in rural locations so that they can implement the curriculum with high fidelity. In this Translational Team project we work with community partners to develop an effective distance professional development program.