Many Nebraska schools indicate that students who have reading difficulties have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, state schools have been charged with implementing the Nebraska Reading Improvements Act for Nebraska.

The Nebraska Department of Education has partnered with the University of Nebraska–Lincoln to provide practice-based professional develop to address this prior to the pandemic. This is fortunate timing, as the WORDS project may also be a tool to help accelerate reading improvement in students who have been impacted by the pandemic. 

This project is designed to implement practice passed professional development for schools to speed up pandemic recovery for students with and at-risk for reading disabilities, and to provide an evaluation of the project.

Researchers aim to implement the WORDS project with all students falling below the state identified cut-scores on Nebraska reading screeners in 10 Nebraska schools; evaluate the impacts of the Nebraska WORDS project using a regression discontinuity design; evaluate the impacts of the Nebraska WORDS project using a propensity score matching to compare schools that receive WORDS with schools that do not receive WORDS; examine the impacts of WORDS descriptively for students with cognitive or intellectual disabilities; and foster sustainability of the WORDS project.