EVALUATION REPORT Reading Beyond Sight: Improving Reading Scores of Children with Visual Impairment in the Philippines Implemented by Resources for the Blind, Inc. in the Philippines JULY 2017 Prepared by School-to-School International (STS) For All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development Evaluation Report: Reading Beyond Sight: Improving Reading Scores of Children with Visual Impairment in the Philippines 2 EVALUATION REPORT Reading Beyond Sight: Improving Reading Scores of Children with Visual Impairment in the Philippines Implemented by Resources for the Blind, Inc. in the Philippines Table of Contents List of Acronyms .................................................................................................................4 I. Executive Summary .........................................................................................................5 Key Findings .......................................................................................................................6 II. Project Description ..........................................................................................................8 III. Research Purpose and Design ..........................................................................................9 Sample ............................................................................................................................ 10 IV. Fieldwork Preparation and Data Collection ..................................................................... 11 EGRA Instruments ............................................................................................................. 11 Institutional Review Board ................................................................................................... 12 Baseline EGRA .................................................................................................................. 12 Endline EGRA ................................................................................................................... 13 End-of-Project Interviews .................................................................................................... 13 V. Project Implementation ................................................................................................. 14 Development .................................................................................................................... 14 Implementation ................................................................................................................. 14 Management .................................................................................................................... 15 Fidelity of Implementation ................................................................................................... 15 VI. EGRA Data Analysis ....................................................................................................... 16 Considerations .................................................................................................................. 18 VII. Summary of EGRA Results ............................................................................................. 19 VIII. Filipino EGRA Results .................................................................................................... 21 Filipino EGRA Results by Subtask .......................................................................................... 21 Filipino EGRA Results by Gender .......................................................................................... 29 IX. English EGRA Results .................................................................................................... 31 English EGRA Results by Subtask .......................................................................................... 31 English EGRA Results by Gender .......................................................................................... 37 X. Additional Findings .......................................................................................................39 Book Awareness ................................................................................................................ 39 Student Questionnaire Composites .......................................................................................40 Reading Materials Production in Schools ................................................................................ 41 Evaluation Report: Reading Beyond Sight: Improving Reading Scores of Children with Visual Impairment in the Philippines 3 Table of Contents (continued) XI. Scalability .....................................................................................................................43 Credibility ........................................................................................................................43 Observability ....................................................................................................................45 Relevance ........................................................................................................................46 Relative Advantage ............................................................................................................47 Ease of Transfer and Adoption ..............................................................................................48 Testability ........................................................................................................................49 Sustainability of Funding .....................................................................................................50 XII. Conclusions ...................................................................................................................53 Lessons Learned ................................................................................................................ 53 XIII. Annexes......................................................................................................................... 55 Annex A: Baseline and Endline EGRA Instrument .....................................................................56 Annex B: Student Questionnaire ........................................................................................... 73 Annex C: Student Questionnaire Results and Composites ......................................................... 82 Annex D: EGRA Descriptive Statistics and Additional Tables ...................................................... 92 Annex E: EGRA Reliability Results ....................................................................................... 100 List of Acronyms ACR GCD All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development CCTV Closed-circuit Television CLSP3M Correct Letter Sounds per Three Minutes CNWP3M Correct Nonwords per Three Minutes CWP3M Correct Words per Three Minutes DAISY Digital Accessible Information SYstem DepEd Philippines’ Department of Education EGRA Early Grade Reading Assessment EOP End-of-Project FOI Fidelity of Implementation GoP Government of the Philippines IRB Institutional Review Board M&E Monitoring and Evaluation NICRA Negotiated Indirect Cost Recovery Agreement ORF Oral Reading Fluency RBI Resources for the Blind, Inc. SD Standard Deviation SPED DepEd Special Education Division STS School-to-School International USAID United States Agency for International Development Evaluation Report: Reading Beyond Sight: Improving Reading Scores of Children with Visual Impairment in the Philippines 4 I. Executive Summary All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development (ACR GCD)—a partnership between the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), World Vision, and the Australian Government—is an ongoing series of grant and prize competitions that leverage science and technology to source, test, and disseminate scalable solutions to improve literacy skills of early grade learners in developing countries. Round 2 of ACR GCD, which started in 2014 and continues through 2017, sources technology-based innovations to improve early grade reading outcomes in developing countries.1 These technology-based innovations concentrate on three focus areas: 1. Mother tongue instruction and reading materials 2. Family and community engagement 3. Children with disabilities ACR GCD increased its focus on the assessment of early grade reading skills to understand the ability of the technology-based innovations to improve the literacy skills of early grade learners. To measure this, ACR GCD uses the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) to systematically assess reading skills across all Round 2 grantees. The EGRA is an oral assessment that measures students’ most basic foundation literacy skills in the early grades—specifically, recognizing letters of the alphabet, reading simple words, understanding sentences and paragraphs, and listening with comprehension. The EGRA methodology was developed under EdData II and has been applied in more than 30 countries and 60 languages.2 The EGRA instruments used by ACR GCD grantees were adapted to reflect the specific context of each grantee’s project, including adaptations for students who have low vision or are blind and students who are deaf or hard of hearing. Resources for the Blind, Inc. (RBI)—an ACR GCD Round 2 grantee—implemented the Reading Beyond Sight project in collaboration with the Philippines’ Department of Education (DepEd). The project’s overall goal was to improve the literacy skills of students in Grades