The National Center for Special Education Research has awarded $10 million to a team of researchers led by Doug and Lynn Fuchs, the Nicholas Hobbs Professors of Special Education and Human Development, to develop new math and reading strategies aimed at improving student success.
The five-year grant, which establishes an Accelerated Academic Achievement Research Center, will enable them to study instructional programs targeting students with the most severe learning disabilities in grades 3 to 5.
Vanderbilt is the only institution to receive the federal grant. In designing the research program for the new center, the Vanderbilt team relied on the new Common Core State Standards to determine the critical competencies on which the center’s new interventions will focus.
The new instructional programs developed at the center will help educators address challenges such as how to assist students in progressing to more complex subject matter and how to transfer learning between different intellectual tasks. The center will identify 2,000 to 3,000 students from Nashville schools to participate.