Mount St. Joseph University Secures $4.67 Million Grant for Early Literacy Curriculum Development
Mount St. Joseph University's Center for Reading Science has been awarded a substantial $4.67 million grant from the Hollyhock Foundation. This funding will support the development and implementation of the Reading Opens Worlds (ROW) Integrated Literacy Curriculum, a comprehensive, open-source Pre-K through 2nd-grade curriculum. The initiative aims to address the fragmentation often found in current K-2 literacy programs by integrating phonological awareness, phonics, spelling, writing, oral language, and content knowledge into a single, cohesive model. The curriculum is being developed by MSJ experts with input from national literacy leaders and is currently being piloted in classrooms. A pilot program in a Cincinnati kindergarten classroom during the 2025–2026 school year, involving 91% multilingual learners and 100% free or reduced lunch qualified students, showed significant positive results, with all students scoring at or above benchmark on end-of-year Acadience Reading measures.