Language and Literacy Research Center (LLRC)

Promoting Adolescents’ Comprehension of Text (PACT) Plus is a model demonstration project aimed to create, execute, and test a school-wide literacy model in four middle schools in the UMD area in order to increase and improve the reading instruction that students with varying literacy needs receive across content areas and in supplemental reading intervention classes. PACT Plus is a fully developed text-based approach that focuses on the content in text as the vehicle for instruction, allowing students to build coherent representations of the ideas in text. Participating teachers receive intensive professional development and individualized coaching to support their implementation of a set of evidence-based strategies that target background knowledge, vocabulary, and reading comprehension in general education and special education content-area classes as well as in reading intervention classes.

For more information, visit the Project PACT Plus website. 

Funder: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education (OSEP)

Time Frame: Four years

Principal Investigator: Dr. Jade Wexler, Professor of Special Education at the University of Maryland

Principal Investigator: Dr. Sharon Vaughn, Professor of Special Education at the University of Texas at Austin

Principal Investigator: Dr. Elizabeth Swanson, Research Professor at the University of Texas at Austin

Project Manager: Alexandra Shelton, Special Education Doctoral Student

Project Manager: Leigh Ann Kurz, Faculty Research Associate