Fantastic Phonics in Liberia In 2007, Fantastic Phonics began to
provide the program free of charge to charities working in
poorer communities around the world. In 2008, USAID
(http://www.usaid.gov) chose Fantastic Phonics to use in a
reading intervention program in Liberia, on the West Coast of
Africa, where 85% of the population is considered to be below
the international poverty line. Initially there were 178 schools
in the program trial. The program, known as EGRA (Early Grade
Reading Assessment), was designed to provide an evidence–based
assessment to find the best methods of early-reading
instruction. The research ran from 2008 – 2010 (3 years), and
the outcome of the program was so successful that it has been
extended to an additional 2300 schools (75,000 copies have been
printed). After just one-and-a-half years of intervention, -
students in the "full treatment" group outperformed their peers
dramatically, nearly tripling the gains made by the control
group in oral reading fluency and reading compreh