| Hello, *|NOME|* Educational managers in Brazil have access to good quality literacy data that allows them to take a snapshot of literacy. But it is undeniable that a better understanding of this complex process can have important practical consequences for the monitoring, evaluation, and construction of effective public policies. This March, IMDS starts a partnership with the Institute of Evidence-Based Education (Edube) whose objective is to build something closer to a short film of this process, as it occurs in Early Childhood Education and in the school years whose focus is literacy (1st and 2nd grade). During the year 2024, Edube will implement, in these grades, in the municipality of Mangaratiba (RJ), New Friends, a literacy program developed by Renan Sargiani (Edube) and Catherine Snow (Harvard Graduate School of Education), which aims to develop foundational literacy skills such as phonemic awareness and knowledge of phoneme-grapheme relationships. The partnership involves, first and foremost, developing, applying, and enhancing comprehensive instruments for capturing these foundational skills. An intrinsic – and fascinating – difficulty in the process is that it involves gaining insight into language abilities in children who cannot yet read fluently. IMDS will monitor the process of consolidation of the constructs underlying the instruments and will provide technical support in the analysis of longitudinal data throughout the year, in parallel with the efforts of Edube's technical team. On this front, the main mission is to understand the hierarchical structure of skills that allows children to achieve the superior abilities of fluency and interpretation of text. Also acknowledging the central role of teachers and school principals in the process, the partnership involves cooperation in constructing, applying, and analyzing data on literacy practices within the classroom and on school management as a whole. In this controlled environment, in which various inputs to the literacy process are being integrated into the routine of children and teachers, we believe it is possible to build a model structure to monitor the literacy process in future assessment projects. The 2016 National Literacy Assessment (ANA) revealed that by the end of 3rd grade, only 1 in 2 students were able to read and interpret the meaning of a short text. Even heroically assuming that there have been improvements in the last 8 years – which the pandemic must have made difficult – the result is alarming and unsettling. Through this partnership, IMDS once again makes explicit its commitment to enriching the story behind these alarming snapshots. See you at the next “Letter from IMDS”! Paulo Tafner CEO | 
