Project Coordinate: Impact of Content-Focused Lesson Study on Teacher and Student Outcomes in Tiered Reading Instruction

General and special educators often need support to learn the necessary knowledge and skills for effectively implementing evidence-based, multitiered instruction and the collaborative practices to coordinate their instructional efforts. In our study, we employed a randomized control design to examine the impact of Project Coordinate (PC), a professional development approach incorporating online content modules and lesson study, on 24 fourth-grade general and special education teachers’ knowledge, collaborative planning, and instructional practice in reading. Using mixed effects models, we show that PC has a large effect on teachers’ knowledge, moderate to large effects on most aspects of collaborative practice, moderate to large effects on teachers’ use of evidence-based practice and explicit systematic instruction, and smaller and more mixed effects on measures of student word level and comprehension achievement. We discuss implications for future research on PC and similar interventions.