Prior to the development and use of the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA), there had been very little information about student learning in the early grades in low-income countries. EGRA was developed to provide a way to measure a child’s initial reading skills, and since being piloted in 2007, EGRA has been employed in dozens of countries and even more languages. Specifically, EGRA was constructed to assess the reading and language skills identified as being critical for students to become fluent readers who comprehend what they read. By assessing student knowledge of the alphabetic principle, decoding skills, oral reading fluency (ORF), and comprehension of written text and oral language, EGRA may inform Ministries of Education, donors, teachers, and parents about students’ reading skills in the early grades. Because of EGRA’s direct links with the skills critical for successful reading achievement, the assessment may assist education systems in setting standards and curricular planning to best meet children’s needs in learning to read. The EGRA instrument consists of a variety of subtasks designed to assess foundational reading skills crucial to becoming a fluent reader. EGRA is designed to be a method-independent approach to assessment (i.e., the instrument does not reflect a particular method of reading instruction). Instead, EGRA measures the basic skills that a child must possess to eventually be able to read fluently and with comprehension—the ultimate goal of reading. EGRA subtasks are based on research regarding a comprehensive approach to reading acquisition across languages. These skills are phonological awareness, decoding, reading fluency, reading comprehension, and listening comprehension. The EGRA, as adapted for Ethiopia and the Hadiyyisa and Wolayttatto languages for administration of a baseline assessment in June 2014, is an individually and orally administered standardized assessment of beginning reading that takes about 15 minutes to administer per child.