The Accelerating the Academic Achievement of Students with Learning Disabilities Research Initiative (A3 Initiative) is intended to support research to develop and evaluate interventions (e.g., instructional approaches, curricula, technology) to accelerate the academic achievement of students with or at risk for learning disabilities in grades 3 through 8. The A3 Initiative will take a comprehensive approach to tackling the problem of improving the academic achievement, namely reading and mathematics achievement, of students with or at risk for learning disabilities who demonstrate the most intractable learning problems. The development and rigorous evaluations of interventions based on systematic experimentation and analysis of content and intervention features as well as implementation variables are required to build a science of intensive instruction to meet the academic needs of these students. In addition, the Institute plans for the A3 Initiative to change the way in which research on the achievement of students with disabilities is conducted by creating a tightly linked network of researchers across a variety of disciplines who will work collaboratively to address the problem.