What Makes Superman So Great? Closing the Achievement Gap

• December 14, 2010 by Terri Zezula

He gets results! Rescuing the good citizens of Metropolis and instilling hope and wonder in all citizens. Yes, it’s a comical notion but we love to believe in the Superheroes and their ability to get things done!

When it comes to education, we look to our school district leaders to get things done – improved student achievement, high quality schools and low cost education programs that get maximum results. Especially in light of recent reports that show the US lagging behind other countries in reading, math, science and social studies. But there is one district in Louisiana that is getting things done – their results are proof that good leadership, a supporting community and proven education programs can turn a district around, from failing to proficient in a short amount of time.

Once a low performing district, the St. Mary Parish Public School System has achieved significant gains to become a role model for schools looking to make dramatic changes in their performance. After using the Fast ForWord® and Reading Assistant™ family of educational software products to strengthen students’ brain processing and literacy skills, students have increased their reading proficiency, and improved their achievement on state tests. In addition, fourth grade promotion rates have increased and test scores for student subgroups have improved, with the district making significant progress toward closing the achievement gap.

During the 2006-07 school year, St. Mary Parish started school-wide use of the Fast ForWord software at eight elementary schools that were in Academic Assistance. During the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years, the Fast ForWord program was extended to the rest of the district. Students in grades three through five work with the Fast ForWord products 30, 40 or 50 minutes a day, depending on the school. Since 2008, the district has implemented Reading Assistant software as well.  Reading Assistant combines advanced speech-verification technology with the latest reading science to help students strengthen their fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary.

Results

• Improved state test scores
• Increased fourth grade promotion rate
• Fewer students required to attend summer remediation
• Reduced achievement gap

From 2006 to 2010 the percentage of fourth graders performing at or above the Basic level on the initial LEAP ELA test increased from 55 percent to 78 percent. In 2008, for the first time in a decade, the district exceeded the state average for the percentage of fourth graders reading at or above Basic on the initial ELA test. In addition, for the first time in years, the district had no schools labeled Academically Unacceptable.

Similarly, from 2006 to 2010, the percentage of fourth graders performing at or above Basic on the initial LEAP test rose from 59 to 79 percent in Math, from 53 to 69 percent in Science, and from 59 to 72 percent in Social Studies.

Fourth Grade Initial LEAP Test
Subject	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	Net Change*
ELA	53%	54%	60%	55%	64%	73%	73%	78%	+25%
Math	54%	54%	62%	59%	59%	71%	69%	79%	+25%
Science	45%	56%	59%	53%	59%	66%	67%	69%	+24%
Social Studies	56%	58%	55%	59%	66%	63%	63%	72%	+16%

*Net Change is measured from the year before Fast ForWord participation to 2010, i.e. 2006-2010 for 4th graders.

Fourth Grade Promotion Rates

In addition to improving LEAP scores, St. Mary Parish collected longitudinal data about the percentage of fourth grade students each year who were promoted to fifth grade. From 2006 to 2010, the district’s fourth grade promotion rate improved from 65 to 85 percent.

Both general education and special education students showed a positive trend in fourth grade promotion rates. Between 2006 and 2010, the fourth grade promotion rate improved from 67 to 88 percent for general education students, and from 33 to 59 percent for special education students.

 “Over the past four years, our fourth grade students have made astounding gains, outpacing their state counterparts in English language arts as well as math and science,” said Superintendent Dr. Donald Aguillard. “Our fourth graders now rank 14th in the state, signifying a continuance of annual proficiency increases since 2006. As a result, the number of fourth graders who require summer remediation has declined significantly, and students’ self-confidence and motivation have soared. In reading and across the curriculum, our students are clearly benefitting from our ongoing efforts to provide effective, targeted instruction and interventions through the Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant programs.”

St. Mary Parish Public School System is an example of a district that is getting results – making significant gains in reading, math, social studies and science. Providing the standard for making our education system No. 1 in the world again!

Categories: Education Trends, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant, Special Education

Tags: academic assistance, academic proficiency, academic success, accelerated learning, achievement gap, below grade level, elementary learning, elementary school learning, fluency, improving reading skills, increased test scores, LEAP, Louisiana, math, motivating students, reading comprehension, reading intervention, school leader effectiveness, science, social studies, struggling readers, struggling students, student reading growth, technology in education, vocabulary

Dr. Donald Aguillard: Improving Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP) Scores in St. Mary Parish Schools

• December 9, 2010 by Terri Zezula

Superman is here… is more powerful than a locomotive and can leap tall buildings while raising district scores in a single bound, the Superhero the education world has been waiting for. Who is this Superman? It’s the School District leader who makes failure not an option; who sees opportunities and possibilities where others see roadblocks and status quo. The Superintendent who takes risks to make progress and the teacher who knows all students have dreams and unique learning capabilities. The Superheroes are among us – saving and enriching the lives of students every day.

Take one such Superhero, Dr. Donald Aguillard, Superintendent of Schools at St. Mary Parish Public School System. His story is like many great district leaders – he saw a need, he embraced the challenge and he took measures to take his schools from failing to proficient in just a few years.

In the mid-2000s, after years of struggling, St. Mary Parish Public School System knew powerful change was needed. The rural district’s high stakes test scores lagged behind the state average, and there were large disparities between the reading proficiency of student subgroups. The state of Louisiana had placed several of the district’s schools in Academic Assistance, a designation for schools that fail to grow sufficiently — and some had remained there for nearly 10 years.

Dr. Aguillard and his leadership team took charge – they invested in a program that builds brain fitness and accelerates learning for all students. During the 2006-07 school year, St. Mary Parish started school-wide use of Fast ForWord® software at eight elementary schools that were in Academic Assistance. “One of the things I was excited about was that the Fast ForWord program is based on the science of how the brain learns and retains information,” said Dr. Aguillard. “Our challenge wasn’t necessarily that our programs were ineffective. It was that we weren’t meeting the individual needs of students. We realized that to make the most of our programs, we needed to develop and strengthen the cognitive skills essential for learning and reading success.”

As a result of building students’ brain fitness, the district saw a marked increase in student performance in these eight schools and adopted the program district-wide. “This built tremendous momentum because there were so many more students reaching the proficiency bars set in high stakes testing,” said Aguillard. The results are evident across the district. In fact, from 2006 to 2010, the percentage of fourth graders performing at or above Basic on the initial LEAP test rose from 59 to 79 percent in Math, from 53 to 69 percent in Science, and from 59 to 72 percent in Social Studies.

Dr. Aguillard has a wonderfully supportive staff that enthusiastically promotes the Fast ForWord program and strives for excellence in education; a community that rallies behind his efforts and students who see the future as a world of open doors. Lead on Dr. A., the world loves a Superhero!

Categories: Brain Fitness, Education Trends, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic assistance, academic success, accelerated learning, brain training, cognitive skills, improving reading skills, increased test scores, LEAP, Louisiana, reading intervention, struggling readers, struggling students, technology in education

Where is Superman?

• December 7, 2010 by Terri Zezula

Why wait for Superman?  Students across the country are making great academic gains with great teaching, rich content and outstanding educators.

Take a look at Patterson High School in St Mary Parish, Louisiana where Kenny Hilliard could barely read at the level of a second grader when he reached high school. After a few weeks of doing the Fast ForWord program at school, he reads at grade level and he understands what he reads. Once at risk of dropping out of high school, now Kenny is headed for Louisiana State University on a football scholarship. Kenny had great teachers, a rich curriculum and a community that supported his academic and athletic goals. Yet Kenny, like many other students across the country, needed an intervention to help build his cognitive skills of memory, attention, processing and sequencing – the skills necessary for reading and learning.

“What changed is that Kenny did a computer program called Fast ForWord,” said Patterson High School Principal, Rachael Wilson. “He is such a talented football player, and his talents can carry him far, but recruiters are looking for kids who have talent and good grades. The first two questions recruiters ask me are ‘What kind of kid is he?’ and ‘What kind of grades does he make?’ Thanks to the progress Kenny made in Fast ForWord, he does not need to rely on athletic talent alone.”

Kenny says he was a little nervous at first, but he decided to give Fast ForWord a try. It is a program that is proven to accelerate learning and increase reading proficiency in students from kindergarten through high school. The software consists of brain fitness exercises and actually improves how the brain learns.

“It worked,” said Wilson. “Within weeks, Kenny began to see a change in his ability to focus. Over time, his reading comprehension improved dramatically and that’s helped him in all subjects, and he has the GPA and ACT scores required for enrollment into a four-year university.”

Today, Kenny continues to break records playing football for St. Mary Parish School District and is planning for his college courses at LSU. To learn more about Kenny and his amazing story, watch this video.

Categories: Brain Fitness, Education Trends, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic problems, academic success, accelerated learning, ACT, at-risk, attention, below grade level, brain training, cognitive skills, high school learning, improving reading skills, increased test scores, Louisiana, memory, processing, reading intervention, sequencing, struggling readers, struggling students, technology in education, waiting for Superman

Scientific Learning Around the World

• November 9, 2010 by Peter Carabi

Most readers of this blog are familiar with some of the “life-changing” stories associated with the use of Scientific Learning (SLC) programs (Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant) in schools and clinics in North America.  But did you know that these same remarkable results are being achieved with students all over the world?  While the use of our programs continues to expand in North America via sales to school districts and in conjunction with private providers, the company also has a growing international presence.   Currently, SLC has a network of 25 Value Added Representatives (VARs) who provide our programs in over 45 countries (for a list of VARs and their countries.  To obtain a list of our VARs, please visit http://www.scilearn.com/company/international/list-of-intl-vars/.  The growth of the international market for SLC is considered a high priority, and is fueled by increasing awareness of brain fitness and the role of cognitive neuroscience in the learning process, as well as a keen emphasis (especially in Asian countries) on English language learning as a prerequisite for career success.

Our VAR network is composed of expert implementers of our programs, with backgrounds in such areas as speech pathology, English language learning, audiology, physical therapy, and reading theory.  In most cases, VARs deliver Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant in combination with other interventions, therapies, and curricula, to address the particular needs various sub-groups of users.  Most VARs have developed strategies to address the needs of different segments of their local users. For instance, most VARs have one or more of their own after school-day learning centers.  In addition, they usually develop a network of “sub providers” (who can be composed of therapists, tutoring or language learning center operators, or other specialists).  Finally, many VARs also conduct direct sales efforts to public and private schools.  In each case, the kinds of “value added” services they provide will vary according to the needs of the partner or end user.

In addition to the many instances amongst our VARs of life-changing stories of success with individual students, several international research studies have been conducted which have added to the mounting library of evidence of the efficacy of our programs.  These studies (visit http://www.scilearn.com/scientifically-based-research/international/10/) include research from Singapore, Germany, Bermuda, India, Australia, the UK, Ireland, Philippines, and Thailand. 

It has taken time for the concept of brain fitness to gain widespread acceptance in North America.  The same is true internationally.  But recent events have dramatically demonstrated that educators and parents around the world are beginning to understand the power of our programs to build brain fitness, increase academic performance, address specific learning disorders, and enhance English language proficiency.   For instance, in the area of special needs, in 2009 the Australian Government’s Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs named Fast ForWord as an approved intervention for children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs).  In South Korea, our local VAR partner (which has over 120 sub partners and school clients) has an official relationship with the Korea Association of Primary English Education (KAPEE) as a result of KAPEE’s observation of the success of Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant to help students quickly increase their English reading and speaking proficiency.  And, in China, preliminary results of research conducted in conjunction with two prestigious universities (Peking University and Beijing Normal University) has shown impressive results for Chinese students using Fast ForWord. 

More information about our VAR program can be found at www.scilearn.com/international.  Our VARs are a committed, caring group of professionals who are happy to share what they have learned about our programs, and they always extend warm invitations to visitors who may be traveling in their countries on vacation and/or business, to visit their centers and learn more about how they incorporate our programs into their businesses.  For more information, you can contact me at pcarabi@scilearn.com.

Categories: Brain Fitness, English Language Learners, Fast ForWord, Reading Assistant

Tags: academic proficiency, academic success, accelerated learning, improving reading skills, language learning

The Inspirational—Remarkably Human—Child Prodigy

• October 21, 2010 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

Why are we so fascinated by people like Akrit Jaswal, IQ 146, who performed his first surgery at seven years old; or Kim Ung-Yong, IQ 210, who attended university at age four and received his doctorate in physics at age fifteen; or the precocious Adora Svitak, who has become an accomplished writer, poet, teacher and humanitarian by age twelve?

We have interests and passions just like they do. Still, their abilities allow them to pursue their passions and achieve fantastic success at speeds most of us reach only in our dreams. While their talents and unique minds set them apart from the general public, they represent the best of us, with incredible abilities to learn, process and utilize information and skills. When we look at these individuals, we see life trajectories jumping effortlessly from success to success ad infinitum.

One branch of research into prodigies asks the question: What gives them these abilities? While the scientific basis is still not entirely understood, the Society for Neuroscience, in its briefing, Glia: The Other Brain Cells (September 2010), suggests that part of this capability might lie in a very high density of glia cells which support synaptic function and, ultimately brain plasticity. Studies of Albert Einstein's brain in the 1980s revealed a high density of glia cells "especially in the association cortex, an area of the brain involved with imagination and complex thinking."

Another branch of research asks another question altogether: Why is it that child prodigies often do not necessarily grow up into the out-of-this-world adult successes that we imagine they would? According to Ellen Winner, Boston College professor of psychology and author of Gifted Children: Myths and Realities, child prodigies rarely grow up to become adult geniuses. Interestingly, their young minds seem to be able to master knowledge that has already been discovered, but that does not always come with the ability to create, which "requires innovation, rebelliousness, dissatisfaction with the status quo (What Are Child Geniuses Like As Adults? (ABC News, 2005)."

Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author of Blink, Outliers and The Tipping Point, summed it up when he said, "What a gifted child is, in many ways, is a gifted learner. And what a gifted adult is, is a gifted doer. And those are quite separate domains of achievement." (See APS Observer, August 2006) In Outliers, Gladwell argues that most so called geniuses (but not these types of prodigies) became experts in their fields by early and intense exposure and practice in areas that they would later excel in; his guesstimate is that it takes about 10,000 hours to become an expert. Somehow, with their mental abilities, these prodigies do what they do without Gladwell's time investment.

Research aside, they represent amazing talents, and we are right to find inspiration in them. Adora Svitak does possess that restlessness and dissatisfaction; these are the minds that I find most interesting. Through watching someone like Miss Svitak learn and succeed as she matures, I am constantly inspired to take my own learning and my own successes, and see how I can use them to make the world a better place.

Learn more about child prodigies in these articles:

• What Are Child Geniuses Like As Adults? ABC News, 2005
• 10 child prodigies (who actually ended up doing something), CNN Living, December 10,2007)
• The Myth of Prodigy and Why it Matters, Observer, Association for Psychological Science, August 2006

Finally, do take eight minutes and thirteen seconds and watch Adora Svitak's February 2010 TED talk. You will be inspired.

Categories: Reading & Learning

Tags: accelerated learning, arts, cognitive skills, creativity, early learning, Innate abilities, innovation, intelligence

Gifted and Talented Students Demonstrate Improved Reading Achievement after Using Fast ForWord Products

• October 8, 2010 by Melissa Agocs

During the 2009-2010 school year, the St. Mary Parish Public School System was interested in evaluating the impact of the Fast ForWord® products on the reading achievement of gifted and talented students. Students who were part of this group were in the 2nd through 9th grades and their average grade level was early 4th grade. Even though their average actual grade level was early 4th grade, the group was reading at a grade level of mid-5^th grade, demonstrating their gifted and talented status.

Students started on the Fast ForWord Language or Fast ForWord Literacy products, using the 40- or 50-Minute protocols. Students then progressed through the Fast ForWord Reading products. Some also used Scientific Learning’s Reading Assistant™ software. Students were pre- and post-tested using Reading Progress Indicator, a computerized assessment used to rapidly measure a student’s reading skills, including phonemic awareness, decoding, vocabulary, and comprehension.

The students made gains on Reading Progress Indicator, significantly improving their grade-equivalent scores from a reading grade level of mid-5th grade to mid-7th grade. Before these students started on the products, they had an average actual grade level of early 4th grade. These results show that the students were advanced prior to using Fast ForWord products but also that they were able to benefit, suggesting that students of various levels can show benefit from the products.

Categories: Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Scientific Learning Research

Tags: academic success, accelerated learning, gifted & talented, improving reading skills, Reading Progress Indicator

Students Make the Same Reading Gain
in Half the Time with Fast ForWord Language v2

• October 6, 2010 by Andrew Ostarello

In 2008, Scientific Learning introduced a major update to Fast ForWord Language – our award-winning flagship product for language development in elementary-school-aged children. We will discuss the improvements present in the new version of the software: Fast ForWord Language version 2 (or “v2” for short). 

Product development at Scientific Learning occurs with the support of five key areas of research:

• Basic, foundational research
• University-based Research
• Studies conducted by schools using Fast ForWord products
• Detailed Fast ForWord product use data
• Outcomes data such as high-stakes reading and language assessments

We looked at these data sources and decided that we could substantially enhance the Fast ForWord Language experience. We set out to create a completely upgraded version of the software.

We had four primary goals for this revision:

• Increase the number of trials a student performed in a session.
• Increase the overall engagement level of the products by overhauling the graphics and updating the game designs.
• Decrease the time required for students to complete Fast ForWord Language, while
• Maintaining the same levels of learning gain.

As each student uses Fast ForWord software, their machine sends product use data back to Scientific Learning databases in real time. These data are filtered to the Innovation and Research Department for analysis. After we’d developed and released Language v2, we naturally wanted to verify that we’d met our four goals. A few months after release, we used a data mining approach to compare the performance of Language v1 to the performance of Language v2.

Data mining is a very data-hungry process, but our database is broad enough that we’re swimming in data. We ended up with a rich data set containing data from over 16,000 students who used either Language v1 or Language v2. 

Here is what we found regarding our first goal: Increased trial count. In an average 50-minute session, Language v2 users performed 21% more trials than Language v1 users.

Our second goal was to increase student engagement. We created new exercises and introduced new characters. For example, we created Whaliens. The core exercise is the same as Phonic Match in Language v1, but the graphics are better, there are many more exciting animations, and there are multiple new visual indicators of student progress. In addition, lots of significant revisions were made to the stimuli and educational design of this and other exercises. These revisions help create a more enticing experience for students.

Our third goal: We wanted to decrease time to completion. The most exciting finding is that Language v2 takes HALF the time to complete that Language v1 does. This means that students who use Language v2 can finish and start the next Fast ForWord product in their sequence more quickly.

Finally, did we meet our goal of having equivalent learning gain? We found that Language v2 users make 50% more reading gain per hour of use than Language v1 users. Combined with the fact that Language v2 takes about half the time to complete,  it turns out that the total reading gains from v1 and v2 are statistically indistinguishable from each other. 

So Language v2 provides equivalent reading and language gains in half the time of Language v1. This leads to the conclusion that, in addition to offering a more engaging and intensive Fast ForWord experience, Language v2 is twice as efficient as Language v1.

To learn more, visit our Fast ForWord Language v2 product page. 

Categories: Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Scientific Learning Research

Tags: accelerated learning, brain training, elementary school learning, Fast ForWord characters, improving reading skills

Register Today for our Fall Webinar Series!

• September 16, 2010 by Carrie Gajowski

Alan November, Eric Jensen and Bill Daggett will be joining Scientific Learning for the Fall Webinar Series starting on Wednesday, September 22^nd. The webinar series is designed to help educators understand how the latest developments in educational technology and neuroscience can inform teaching, accelerate learning and improve student achievement.

The webinars will begin on Wednesday, September 22^nd with Alan November, a speaker, author, educator and leader in educational technology. His session is titled, “Creating a New Culture of Teaching and Learning”. During this live session, Alan November will show how a powerful new culture of empowered teaching and fearless learning is emerging and how access to more timely information and communication tools can empower educators to focus on the individual learning needs of their students.

Eric Jensen, an educator, author and expert in connecting neuroscience research with practical classroom applications, leads the second webinar on Tuesday, September 28^th. Titled “7 Discoveries from Brain Research That Could Revolutionize Education,” this session will explore cutting-edge discoveries in brain research that have real-world implications for educators. Jensen will describe specific strategies on reinventing the learning process and connecting games and tools, which educators can use to improve student achievement.

The fall webinars will conclude in December with a presentation by Dr. Willard Daggett, CEO of the International Center for Leadership in Education and an expert on school improvement initiatives. His session is titled, “Our Changing Education Landscape”. Additional details will be available in early October.

The webinars are provided free of charge. For more information and to register for the sessions, please go to: www.scilearn.com/webinars.

Categories: Brain Fitness, Brain Research, Education Trends

Tags: academic success, accelerated learning, Alan November, ayp, brain plasticity, brain training, cognitive skills, Eric Jensen, how adults learn, how children learn, innovation, science, technology in education

One Half Year Increase in One Month with Reading Assistant

• August 25, 2010 by Melissa Agocs

The Marion County Schools in West Virginia were interested in evaluating the impact of the Reading Assistant software on readers who had demonstrated “partial mastery” on their state assessment. The software was used within an intensive summer school program.

In the summer of 2009, prior to entering the fifth grade, these selected students worked for 30 minutes a day on Reading Assistant, three to four days per week, for four weeks.

The Scholastic Reading Inventory, abbreviated as SRI, was used as a pre and post measure. The assessment is a research-based, computer-adaptive reading assessment for Grades K–12 that measures students’ level of reading comprehension and it reports Lexile scores. At this age, average readers typically gain 100 to 120 Lexile points after a full year of instruction.

In the video, the graph presented shows the gains the students made on the Scholastic Reading Inventory, significantly improving their Lexile scores from 537, shown by the blue bar, to 605, shown by the red bar. In this one-month summer program, participants gained 68 points, more than half the expected yearly gain of 100 to 120 points. 

For more information, please see the Educator Briefing on this study as well as any of our 200+ additional reports on Fast ForWord software results. If you have questions about any of our research studies, please contact us.

Categories: Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant, Scientific Learning Research

Tags: academic proficiency, academic success, accelerated learning, assessments, elementary learning, elementary school learning, improving reading skills, increased test scores

Over 45% Relative Improvement in Students Reaching Proficiency

• August 18, 2010 by Melissa Agocs

 

Since the 2006-2007 school year, the St. Mary Parish Public School System has been implementing the Fast ForWord products. The district started with seven elementary schools that were in academic assistance, which is a designation for schools that don’t make sufficient progress. After seeing the results on student achievement, the St. Mary Parish Public School System expanded its use and now has a district-wide implementation.

Students started with the Fast ForWord Language products and then progressed through the Fast ForWord Reading products. The Scientific Learning Reading Assistant software was first used in the district during the 2009-2010 school year.

The Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP) is part of Louisiana’s criterion-referenced state testing program and is administered to students in the fourth and eighth grades.

The LEAP has two components – the results shown in this presentation are from the English Language Arts test. Students receive one of the following five achievement ratings: Advanced, Mastery, Basic, Approaching Basic, or Unsatisfactory.

This graph shows the percentage of fourth graders each year who achieved a performance rating of Basic or Above on their LEAP English Language Arts test. The blue line indicates The St. Mary Parish 4^th graders and the red line indicates the 4^th graders in all of Louisiana for their initial LEAP tests given each spring.

Fast ForWord started being used in the district during the 2006-2007 school year, shown by the yellow shading. Since that school year, as you can see in the graph, fourth graders in the St. Mary Parish Public School System have shown dramatic improvements in their reading achievement as measured by the LEAP ELA.

In 2008, for the first time in a decade, the district exceeded the state average for the percentage of fourth graders reading at or above the Basic level.

During the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 school years, Fast ForWord was extended to the rest of the district, and the schools began using Reading Assistant. In four years, the percent of fourth graders in the district performing at or above Basic on the initial LEAP ELA test increased impressively from 53% to 78%, starting out far below the state average and then exceeding it.

For more information, please see the Educator Briefing on this study as well as any of our 200+ additional reports on Fast ForWord results. If you have questions about any of our research studies, please contact us.

Categories: Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant, Scientific Learning Research

Tags: academic problems, academic proficiency, academic success, accelerated learning, below grade level, child reading development, elementary learning, elementary school learning, improving reading skills, increased test scores, intervention, learning to read, literacy, Louisiana, middle school learning, reading intervention, struggling readers, struggling students, technology in education