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

Building Unstructured Play Into the Structure of Each Day

• August 20, 2010 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

As educators, we carefully design connections between what we teach and our students' future success. Practically every aspect of our young people's school day is designed with a specific learning purpose in mind. Along with helping them learn foundational, essential content, we also employ classroom experiences to help students learn to apply knowledge to creative solutions, analyze situations to make smart decisions, and learn to collaborate with others.

Now, stop for a moment and think about the skills I just listed: analyzing challenges; making decisions; creating; collaborating. As it turns out, these are all benefits that young brains get out of the simple experience of good old-fashioned unstructured play.

Today, 21st century society has evolved into one where our children's time is over-scheduled and over-structured. A recent poll of 2,000 parents in the UK indicated that, after figuring in school, homework, extra lessons, after-school activities and television and computer screen time, the average child gets a seriously inadequate 69.77 minutes a day for unstructured play.

Why is unstructured playtime so essential? In the 2007 clinical report, The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds, published by The American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg outlines the key benefits of play, which include:

• The development of creativity, imagination, dexterity, and physical, cognitive, and emotional strength
  
• The ability to engage, interact with and manipulate the surrounding world
  
• The opportunity to conquer fears and practice adult roles
  
• The ability to develop self-confidence and resiliency
  
• The chance to work in groups, share, negotiate, resolve conflicts and learn self-advocacy
  
• The opportunity to build healthy, active, coordinated bodies

The list goes on and on and on. And yet, even with that understanding of the importance of such play for healthy development, we find it challenging--both as parents and educators--to make that time. But we can and we must, so let us assume that you can successfully "unplan" some time each week. Once we flip the switch to the "off" position, then what? Here are a few ideas just to get you started:

• Spend a day in the park. But for goodness sake, don't plan anything! Just bring a picnic and let the rest happen. (It will, you'll see.)
  
• Pay a regular visit to the library and let those budding brains explore.
  
• Revisit your back yard. Remember that place? You will be amazed and what a few youngsters will devise with just some sticks, a garden hose and some nice, yummy mud. (Notice: Getting dirty is part of the fun and the learning. It'll be even more fun if you get into it with them.)
  
• Plan more play dates. Not only will friendships become more and more solid, but the negotiation and collaboration skills learned will be invaluable.
  
• Keep those art supplies stocked. Get a simple plastic cabinet, box or trunk that you can keep stashed in a closet, and FILL IT with art supplies. Then, maybe when it is least expected, open that treasure chest and let the magic happen.

As the grownups and educators, we want to plan with purpose. In the case of play, we need to relax and take it easy. If we can simply present some options, children and play will find their way.

Now, what about teens, who are by nature struggling to find their way? In general, teens' time is much more structured than that of younger children, considering that they are juggling school, homework, sports, music lessons, clubs, etc. While the general opinion is that teens have a greater propensity for getting into trouble when they have too much unstructured time, we must not forget that there are still benefits to unstructured time. Given reasonable boundaries, teens will continue to reap the benefits of unstructured time by stretching and exercising their mental wings. Think about all the great things that teens are doing through YMCAs, Boys and Girls Clubs of America and similar organizations that give them the time and space to just be themselves in a safe, stimulating environment. Home can and should be just as safe, positive and creative.

While the research available is extensive, here are a couple of articles just to get you started:

• The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds, Kenneth R. Ginsburg, MD, MSEd, American Academy of Pediatrics (January 2007)
  
• Make Way for Play, Walter F. Drew EdD, Scholastic (June 2007)

Categories: Brain Fitness, Brain Research, Family Focus

Tags: cognitive skills, creativity, development, elementary learning, elementary school learning, emotions in learning, health and well being, how children learn, imagination, learning through play, middle school learning, play, self-esteem

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

Broward County, FL: “Fast ForWord has made me a more confident learner.”

• August 10, 2010 by Carrie Gajowski

In 2010, Scientific Learning partnered with Broward County School District in Florida to implement Fast ForWord products in five schools.  Over 1,200 students worked with the products, and participant grade levels ranged from elementary to high school.  The average gain for participating students was 1 year and 1 month after only 32 days of product usage.

Principals, teachers, and students at the Broward County schools reported improved reading, improved self-esteem, and engaged learning.  In this video created by the district, staff and students share their thoughts about working with Fast ForWord software to build confidence and raise test scores.

Categories: Brain Fitness, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: accelerated learning, brain training, child reading development, elementary learning, elementary school learning, Florida, high school learning, improving reading skills, increased test scores, literacy, middle school learning, motivating students, self-esteem, student growth, technology in education, video

Musical Training and Cognitive Abilities

• August 5, 2010 by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D.

The debate over music and its benefits for the development of early cognitive abilities have raged now for almost two decades. Can classical music transform children into smarter, more effective learners? Today's research indicates that the clear answer is that this is the wrong question. The question is this: What are the differences in the effects of passively listening to music vs. active musical training upon cognitive abilities?

On passive listening
Ever since French researcher Dr. Alfred A. Tomatis, in his 1991 book Pourquoi Mozart?, put forth the assertion that listening to the music of Mozart can retrain the brain, laypeople and researchers alike have been on the hunt for evidence to support his claims. Two years later, University of California at Irvine psychologist Frances H. Rauscher reported findings demonstrating that passively listening to Mozart's music enhanced college students' cognitive abilities. (Such claims gave rise to numerous products that were aggressively marketed to parents, the most popular being the highly scrutinized Baby Einstein series. See this 2009 article in the NY Times.)

While they garnered a fantastic amount of attention, researchers around the world have been highly skeptical of Rauscher's conclusions. Today, numerous studies have demonstrated that, alas, passively listening to music will not transform babies' brains into mini computational powerhouses. See this May 10, 2010 article in Science News.

On active training
All this does not translate to the conclusion that there is no educational benefit to music. I'm happy to report that active musical training, such as taking formal lessons in learning to play the piano or read music, does produce substantive positive changes in the brain in children as well as adults. As we know, the brain is plastic; it changes based on how it is exercised. (That is why we talk so much about brain fitness at Scientific Learning.)

In contrast to Tomatis and Raucher's work in passive musical listening, last year a team of European researchers published a study entitled, "Musical Training Influences Linguistic Abilities in 8-Year-Old Children: More Evidence for Brain Plasticity." Researchers tested thirty-two non-musician children over nine months to look at their predispositions for music, as well as to measure the effects of musical training upon non-musical functions.

Remarkably, they found that just six months formal musical training had positive affects upon subjects' abilities in speech. Specifically, subjects' musically trained ears allowed them to better discern differences in pitch. Further, this research supported the idea of brain plasticity in showing that even short periods of training the brain can have large effects upon brain function.

But how does musical training affect language processing in adults? Again, the research clearly outlines the positive affects, demonstrating that brain plasticity continues on through adulthood:

• Schon, Magne and Besson published in 2004 demonstrated that training helps adults process not only music, but also speech. In studying the perception of fundamental frequency--the lowest threshold of audible tones--in eighteen musicians and non-musicians (mean age of 31), results showed that extensive musical training does have a clear affect on "the perception of pitch contour in spoken language."
• The research from Gabb, Tallal, Kim, Laskminarayanan, Archie, Glover and Gabriela suggests that musical training actually "changes the neural network involved in rapid spectrotemporal processing so that it overlaps primarily with brain areas traditionally associated with language processing (e.g., Broca's region)."

The significance of all this research is clear; don't just listen to the music. Take up producing your own and you'll be rewarded with all that music has to offer, while gaining improved brain function as a bonus.

Categories: Brain Fitness, Brain Research, Reading & Learning

Tags: auditory processing, brain plasticity, brain training, cognitive skills, early learning, effort, elementary learning, elementary school learning, language learning, musical training, oral language skills, processing

Nevada Department of Education: Fast ForWord is a “High-Gain Program”

• July 21, 2010 by Melissa Agocs

The Nevada Senate Bill 185 (SB 185) funded districts to purchase and implement innovative and remedial educational programs, materials, and strategies specific to their academic needs. 

The Nevada Department of Education commissioned the Leadership and Learning Center (LLC) to conduct an in-depth evaluation of the programs that had been purchased with SB 185 grants.  Their 2010 Interim Report includes a review of the performance of Fast ForWord products.

To quote from the Report….“Emphasis was placed on measuring student growth toward academic proficiency and mastery using state and local assessments… The analyses were completed as a result of extensive site visits, phone interviews, and an examination of two-year sets of school cohort achievement data for Criterion-Referenced Tests (CRT) for grades three through eight and High School Proficiency Exams (HSPE) for grades nine through twelve.” 

The Report closely examined CRT results at Goolsby Elementary School (which implemented Fast ForWord across all grade levels).  They concluded that each year of Fast ForWord implementation resulted in an increase in the percentage of grade-level proficient students. To quote the Report, “CRT data indicate a statistically significant increase in Reading and Writing proficiency levels…   CRT data indicate that Reading increased from 67% to 82% proficient, [and] Writing increased significantly from 55% to 82% proficient… from 2006 to 2008.”

This graph summarizes the main conclusions from the Report. The red bars represent programs that were found to have undetermined effects or low gains. Blue bars indicate high-gain programs, in which students made high gains according to the LLC standards. The green bar represents Fast ForWord, which was also found to be a high-gain program. In fact, the Report concludes that Fast ForWord products increased student reading achievement by an average of 22.2 percentage points, which was the largest average impact of all programs reviewed in the Report.

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: Education Funding, Grants, and Stimulus, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic proficiency, academic success, accelerated learning, child reading development, elementary learning, elementary school learning, improving reading skills, increased test scores, innovation, learning to read, middle school learning, Nevada, remedial education, SB 185, struggling readers, struggling students, student growth, technology in education, writing

Teaching Children to Read

• July 6, 2010 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

According to the Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read Reports of the Subgroups, the capacity to learn and grow as a reader depends on five essential skills:

Foundational Skills for Beginning Readers:

1) Phonemic Awareness: The insight that every spoken word can be conceived as a sequence of phonemes. Phonemes are the speech sounds that are represented by the letters of an alphabet.

2) Phonemic Decoding: The ability to capture the meaning of unfamiliar words by translating groups of letters back into the sounds that they represent, link them to one's verbal vocabulary, and access their meaning.

Skills Needed to Read for Meaning:

3) Vocabulary: Understanding the words in a passage, including the specific dimensions of their meanings or usage that matter in context.  For example, knowing that “tree” when reading about a “family tree” has a different meaning from “maple tree”

4) Fluency: The ability to read with sufficient ease and accuracy that active attention can be focused on the meaning and message of the text and the text easily retained.

5) Comprehension: Thinking about the meaning of each segment of the text as it is read, building an understanding of the text as a whole, and reflecting on its meaning and message.

Teachers today are fortunate to have access to a wealth of scientifically based research into what works when teaching children to read.  The links that follow are courtesy of the National Institute for Literacy:

Birth to Early Childhood

Children begin building literacy skills long before they go to school.  Even very young children can be prepared to become successful readers later on.  Research has identified certain skills that are important for later literacy development; these skills include knowing the names and sounds of printed letters, manipulating speech sounds, and remembering what has been said for a short time.  Here are some ways to teach younger children these pre-reading skills.

Childhood

From kindergarten through third grade, young readers are actively developing all five of the core reading skills from phonemic awareness to fluency and comprehension.  Research has shown that teaching children to read successfully during this window requires a combination of strategies and instructional approaches.  Teachers must know how children learn to read and be able to tailor instructional approaches to individual children--especially those who are struggling readers.  Here are some instructional approaches for the five essential skills.

Adolescence

While many adolescent readers have mastered phonemic awareness and decoding, they are often still challenged to fully understand what they read.  In middle and high school, it is common for literacy skills to be developed not only in language arts courses, but also in a variety of different content areas.  To prepare students for the literacy challenges of secondary school, language arts and content area teachers need to focus on the last three components of reading: vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.  Here are some approaches to teaching vocabulary and comprehension skills.

What are some strategies you have used when teaching children to read?  Which have been most successful?  Share your expertise on our Scientific Learning Facebook page!

Categories: Reading & Learning

Tags: child reading development, early learning, elementary learning, elementary school learning, fluency, high school learning, how children learn, improving reading skills, intervention, learning through play, learning to read, literacy, memory, oral language skills, phonemic awareness, phonics, reading comprehension, reading intervention, struggling readers, struggling students, teacher effectiveness, teacher impact, vocabulary

Meet our Science of Success Microgrant Recipients

• July 1, 2010 by Norene Wiesen

We asked members of the WeAreTeachers.com (WAT) Brain Research Microcommunity to submit ideas for keeping their students’ brains fit.  All entries were reviewed and voted on by the WAT community for a chance to receive one of five Science of Success microgrants.  We received over 178 entries, and are pleased to share the five peer-selected winners and their project proposals for promoting brain fitness in the classroom:

1) Jason Dietrich, Illini Central High School: Engineering in the Classroom with LEGO NEXT and Carnegie Mellon Curriculum
The purpose of this project is to engage students in open-ended design problems using current technology in robotics research and college academic work. Activities involved in this project will challenge students to develop critical scientific inquiry skills and apply these skills in technological design. Specifically, students will: Write programs for the LEGO NXT Intelligent Brick using LEGO Mindstorms Educational Software 1.1 [Powered by National Instruments Lab View Software]   Full proposal.

2) Don Sarazen, H.B. Rhame Elementary School: Are They Really "Double Stuffed?"
My idea is to have my students remove the cream from a regular Oreo cookie and a Double Stuf Oreo cookie, measure the mass of both cream samples, and determine if a Double Stuf Oreo really has twice as much cream as a regular Oreo. They will do this using triple beam balance scales and electronic scales that measure to the nearest tenth of a gram. Description: My students will then write letters to report the results of their investigation to Kraft Foods, the company that makes Oreos.  Full proposal.

3) Melissa Wlodarski, Eggers Middle School: Brain Yoga...starting our day the SMART way!
Description: Science has proven that completing certain activities every day will help keep our students minds sharp, and improve memory. For this program, students will participate in various "brain yoga" activities during their homeroom period each morning. These activities will include: activating pressure points, which are proven to increase energy and improve attention span (particularly good for students with ADHD), writing activities, and various right brain/left brain activities to start the day.  Full proposal.

4) Gail Feely, Caldwell Elementary: Growing Algae in the Classroom, an Alternate Energy Source
My students will learn about algae as a unicellular living organism and also as an alternate energy source. We will set up a controlled photo bioreactor in which to grow algae. I have met with a local alternate energy team who is willing to work with my students in building a photo bioreactor made of PVC pipe. I think this will be an amazing experience for my students as well as the local team. It will be a trial and error project to find ideal growing conditions to reproduce algae.  Full proposal.

5) Lynn Farr, Martin Elementary: What's the Matter: Weekly class for hands-on science fun
Description: I would like to provide EVERY student from grades K-5 in our school the opportunity to explore matter through hands-on science fun. After a 6 week instruction period on grade-level science standards, students will participate in a "make-and-take" project supporting lessons and concepts learned. Ideas include: Lava lamp, blubber, rocket, sedimentary rocks... Full proposal.

Each winner receives a FlipVideo™ camera or an iPodNano® to capture their project in action. Congratulations to all!

All 178 entries can be viewed in the WAT Brain Research Microcommunity.  Do you have an idea for promoting brain fitness in the classroom or at home?  Share it now!

Categories: Brain Fitness, Education Funding, Grants, and Stimulus

Tags: ADHD, attention, creativity, elementary learning, elementary school learning, health and well being, high school learning, innovation, memory, science, teacher impact, technology in education, writing

What is the School Improvement Grant?

• June 29, 2010 by Joseph Noble, Ph.D

What is the School Improvement Grant?

“School Improvement Grants…are used to improve student achievement in Title I schools identified for improvement, corrective action, or restructuring so as to enable those schools to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) and exit improvement status.” 
(www.ed.gov/programs/sif/index.html)

How much money is available?  

FY 2009 School Improvement Grant appropriation: $546 million

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: $3 billion

Total: $3.546 billion

Who is eligible to apply? 

Formula grant to states, which make sub-grants to school districts.

What is the timing of the grant? 

Application available: December 3, 2009

Application deadline (for states): February 8, 2010

Awarding and disbursement of School Improvement Grant funds 

“FY 2009 school improvement funds are available for obligation by SEAs and LEAs through September 30, 2011. In its application for these funds, an SEA may request a waiver of the period of availability to permit the SEA and its LEAs to obligate the funds through September 30, 2013.”   (www.ed.gov/programs/sif/applicant.html, click on “Application” link and go to page i)

Amount of LEA awards

LEA subgrants can range from $50,000 to $2 million. 

(www.ed.gov/programs/sif/faqs.doc  and www.ed.gov/programs/sif/guidance20100120.doc)

School Improvement Grant Requirements

“The secretary would require states to identify three tiers of schools:

• Tier I - The lowest-achieving five percent of Title I schools in improvement, corrective action, or restructuring in a state, or the five lowest-performing Title I schools, whichever number is greater.
• Tier II – Equally low-achieving secondary schools that are eligible for, but do not receive, Title I funds. The secretary proposes targeting some of these extremely low-achieving high schools and their feeder middle schools….
• Tier III – The remaining Title I schools in improvement, corrective action or restructuring that are not Tier I schools in the state.

[Recent legislation has allowed SEAs to use School Improvement Funds to serve “newly eligible” schools: certain low-achieving schools that are not Title I schools in improvement, corrective action, or restructuring.  For more information, go to: www.ed.gov/programs/sif/guidance20100120.doc, pages 11-12.]

In its application to the state, each school district would be required to demonstrate its commitment to raising student achievement by implementing, in each Tier I and Tier II school, one of the following rigorous interventions:

• Turnaround Model – This would include among other actions, replacing the principal and at least 50 percent of the school’s staff, adopting a new governance structure and implementing a new or revised instructional program.
• Restart Model – School districts would close failing schools and reopen them under the management of a charter school operator, a charter management organization or an educational management organization selected through a rigorous review process. A restart school would be required to admit, within the grades it serves, any former student who wishes to attend.
• School Closure – The district would close a failing school and enroll the students who attended that school in other high-achieving schools in the district.
• Transformational Model – Districts would address four specific areas: 1) developing teacher and school leader effectiveness, which includes replacing the principal who led the school prior to commencement of the transformational model, 2) implementing comprehensive instructional reform strategies, 3) extending learning and teacher planning time and creating community-oriented schools, and 4) providing operating flexibility and sustained support.

Districts should choose the strategy that works best for each school. To ensure districts are choosing a variety of strategies, any district with nine or more schools in school improvement will not be allowed to use any single strategy in more than half of its schools.”   (http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2009/08/08262009.html)

How do Fast ForWord® and Reading Assistant™ products fit with the School Improvement Grant?

Improve student achievement

To date, students in almost 6,000 schools have achieved gains in language or reading skills with the Fast ForWord products. Numerous independent studies as well as detailed research and outcomes data consistently confirm the effectiveness of the products. After using the Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant products, students have shown gains in achievement on a variety of standardized tests and state assessments. For example, Fast ForWord participants in Everett Publics Schools in Everett, Massachusetts, made significant gains in reading achievement following Fast ForWord product use during the 2007-2008 school year. Sixty-six percent of the students improved their MCAS Reading score in 2008 with an average improvement of 4.6 points. Scientific Learning has over 200 school based effectiveness and case reports documenting the substantial gains in achievement made by students after using the Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant products.

Help Title I schools identified for improvement, corrective action, or restructuring so as to enable those schools to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) and exit improvement status  

With a background of over 30 years of neuroscience research and over 10 years of school site studies of effectiveness, Scientific Learning’s products have been shown to be proven intervention strategies for all schools, including those that are the lowest performing. The Fast ForWord Language and Fast ForWord Literacy series, with their cutting edge, neuroscience designed adaptivity and acoustically modified and enhanced sound, have been used successfully by students in low-performing schools in order to improve their cognitive, oral language, and reading skills. And both software series provide intensive support in a short period of time, from 4-16 weeks, depending on the scientifically validated protocol used.

Four Models of turning around schools:  

• Turnaround model: Implementing a new or revised instructional program – Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant fit well as part of a new or revised instructional program to use neuroscience based and proven learning techniques to turn around schools identified for improvement, corrective action, or restructuring.
• ReStart Model: Schools closed and re-starting will need scientifically based and proven educational tools like Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant in order to start anew and provide their struggling students with the cognitive, oral language, and reading skills that they need to succeed in all subject areas.
• School  Closure: Schools assimilating struggling students from closed schools will find that they need intervention products like Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant in order to help these students achieve grade level proficiency and assure that the school achieves or continues to achieve AYP.
• Transformational Model: Implementing comprehensive instructional reform strategies – Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant fit well as part of or as a supplement to any comprehensive instructional reform strategy, and indeed, the effects of the products are comprehensive, affecting student performance in all subject areas. Extending learning...time - Scientific Learning’s software can be implemented easily during extended hours.

Categories: Education Funding, Grants, and Stimulus, Fast ForWord, Reading Assistant, Scientific Learning Research

Tags: academic problems, academic success, achievement gap, ayp, below grade level, cognitive skills, elementary learning, elementary school learning, high school learning, improving reading skills, increased test scores, intervention, Massachusetts, MCAS, oral language skills, response to intervention tier i, response to intervention tier ii, rti tier i, rti tier ii, school leader effectiveness, struggling readers, struggling students, teacher effectiveness, title i

Can Scientific Learning Products Improve School Test Scores?

• June 2, 2010 by Norene Wiesen

When making a buying decision about educational software for a school or district, one of the most important questions to ask is whether the product is effective.  Administrators considering the Fast ForWord® and Reading Assistant™ products want to know: Do they help students learn and succeed?  Do they improve school test scores?  Are they evidence-based?

The answer to all of these questions is yes.  Scientific Learning products have been proven to improve language, reading, and cognitive skills as well as to improve school test scores on state assessments and other standardized tests for schools that follow the prescribed protocols.  Our Scientifically Based Research page is your starting point for exploring the 200+ studies that have evaluated the effectiveness of the programs and that serve as evidence of improved learning outcomes.

On average, students see a 1-2 year improvement in reading level on school test scores in as little as 8-12 weeks.  English language learners, struggling readers, and special education students have all been positively impacted.  So have students performing at grade level and above.

Here are just a few examples:

Dallas Independent School District, TX (View PDF)

• Four year longitudinal study
• Fast ForWord participants significantly improved their reading achievement scores on the TAKS state assessment and maintained their improved reading skills
• Average decrease in the achievement gap for the 544 Fast ForWord participants was 25%

St. Mary Parish Public School System, LA (View PDF)

• After using Fast ForWord products, percent of Centerville, LA, 4th graders scoring proficient on state assessments exceeds state average
• Marked improvement in 4th grade Math, Science, and Social Studies test scores, highlights the impact of Fast Forword products on improving cognitive and foundational skills

Bridges Academy, Winter Springs, FL (View PDF)

• A private school serving students with learning disabilities with a goal of improving reading skills
• Case study on 2nd through 10th graders to evaluate the effects of adding Reading Assistant software to their existing Fast ForWord implementation
• Reading Assistant and Fast ForWord products are used concurrently and students are assessed before and after use
• In an average of three months, the students at the school improve their grade equivalent test scores by an average of one year and three months on the Basic Skills Composite, which combines the Word Identification and Word Attack subtests

The benefits of Scientific Learning products go beyond improving state assessment scores.  Researchers have measured improvements in self-esteem, communication skills such as vocabulary and pronunciation, improvements in listening and understanding, and stronger memory for things like phone numbers and event sequences.  Review our scientifically based research for detailed information.

Categories: English Language Learners, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant, Scientific Learning Research, Special Education

Tags: academic problems, academic success, achievement gap, brain training, child reading development, cognitive skills, elementary learning, elementary school learning, Florida, high school learning, improve test scores, improving reading skills, increased test scores, intervention, language learning, learning disabilities, literacy, Louisiana, math, memory, reading intervention, science, self-esteem, social studies, struggling readers, TAKS, Texas, vocabulary