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Every spring, the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, abbreviated CRCT, are administered to students in Georgia. The CRCT is designed to measure how well students acquire the skills and knowledge described in the Georgia Performance Standards.
Students are tested in reading, English/language arts and mathematics. This summary will concentrate on the reading results from the Clarke County School District in Georgia. The CRCT is given every spring to all students in grades 1-8, and the students included in this study were first through eighth graders during the time of the study.
A longitudinal study is a type of study that follows the same subjects over time. Clarke County students who used the Fast ForWord products generally started with the Fast ForWord® Language or Fast ForWord® Literacy series, with students then progressing through the Fast ForWord® Reading series. Students started on the products during different years, with some starting as early as the 2006-2007 school year, and others starting aslate as the 2010-2011 school year.
The first wave of Fast ForWord participants at Clarke County started using the products in the fall of 2006 and made statistically significant improvements on the spring 2007 CRCT with continued improvements in 2008 and the following years. Students in the second wave started using the products in the fall of 2007 and made statistically significant improvements on the spring 2008 CRCT.
After a third group started in 2008 school year, the group’s CRCT scores significantly increased and then continued to go up. Similarly, students who began using the products in 2009 and 2010 also started to show increases in their reading scores after Fast ForWord participation.
Each cohort exhibits a similar pattern in that after Fast ForWord participation started, on average, the group showed a steady increase in their CRCT reading scores with each passing year.
Looking at the students who started using Fast ForWord products in 2010, there was an increase in the percentage of students reaching reading proficiency, with 55% of students who were not proficient in 2010 crossing the proficiency threshold in 2011.
In addition to longitudinal results, data were also analyzed for certain demographic groups, including students who were receiving Special Education services and students with Limited English Proficiency. Both groups achieved statistically significant improvements on the CRCT Reading Test after Fast ForWord participation.
If you have questions on this study or any other Fast ForWord study, please feel free to contact our Customer Service Team.
Related Reading:
Fast ForWord® Language Series Has Greatest Impact of Any Intervention Listed by NCRTI
My Nephew Was a Struggling Learner (Not Anymore!): Carrie’s Story
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Categories: English Language Learners, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Scientific Learning Research, Special Education

Educators and families who are looking for appropriate learning interventions for students often turn to The Instructional Intervention Tools Chart from the National Center on Response to Intervention (NCRTI). Now, the Fast ForWord® Language series has been added to the chart, with the NCRTI evaluations of research on the series supporting the claim that the products have high-quality studies, demonstrating their effectiveness when used for Response to Intervention (RtI).
The effectiveness of the Fast ForWord Language series is evident from the “effect size” found by the NCRTI. Effect size is a statistical way to measure the magnitude of the effect of an intervention. Of the three studies on the Fast ForWord Language series that have been evaluated by the NCRTI, one showed a medium effect size and the other two showed a large effect size. In fact, two of the three Scientific Learning studies were ranked as having the highest scores in effect size, showing that the Fast ForWord Language Series had the greatest impact and the largest positive effect of any intervention listed by the NCRTI. These evaluations of research on the Fast ForWord Language series validate the quality of the studies behind the products, demonstrating their effectiveness when used for RtI.
The impact identified in the NCRTI evaluations holds up in real-world implementations, as well. For example, one district used the Fast ForWord program as its only intervention for kindergarteners during the 2009-2010 school year, to see what kind of difference the program could make when used as the sole intervention for participating students. Westerly Public Schools in southern Rhode Island identified kindergarten students who scored at the deficient or very deficient levels in letter sound fluency and letter naming fluency on the AIMSweb benchmark, and placed these students into the Fast ForWord program, with no other interventions.
After using the Fast ForWord program, test scores for the participating students rose substantially, and many were able to move off of the personal literacy plans they had been placed on as struggling elementary students. Because only the Fast ForWord program was used, the district was able to determine that these effects were due to the students’ participation in the program. And because the students didn’t need as many interventions, the district also saved money.
The NCRTI is funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). The center partners with researchers from Vanderbilt University and the University of Kansas to build the capacity of states to assist districts in implementing proven models for RTI.
Visit http://rti4success.org/instructionTools to see Scientific Learning’s listings on the NCRTI’s “Instructional Intervention Tools Chart.”
Watch the video on “effect size” and the NCRTI evaluation of the Fast ForWord Language series products.
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Related Reading:
Results from a “Gold Standard Study” Show Significant Student Gains in Language and Literacy Skills
Intensive Intervention Tier 3: What Leads to the Need?
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Categories: Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Scientific Learning Research
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This post is the fourth in a series aimed at sharing the success stories, both personal and professional, that Scientific Learning employees witness every day.
Mary’s Story:
I was hired at Scientific Learning in 2007 to educate people about the products as an Account Manager in the Midwest. At the same time that I got the phone call to find out if I had interest in talking to Scientific Learning, our ninth grade son announced to us that he was not going to high school and he was going to drop out. It took my breath away. Both his father and I have been educators for many years and we both hold advanced degrees.
I said, “Todd, you have to go to high school,” and he said, “But I don’t want to go.” I said, “But you have to,” and he asked, “Well, what would happen if I didn’t go?” I said, “It’s the law, Todd.” Then he said, “I can’t read. I can’t keep up with it. You guys have done everything for me that is possible but I can’t read. I can’t read at grade level.”
I called my son’s teacher (we convinced him to go to school) and I said, “Here’s the carrot. My son doesn’t have to do any homework until he finishes this product. This is his homework at night.” And every night he came home and did Fast ForWord.
And what he did is committed to doing 90 minutes a day and he was done is less than 4 weeks, and he did the post test and when I looked up the score my son had gone from seventh grade, one month reading level to tenth grade, two months reading level. He was a year above grade level and for the very first time in his life he said, “I love to read.”
All I can say is thank you to all the scientists that did all the work to bring this product to not only my son but to the parents and kids out there in America who need it so desperately.
Related Reading:
Language Skills Increase 1.8 Years After 30 Days Using Fast ForWord
Implementation Fidelity: Maximizing Your Fast ForWord® or Reading Assistant™ Investment
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Brain Fitness, Family Focus, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning
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Summary: A recent study by Nicole Russo of Northwestern University and her colleagues, published in Behavioral and Brain Functions in 2010, evaluates whether auditory training programs such as Fast ForWord® can alleviate the auditory processing deficits so frequently seen in ASD children.
Russo’s study examines how effectively Fast ForWord could strengthen the auditory processing of speech sounds in similar ASD children. Her team hypothesized that such training would modify the neural processing of sound in children with ASD, and that such children “would show improvement in the neural encoding of speech syllables, including faster response timing, greater fidelity of the response relative to the stimulus, and more accurate pitch encoding over time.” (p. 3)
Results showed that training appeared to have benefited all participants in the experimental group, affecting their neural transcription of speech. According to Russo and her team, “each of the five children who underwent FFW training improved on at least one measure of cortical speech processing relative to the control group, with response timing improving in both quiet and noise for some children.” (p. 13)
Russo and her team were able to conclude that directed auditory training using Fast ForWord shows great promise for improving auditory processing in children with ASD – specifically, those high-functioning children who have hearing in the typical range.
Content: This study was published in Behavioral and Brain Functions in 2010 and was done at Northwestern University by Dr. Nicole Russo and her colleagues. It evaluates whether auditory training programs, such as Fast ForWord, can alleviate the auditory processing deficits so frequently seen in children with autism spectrum disorders. Children with autism spectrum disorders or ASD demonstrate impairments in their use of language for social and communicative purposes. These impairments are typically apparent prior to three years of age.
There is emerging evidence that the neural encoding of speech sounds may be impaired in some children with autism spectrum disorders leading to atypical auditory brainstem responses to speech sounds and difficulties processing speech-specific stimuli such as detecting speech in background noise.
Since the Fast ForWord products provide auditory training including listening and sound-sequencing exercises, as well as exercises on auditory attention, auditory discrimination, phoneme discrimination, and memory, Dr Russo and her colleagues were interested in investigating the impact of the products on children with ASD.
High-functioning children with ASD who had participated in an earlier study were invited to partake in this one. The children all had a formal diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. They had typical peripheral hearing, average mental abilities and average or near-average language scores.
Eleven boys with an average age of 9.2 completed the entire testing protocol and met the criteria. The children were then given the option of taking part in the intensive auditory training. Five children opted for the training and formed the experimental group. The other six children who opted not to take part in the training were willing to take part in the post-test and formed the control group. There was not a significant difference between the two groups in terms of age, IQ, or language ability.
Students in the experimental group used the intense intervention: the Fast ForWord Language Series which entailed the Fast ForWord Language product for an average for 20 days followed by Fast ForWord Language to Reading for an average of 32 days.
Auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) and Event-Related Potentials (ERP’s) were recorded from both groups. These tests measure the size and the timing of electrical activity that occurs in the brainstem and brain in response to a sound. In this case, the sounds were synthesized vowels that were heard in the presence of background noise, as well as in quiet. Auditory brainstem responses are subcortical events occurring less than 10 ms after the stimuli is presented while event-related potentials are cortical events occurring a few hundred milliseconds after the stimuli is presented. Both ABR’s and ERP’s measure the aggregate response of neurons and neither requires active involvement by the participant.
Due to the small number of participants, and the variations between them, the analysis involved defining a “typical change” as the average change for students in the control group plus one standard deviation, and defining a “significant change” for one of the participants as a change that was more than the control’s change plus one standard deviation.
The researchers were particularly interested in subjects that had two or more measures with significant change. All five students improved more than one standard deviation on at least two tests. The researchers concluded that there is Initial evidence that directed auditory training may improve auditory processing in a specific population of children with ASD – specifically high-functioning children with ASD who have hearing in the typical range.
They also concluded that computer-based training may benefit some children with ASD by acting on biological processes.
Read the complete report on this research at the link below:
Nicole M Russo, N., Hornickel, J., Nicol, T. Zeckler, S. Kraus, N. Biological changes in auditory function following training in children with autism spectrum disorders. Behavioral and Brain Functions 2010, 6:60.
Related Reading:
Understanding Autism in Children
Language Skills Increase 1.8 Years After 30 Days Using Fast ForWord
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Brain Fitness, Brain Research, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Scientific Learning Research
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This post is the third in a series aimed at sharing the success stories, both personal and professional, that Scientific Learning employees witness every day.
Carrie's Story:
My name is Carrie. I'm a Marketing Specialist with Scientific Learning, and I have a story about Fast ForWord with my nephew, Izaak. Back in 2006, he went to kindergarten for his first year. At the end of kindergarten, his teacher told my brother and sister-in-law that although he had a beautiful smile and that beautiful smile could get him through the third grade, it wouldn’t get him past the third grade.
He started with the Fast ForWord Language Basics program. It took him five days to get through the product and then he went in to Fast ForWord Language. Three or four days into Language Basics for Izaak, he was able to have a complete conversation with my brother and sister-in-law and my brother was just amazed that Izaak was able to actually have a conversation as opposed to short answers or short sentences.
He got through the Language program. He got back into kindergarten for his second year in the fall of 2006 and today he is at the top of his class. It’s just very, very exciting to know that these products are life changing and they can make such a difference, and I am very grateful to all the founders and the people that have made the software what it is today so that kids all over the US and the world can…have their lives changed forever.
Related Reading:
Jolene’s Story: “I Saw Tremendous Change”
Leigh Ann’s Story: Making a Difference in Children’s Lives
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Categories: Family Focus, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Customers, mark your calendars! This year’s annual Scientific Learning customer conference, the 2011 Virtual Circle of Learning, will take place on November 4, bringing together Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant product users from across North America. Circle of Learning participants will get to hear the latest in brain research and learn practical applications that will benefit students immediately.
This year’s Circle of Learning will be a 100% virtual event. It will include the same caliber of comprehensive content and keynote speakers as in our past on-site conferences, and we’ll be actively using social media to connect participants before, during, and after the event.
The Circle of Learning agenda features three engaging keynotes—including the ever-popular Eric Jensen (Teaching with Poverty in Mind) and Scientific Learning’s own Dr. Marty Burns (Motivating our Coaches and Teachers) and Andrew Ostarello (The Story of Data). Breakout sessions follow, addressing the importance of attention skills, memory, processing skills, and sequencing skills, as well as a special breakout session especially for tech team members.
Please plan to join us for this once-a-year, not-to-be-missed customer event!
Oh, and did I mention that it is FREE?!
Related Reading:
Students who Struggle in the Mainstream: What their Homework Patterns May Tell You
Implementation Fidelity: Maximizing Your Fast ForWord or Reading Assistant Investment
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Brain Research, Education Trends, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant, Scientific Learning Research
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This study is a randomized controlled trial that investigated the impact of Fast ForWord Language software in 9 elementary schools. The analyses that follow include data from 452 students in grades K through 5.
Students were randomly assigned to be in either the Fast ForWord group or the control group. The randomization was stratified within age and gender.
Students using Fast ForWord trained for 100 minutes per day for an average of 30 school days. Both groups were evaluated using three assessments:
The average gains from pre-test to post-test were larger for Fast ForWord participants than for the control group for both Language Comprehension and Phonological Isolation. Both of these results were statistically significant.
In addition, a large subset of students in this study were English Language Learners. A total of 85 students did not speak English as their primary language – 53 of whom used Fast ForWord, while 32 served as controls. The results for English Language Learners were consistent with those for native English speakers. Both of these results were statistically significant.
In conclusion, Fast ForWord participation led to significantly larger improvements than the control group in a variety of early language skills.
The vast majority of students made learning gains; these students averaged 1.8 years of language improvement in only 30 school days.
These results are consistent for both ELL students and for native English speakers.
Finally, note that this study was conducted on the original version of Fast ForWord Language. Since publication of this study in 2004, a new and enhanced version of Fast ForWord Language has been released (Fast ForWord Language version 2).
Related Reading:
Forecasting ROI from Fast ForWord® and Reading Assistant™ Products
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Categories: English Language Learners, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Scientific Learning Research
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What is Implementation Fidelity? It is Scientific Learning’s measure of how well Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant users are following product usage protocols.
In order to maximize a student’s benefit from Fast ForWord or Reading Assistant, users need to have an intensive and persistent experience. This means using the products regularly and according to protocol. The available Fast ForWord protocols are five days a week for 30, 40, 50, or 90 minutes per day. For Reading Assistant, the protocols are 20, 30, or 40 minutes per day (depending on the grade band) for three days per week. Adherence to these protocols helps students build on their daily successes.
This leads naturally to the following question: How do you know if a student is having an intensive and persistent Fast ForWord or Reading Assistant experience?
Our answer is a concept called Implementation Fidelity. Implementation Fidelity measures how closely users of Scientific Learning products are adhering to the recommended usage protocols.
There are three components to Implementation Fidelity:
Each of these components can be measured at the individual student, classroom, or district level.
Implementation Fidelity components are measured on a scale from 0 to 100%. Scores in the top 20% are considered “Good,” scores in the middle 60% are considered “Fair,” and the remaining scores in the bottom 20% are considered “Poor.”
Scientific Learning Progress Tracker is an online tool to monitor and manage Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant success.
Progress Tracker has reports to help customers track the Implementation Fidelity of their students. For example, one Implementation Fidelity report shows the overall Completion Rate, Attendance, and Participation categories for a district as a whole and for each school in that district.
We have found that a good implementation, on average, leads to 50% more reading gain per year.
Related Reading:
Forecasting ROI from Fast ForWord® and Reading Assistant™ Products
Making Computerized Learning Work Takes WORK
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Fast ForWord, Progress Tracker, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant, Scientific Learning Research

Note: This post is the 3rd in a series on Scientific Learning Value Added Representatives (VARs)who provide our products around the world.
LearnFast Australia was founded by Devon Barnes, a speech language pathologist and audiologist. Devon has worked with children struggling with language, learning and reading difficulties for over 40 years. Many times during those decades when working with a learning disabled child she would remark to her colleagues, “If only there were some way to get into their brains and reorganize them, perhaps we could fix the problems.”
Devon had read about the work of Dr. Paula Tallal, a renowned neuroscientist. In 1997 she decided to travel to the University of York in England to hear Dr. Tallal present the results of the early trials of a set of exercises which were to become the foundation for the development of Fast ForWord®.
The results were so impressive, Devon realized she had found something that could potentially ‘re-wire’ the brains of learning disabled clients.
The following year Devon completed the Fast ForWord Professional Provider Training in New York and commenced offering the programs at her clinic, Lindfield Speech Pathology Learning Centre, in Sydney.
Today, LearnFast provides Fast ForWord to thousands of students and adults via schools, professional learning practitioners, and in homes.
LearnFast has offices in Sydney, Australia and in Auckland, New Zealand. The company has developed a staff of passionate learning experts who genuinely care about helping as many children and adults as possible overcome their learning and reading struggles, and to help every person achieve his or her potential. This passion is reflected in everything LearnFast does, from the people who work for the business, to the way the Fast ForWord programs are implemented and supported.
As well as providing Fast ForWord, LearnFast is active in supporting the development of innovative ways to improve education for all, and in bringing the latest research and knowledge to parents, educators and learning professionals.
LearnFast’s Facebook page was launched recently and has developed an active community of people who are interested in the science of learning and how the findings from the research can be applied to help all those who want to improve their ability to learn and to read.
There is also a valuable source of video content made available to the public (mostly free of charge) via LearnFast Education’s Video Store which provides information about Fast ForWord and learning and reading difficulties, including auditory processing disorders, attention deficit disorders and dyslexia, as well as adult literacy development, autism and other topics. For more about LearnFast and Fast ForWord, visit www.fastforword.com.au.
Related Reading:
Scientific Learning Around the World
Unlocking the Potential of English Language Learners
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Categories: Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Ms. Egli is Executive Director at Bridges Academy in Winter Spring, FL.
Students who maintain average grades, but appear to be expending an excessive amount of time and effort to maintain those grades may have underlying learning deficits. As educators, we shouldn’t overlook the fact that students who require more time for completing assignments seem to show a disparity between what they have learned in class and how they perform on high stakes assessments. They may in fact be struggling with various learning challenges such as weakness in memory function, inability to process large volumes of information, vocabulary deficits and poor abilities in written expression.
Working with University of Central Florida Communications Disorders doctoral candidate Janet Proly, I had the opportunity to collaborate on a single-subject designed study of three promising high school students who appeared to be successful in their classes but also had significant hidden learning deficits.
The three students, twin 10th-grade boys in a general education program and a 12th-grade student who attended a magnet health and science academy, expressed concern over their struggle to keep up with their respective workloads of studying, reading and comprehending assignments, and their performance on tests like the FCAT. All reported that it took them three times the amount of actual time to complete their homework, citing that they had to re-read assignments multiple times in order to master the information. This inefficient learning caused all three boys to receive lower than expected scores on the state assessment, possibly compromising their ability to obtain a standard high school diploma. All three students approached me to inquire about participating in a summer reading program hosted by Bridges Academy, and thus became candidates for our collaborative study on the impact of improving reading fluency using computer technology for intervention.
Proly and I structured a single subject design study to determine the impact of using computer technology formulated to improve processing and working memory, as well as oral reading fluency. We modeled our study after the 2010 study published by Wexler, Vaughn, Roberts, and Denton.[i] The school offered a summer program to the three students. Using the Fast ForWord Literacy and Reading Assistant products for the six-week planned intervention would address recommendations for an alternative fluency intervention with a higher degree of intensity, and the inclusion of interventions that focus on processing.
After an initial assessment, the students participated in the intervention. We conducted a post-intervention assessment, and then assessed the students once again six months after the intervention. All three students demonstrated significant improvement in their reading fluency, and gains of more than two years on average in word attack and comprehension skills. The three students sustained these gains even though all three were no longer receiving any support or intervention.
This study, along with the focus on adolescent literacy, has increased interest in addressing the needs of middle and high school students who report these kinds of challenges in three specific programs: the UCF Communications Disorders Clinic; the UCF Communications Disorders Doctoral Program; and the Bridges Academy private school. As our results indicate, these short term computer interventions, through focusing on working memory, reading fluency and processing speed, have significant potential to help capable students succeed both in classes and on annual assessments.
In 2008 alone, over 20,000 high school students in the state of Florida dropped out of the public high school program. Did they leave because it was simply too hard to keep up? Could we have kept them in school if we had been able to provide a short term intervention that could not only have engaged them, but improved their learning and achievement? My collaborators and I all believe the answer to both of these questions is, absolutely, yes.
So what comes next? Our plan is to work together on an expanded study for the 2011-12 academic year that will take place at the private school and the UCF Communications Disorders Clinic. In reaching more participants, our plan – and our hope – is to continue to demonstrate program effectiveness and change the lives of more students for the better.
[i] Wexler, J., Vaughn, S., Roberts, G. & Denton, C.A. (2010), The efficacy of repeated reading and wide reading practice for high school students with severe reading disabilities. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 25(1), 2-10.
Related Reading:
Inspiring Fluency: One School’s Journey to Improve Reading Skills
One Half Year Increase in One Month with Reading Assistant
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant, Special Education