Our Lives Change, Too: From Fast ForWord® Skeptic to Believer

• December 21, 2010 by Carrie Gajowski

I often hear from customers and other Scientific Learning employees that our company is distinguished by the passion and commitment of those who work here.  One reason for that palpable passion is that many have been personally and deeply touched by the life-changing experiences that their own family members, students, or customers have experienced with Fast ForWord® and Reading Assistant™ products.  We have seen children’s lives be changed forever by these products.  Students who may not have had opportunities in school now can succeed in ways that wouldn’t have been possible even 15 years ago.

I have my own story to tell—about my nephew—and I will tell it here soon, but today I want to share a personal story from Cory Armes, one of our Education Consultants, who was so impacted by her experience with the Fast ForWord products that she left her teaching job to work for Scientific Learning:

“ I began my experience with the Fast ForWord products, or in my case, product, several years ago.  On a cloudy afternoon in February 1999, our Special Education Director gathered the diagnosticians (of which I was one) and speech pathologists to hear a presentation about a new product called Fast ForWord.  After the presentation, my mind was spinning to think that there might be even a modicum of truth to the research that he had shared…

As a certified skeptic, I had some serious questions about the claims he made that day.  After all, I knew as a teacher that if I made a year’s gain with my students in a year’s time, we were doing a good job.  My problem was that many of the students I worked with throughout my career came to me two-to-three years below grade level.  If we made a year’s progress in a year’s time, it was great but they still were two-to-three years behind.  So to have someone tell me that there was a product available that could help students make one-to-two years gain in a few weeks time was questionable at best.  I couldn’t imagine that brain fitness exercises actually could change a student’s ability to focus and retain information much less improve the way the brain processes.  But we had a recent article from ASHA (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association) that supported his claims along with other research information so decided to implement Fast ForWord as our summer school program.

After the meeting, I called the Special Education Director to ask if there was something that I could do, beyond the pre-and post-testing, to learn more about the program and how it worked.  She very graciously said, “Of course.” and promptly put me in charge of the implementation for the district.  Now, there were a few things to consider: first, I wasn’t convinced that this program would even work and, second, I’m a bit of a perfectionist.  So, I decided that there was only one thing to do and that was to run the implementation exactly as the company suggested with a strict fidelity to the protocol and a good motivational system in place so if we didn’t get the results they advertised, it wouldn’t be my fault!

Our first implementation included 25 first to eighth graders who had been through multiple reading products with little improvement.  I had a great team who loved kids and we had a blast for the six weeks that we ran the program.  I learned a lot about running Fast ForWord (such as you don’t need to allow ten minutes between exercises for breaks because you can’t get them to stop working!) and at the end of the fourth week at 100 minutes a day; we had some students reach completion.  In week five, we began post-testing those students and could not believe the results.  By the end of the six-week session, our students averaged a 1.5 year gain in language (using the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals and Lindamood Auditory Conceptualization assessments) and 1.5 years in reading (Gray Oral Reading Test)!

The rest, as they say, is history.  An eighth grader with an extremely high IQ but who, as a student with severe Dyslexia, had been reading on first grade level now tested at the fifth grade reading.  One of the third graders who essentially was a non-reader, went to fourth grade with improved reading skills and, after completing the second Fast ForWord product the following summer, was reading on grade level in fifth grade and passed the state reading assessment.  A fifth grader who was reading on first grade level became engaged in school the next year and after completing additional products over the next two school years, was on the A-Honor Roll, no longer required Resource assistance and, according to her mother, read everything she touched.  Many stories, many changed lives and my sincere regret that I didn’t have Fast ForWord much sooner in my career. 

After two years of supervising and implementing Fast ForWord for the district, I believed so strongly in the products that I joined Scientific Learning as a trainer.  Over the last ten years, I’ve seen wonderful product additions, large numbers of students using the products and a worldwide impact in accelerating learning. 

As my 4 -year-old granddaughter would say, “How cool is that”?

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

Tags: academic problems, academic success, accelerate learning, attention, below grade level, brain training, cognitive skills, dyslexia, elementary learning, elementary school learning, increased test scores, intervention, memory, middle school learning, reading intervention, struggling readers, struggling students, student reading growth, technology in education

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!

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

Tags: academic assistance, academic proficiency, academic success, accelerate 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!

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

Tags: academic assistance, academic success, accelerate 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.

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

Tags: academic problems, academic success, accelerate 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

A Sluggish Economy’s Drag on a Generation’s Ability to Perform and Achieve

• December 2, 2010 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

As we've recently gone through the election process, a discussion of our nation's challenged economy might appear to be a tired topic. While adult generations look toward a strong recovery in the coming years, young children may potentially experience the negative consequences of these times for the rest of their lives.

Today, research has demonstrated a clear correlation between socio-economic status (SES) and cognitive ability. In a recent article by Amy Novoteny, The recession's toll on children, the author makes a clear point that while our nation as a whole will surely recover from this downturn, the current generation of disadvantaged children may not. She says children of lower SES experience "negative education and cognitive outcomes as a result of less mental stimulation and increased stress in their living situations." (An interesting note, the same lab that uncovered the phenomenon cited by Novoteny used Fast ForWord on both typically developing children and children with language delay; they observed behavioral improvements as well as physiological evidence for the basis for these improvements. See Stevens,C., Fanning, J., Coch, D., Sanders, L., Neville, H., 2008. This video blog post also discusses Stevens' research.)

As finances put stresses on home lives and force parents to spend more time worrying about work, these same parents are spending less time and energy on their children, playing with them less and reading to them more infrequently. These children's cognitive development is suffering as a result.

Novoteny's ideas are echoed by researchers Raizada and Kishiyama who quote findings that "children from low SES backgrounds perform below children from higher SES backgrounds on tests of intelligence and academic achievement." Additional supporting research showed that these children are "more likely to fail courses, be placed in special education, and drop out of high school compared to high SES children." (Raizada and Kishiyama, 2010)

Interestingly, the data demonstrating these conclusions have historically been based on behavioral studies. The path of research pursuing the neural component-the actual physiological effects upon the neuroplastic brain-is a relatively new one. An example of one such innovative study was performed recently at Berkeley where researchers studied the developmental differences between low- and high-income children through studying the differences in their EEG recordings. The study showed that the recordings of "nine- and ten-year olds from poorer homes showed less brain activity in the prefrontal cortex than the brains of children from more well-off families." (Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Vol. 21, No. 6) According to cognitive psychologist and study co-author Mark Kishiyama, "These kids have no neural damage, no prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol... Yet the prefrontal cortex is not functioning as efficiently as it should be. This difference may manifest itself in problem-solving and school performance."

Neural studies have helped us develop effective interventions for those with learning disabilities related to the brain's neurology, such as dyslexia and stroke. This shines great hope on the potential that research will be able to draw on existing interventions, as well as develop new and innovative techniques, to help level the playing field for these young students who have developed learning difficulties as a result of SES.

Part of my excitement around this subject stems from the fact that when it comes to interventions, psychologists say that the while the brain is vulnerable to the negative influences of poverty, it is likewise able to benefit from positive stimuli and nurturing relationships. Just as these students face the possibilities of negative results, they also have all the requisite abilities-with the right interventions-to turn them into successful outcomes. Those interventions might take any number of forms; Fast ForWord represents one of those interventions that is proven to work. Still, the best early intervention is available in each and every home. Nothing can compare to the positive impact of parents spending more time regularly reading with their children.

To learn more about the impact of a down economy on cognitive development in young children, read Novoteny's article, The recession's toll on children, published this past September by the American Psychological Association.

For a deeper look into previous research as well as a survey of potential interventions for low SES children, read Raizada and Kishiyama's 2010 article, Effects of socioeconomic status on brain development, and how cognitive neuroscience may contribute to leveling the playing field.

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Categories: Education Trends, Family Focus, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic problems, academic success, at-risk, child reading development, cognitive skills, early learning, intervention, learning environment, struggling students

Students Show Improved Auditory Attention and Early Reading Skills After Fast ForWord Intervention

• October 5, 2010 by Barbara Calhoun, Ph.D

Published by Brain Research in 2008, this study was conducted at the University of Oregon by Courtney Stevens and her colleagues.

Behavioral studies have reported deficits in selective attention in children with language disorders including specific language impairments and dyslexia. The Temple et al. study observed that after Fast ForWord participation, there was increased activation in cortical areas related to attention.

This study evaluates whether intervention with the high-intensity Fast ForWord product would influence the neural mechanisms associated with selective auditory attention. This study focused on children who were 6 to 8 years old. 

The students were divided into three groups. Group 1 was made up of language impaired students who used the intervention. Group 2 was comprised of typically developing children who used the intervention. Group 3 was made up of typically developing children who did not use the intervention. 

The intervention was the Fast ForWord Language product. On average, students used it 100 minutes a day, five days a week. They ended up using it for 29 days across six weeks.

Students were behaviorally and physiologically evaluated at the start and end of the study. The behavioral measure was the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF), a measure of oral language and early reading skills. The physiological evaluation was event-related brain potentials, also known as ERPs, which are changes in the electrical activity in the brain in response to specific events, such as briefly presented tones.

In this particular study, two different stories were presented to a student, one in each ear. The stories were about different subjects, and were presented by different speakers. Students were asked to attend to the story in either the right ear, or the left ear. Selective attention can be measured by the difference in the size of the ERP to a specific sound that is presented to the attended vs. ignored ear.

There were two groups of students that received intervention. One group was language impaired and the other group was typically developing. As might be expected, students in the typically developing group had substantially higher scores than did students in the language impaired group. After the intervention, students in both groups had statistically significant improvements in their receptive language skills. The third group of typically developing students who had no intervention had initial scores were similar to those of the typically developing students who had the intervention. However, at the end of the study, there was no appreciable improvement in their receptive language skills.

Initially, students in the typically developing group could attend better than the students in the language impaired group. After the intervention, students in both groups made statistically significant improvements in their ability to attend to an event. Looking at students in the third group, typically developing students with no intervention, showed that they started out at the same level as the typically developing students who had intervention, and there was no appreciable change in their ability to attend.

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Brain Research, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: attention, early learning, improving reading skills, intervention, reading intervention, struggling students

Increased Brain Activity in Reading-Related Areas After Using Fast ForWord Language

• September 28, 2010 by Barbara Calhoun, Ph.D

A study was done by Elise Temple and her colleagues in 2003 and was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2003. Numerous other studies have shown that when children are reading, specific parts of their brains are active. This activation can be measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging, also known as fMRI. There are differences in the physiological activity of the brains of the good readers vs the poor readers. The biggest difference is in the temporo-parietal region.

At the time of this study, Elise Temple was at Stanford University and was interested in whether these differences could be reduced. She examined whether there were interventions that could ameliorate deficits in the neural mechanisms that underlie phonological processing in children with dyslexia.

The study involved children between 8 and 12 years of age and 20 of the students had developmental dyslexia. Then data from a group of typical readers was collected to provide a comparison. These students were behaviorally and physiologically assessed at the start and end of the study. During the study, students with dyslexia used the Fast ForWord Language software product. The students used the Fast ForWord Language product for 100 minutes a day, five days a week. On average, they used the product for 28 days.

Three behavioral tests were given to the students that evaluated students’ early reading skills and reading achievement. They were: The Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing, The Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, and the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test.

These tests evaluated students’ ability to manipulate the sounds in language, as well as their ability to use language in general, and their ability to read and understand words, sentences, and paragraphs. In addition to the behavioral tests, fMRI was used to measure students’ brain activity while they were doing a reading task. As has been found by other researchers, Temple and her colleagues found that during reading tasks, typical readers had physiological activity in the temporo-parietal and frontal regions of the brain. They also found that there are differences in the physiological activity of the students with developmental dyslexia, specifically in the temporo-parietal and frontal regions.

After using the product, students’ cortical activity was re-evaluated. There were several areas that had increased activity – of specific interest were the left temporo-parietal region and the left frontal region. Both are regions that typically have reduced activity in children with dyslexia, but whose activation increased following remediation with the Fast ForWord Language product.

Corresponding with the changes in temporo-parietal activation, there were improvements in the students’ behavioral measures. The improvements in receptive and expressive language skills, as well as rapid naming, which tests rapid recall abilities, were all statistically significant. There were also improvements in other reading skills including sight word reading, decoding, and passage comprehension. Again, these improvements were statistically significant.

The results of this study lead Temple and her colleagues to conclude that students with dyslexia have reduced cortical activity in the temporo-parietal and inferior frontal regions. The activation becomes more typical when students undergo intensive remediation and that the changes in cortical activation are correlated with improvements in early reading skills.

For more information, please take a look at the study done by Elise Temple and her colleagues. If you have questions about any of our products, please contact us.

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Categories: Brain Research, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: dyslexia, fMRI, struggling readers, struggling students

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.

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

Tags: academic problems, academic proficiency, academic success, accelerate 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

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. The percentile scores shown in the graph represent an analysis of data from one to multiple schools using the specified product. In the case of Fast ForWord products, data from three schools were included in the analysis.

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.

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

Tags: academic proficiency, academic success, accelerate 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 reading growth, technology in education, writing

The Imperative of Cultivating Healthy Adolescent Sleep Habits

• July 8, 2010 by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D.

As dedicated parents and teachers, when we talk to adolescents, we tend to focus our coaching on coping with the big dangers like drugs, alcohol and sex. We talk a lot about the imperative of developing good eating and study habits. But when was the last time you talked to the teen in your life about sleep? Research has shown us that our young people’s sleep habits are suffering, creating negative ripples across their waking lives. Quite simply, we need to become better "sleep coaches."

Like breathing or eating, sleep is a physiological necessity. As sleeping and waking habits change during our adolescent years, youngsters begin to experience the effects of lost sleep. Even losing less than an hour a night on a regular basis can result in serious problems. In their 1998 study, "Sleep Schedules and Daytime Functioning in Adolescents", Amy Wolfson and Mary Carskadon examined the correlations between sleep/wake habits, student characteristics and daytime functioning (mood, performance and behavior). Their study of 3,120 students uncovered concerning trends:

• Forty-five percent of tenth to twelfth graders go to bed after midnight on school nights, and 90% go to bed later than that on weekends.
• On weekends, 10- to 15-year-olds get 30 to 60 minutes more sleep; by age 18, that difference goes up to over 2 hours.
• Reductions in sleep time were directly attributable to later bedtimes paired with no change to wake-up time.
• Students getting C’s, D’s and F’s got, on average, 25 minutes less sleep and went to bed 40 minutes later than their counterparts getting A’s and B’s.

See Wolfson and Carskadon’s paper for complete data, but on the whole, adolescents in their studies overall did not get enough sleep, which directly correlated with reduced capacities during the day.

So we know that these important minutes of sleep are being lost, but what are the neurological outcomes? In his 1999 study, "The Consequences of Insufficient Sleep for Adolescents," Ronald Dahl describes five effects that can create negative ripples across an adolescent’s life, such as: 1) sleepiness, 2) tiredness 3) mood, attention, and behavior, 4) impact of emotional and behavioral problems, and 5) bi-directional effects.

• Sleepiness: While highly stimulating activities can stave off sleepiness, a sleepy brain drops into sleep mode during periods of low stimulation. For a sleep-deprived adolescent, activities like reading, driving and classroom learning can be prime dozing times.
• Tiredness and decreased motivation: When we're tired, we find it difficult to initiate and follow through on tasks, especially those that we might find boring. Our motivation and ability to focus on future goals drops; we become less able to engage in activities like reading or studying.
• Emotional variability: Sleep-deprived brains experience a greater range of emotions. Adolescents who haven’t had enough sleep are more likely to experience more extremes of responses like anger, aggression, frustration, sadness and impatience.
• Attention and performance: Youngsters working with a lack of sleep experienced mental lapses in attention during simple tasks, as well as reduced abilities to perform more complex, multifaceted tasks.

So what can we do to change this trend and coach our young people to have healthier sleep habits? If knowledge is power, we can give them the facts. We can actively teach the importance of sleep and the science of circadian rhythms and our innate connection to natural cycles. We can inform our students about the importance of good, healthy sleep, and help them understand some of the real, serious consequences like those above. For some resources, check out this Circadian Rhythms Fact Sheet from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences or these five ideas for better sleep written specifically for teenagers.

Finally, as parents, we can create quiet, comforting evening environments and rituals in our homes to move our families from the fast pace of the day to a slower, protected, unpressured environment where sleep can come. For hints and tips, check out Sleep Rituals: Training The Body And The Mind by Dr. Michael Breus (from the Huffington Post, January 2010).

Are the teens in your life getting enough sleep?  Share your observations on the Scientific Learning Facebook page.

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic problems, attention, behavior, cognitive skills, health and well being, high school learning, sleep, struggling students, teacher effectiveness