Picayune School District Students Achieve Reading Gains Of One Year, Nine Months In 75 Days Of Fast ForWord Software Use
4/9/10
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Jessica Lindl
Senior Vice President, Marketing and Product Management
Scientific Learning Corporation
(510) 625-6784
jlindl@scilearn.com
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Bob Feller
Chief Financial Officer
Scientific Learning Corporation
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investorrelations@scilearn.com
Oakland, Calif. - April 9, 2010 - In the Picayune School District in Mississippi, students who worked on Scientific Learning® (NASDAQ:SCIL) Fast ForWord® software achieved significant gains, improving their reading level an average of one year and nine months after 75 school days of use. Fast ForWord is a family of educational software products that accelerate learning by improving the processing efficiency of the brain.
The Picayune School District implements the Fast ForWord software in seven schools: Nicholson Elementary School, Roseland Park Elementary School, South Side Lower Elementary School, South Side Elementary School, West Side Elementary School, Picayune Junior High School, and Picayune Memorial High School. All students in kindergarten through seventh grade work on the software 30 to 50 minutes per day, five days a week. The software's intensive, adaptive exercises develop and strengthen memory, attention, processing rate, and sequencing - cognitive skills essential for learning and reading success. The strengthening of these skills results in improved critical language and reading skills, such as phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, decoding, syntax and grammar.
During the 2009-10 school year, results from Reading Progress Indicator, a computerized assessment designed to rapidly measure the impact of the Fast ForWord products, showed that students improved their reading grade level by an average of one year and nine months in 75 school days of software use. In this time, students increased from the 39th percentile to the 64th percentile, and improved their performance by one or more proficiency levels. Before using Fast ForWord products, 164 of the 1,173 participating students scored at the advanced proficiency level of reading skills. After using Fast ForWord, that number almost doubled to 307 students.
"Our goal with the Fast ForWord program is to prepare students to be better learners," said Vera Beech, district curriculum coordinator for the Picayune School District. "The key benefits of the program are that it helps to build students' reading and language skills, and addresses the needs of students who arrive at our schools with language deficits. We're excited about the results we're seeing and hope these results carry over to our state testing."
About Scientific Learning Corp.
Scientific Learning creates educational software that accelerates learning by improving the processing efficiency of the brain. Based on more than 30 years of neuroscience and cognitive research, the Fast ForWord® family of products provides struggling readers with computer-delivered exercises that build the cognitive skills required to read and learn effectively. Scientific Learning Reading AssistantTM combines advanced speech recognition technology with scientifically-based courseware to help students strengthen fluency, vocabulary and comprehension to become proficient, life-long readers. The efficacy of the products has been established by more than 200 research studies. For more information, visit http://www.scientificlearning.com/ or call toll-free 888-358-0212.
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