The Louisiana district will implement the online reading intervention to address the foundational cognitive and language skills necessary to help students read on or above grade level
1/17/17
Media Contact:
Hallie Smith
Director of Marketing
Scientific Learning Corporation
(619) 888-0887
hsmith@scilearn.com
Oakland, Calif. — Jan. 17, 2017 — From 2015 to 2016, Avoyelles Parish Public Schools raised its District Performance Score and letter grade, but to continue to improve student performance, the Louisiana district set out to find a new way to enhance its literacy instruction and provide targeted remediation to students reading below grade level. Beginning this month, students in eight of the district’s 10 schools will begin using the Fast ForWord® online reading and language intervention from Scientific Learning Corp. (OTC PINK:SCIL).
“While we’ve seen growth in our state test scores, we’re not yet where we need to be. One of the reasons for this is that we still have a number of students reading below grade level,” said Celeste Voinche, elementary supervisor for Avoyelles Parish Public Schools. “We’ve used different intervention programs over the last several years, but we haven’t seen the results we’ve wanted. When we looked at Fast ForWord, we liked that it took a neuroscience-based approach, which we believe will help our students who haven’t been successful with traditional reading instruction and interventions.”
In Avoyelles Parish, the Fast ForWord implementation will be funded by grants, including a grant from The Rapides Foundation. Each school will determine which students will work on the program, depending on their needs.
The Fast ForWord program helps students improve their language and reading skills by addressing the underlying foundational difficulties that keep them from making progress in school. It starts with cognitive skills such as memory, attention and processing speed, and works from the bottom up, using the principles of neuroplasticity. Students who use the program make fast and enduring progress, producing significant changes in academic results in as little as three months.
“With the Fast ForWord program, we aim to improve our core literacy instruction for our younger students, while providing targeted remediation for our older students who may have missed out on some core skills along the way,” said Voinche. “We’re excited to take a different approach, which is grounded in research, to help our students excel.”
For more information, visit www.scientificlearning.com.
