Press Releases

Contact: Cheryl Pedersen, (609) 275-2258 cpedersen@mathematica-mpr.com

Mathematica^® to Study Technology's Role in Raising Achievement with New Federal Evaluation of 16 Educational Technology Products

Study Will Examine Effectiveness of Computer-Based Reading and Math Programs from 12 Companies Nationwide

PRINCETON, N.J. (February 6, 2004)—Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., will evaluate 16 computer-based reading and math products over the next three years to determine the effectiveness of technology in bolstering student achievement.

The research is part of a $10 million congressionally mandated study funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. SRI International, based in Menlo Park, Calif., will be a subcontractor to Mathematica for the study .

The study will assess the effectiveness of learning technology in teaching reading in grade 1, reading comprehension in grade 4, pre-algebra in grade 6, and algebra in grade 9. As mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act, the study will use scientifically based research methods and a control group design. It will examine the effectiveness of educational technology in raising student achievement and also examine those conditions that increase the ability of teachers to use technology effectively.

“We believe the products selected will help us to gather accurate and comprehensive data on student learning via technology, which will be critical to informing the debate about how to enhance achievement in the future,” said Mark Dynarski, study director and senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.

The 16 products were developed by a dozen different education product developers and were chosen from a pool of 163 applications to participate in the study. The 12 companies whose products were selected include a mix of large and small firms and long-established and new providers. They include:

 

Early Reading—Grade 1

Product/Company

• Academy of Reading/AutoSkill International, Inc.
• Destination Reading/Riverdeep, Inc.
• The Waterford Early Reading Program™/Waterford Institute
• Headsprout Early Reading™/Headsprout, Inc.
• Plato FOCUS™/PLATO Learning, Inc.
• Read, Write, and Type™/Talking Fingers, Inc.

Reading Comprehension—Grade 4

Product/Company

• Academy of Reading^®/Autoskill International, Inc.
• Read 180/Scholastic, Inc.
• KnowledgeBox^®/Pearson Digital Learning
• Leaptrack™/Leapfrog Schoolhouse

 

Pre-Algebra—Grade 6

Product Company

• Successmaker™/Pearson Digital Learning
• iLearn Math/iLearn, Inc.
• Achieve Now™/PLATO Learning, Inc.
• Larson Pre-Algebra/Meridian Creative Group

Algebra—Grade 9

Product/Company

• Cognitive Tutor©/Carnegie Learning, Inc.
• Algebra PLATO/Learning, Inc.
• Larson Algebra/Meridian Creative Group

To implement the study, the products will be placed into schools during the 2004-2005 school year. Teachers will be trained to use the products as part of the study. Student achievement gains will be assessed at the end of the school year. Mathematica and SRI International will measure the impact of using the technologies on achievement gains using a random-assignment study design. More information about the study's design can be found at http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/.

Mathematica, a nonpartisan research firm, conducts policy research and surveys for federal and state governments, as well as private clients. The employee-owned company, with offices in Princeton, N.J., Washington, D.C., and Cambridge, Mass., has conducted some of the most important studies of health care, education, welfare, employment, nutrition, and early childhood policies and programs in the United States. Mathematica strives to improve public well-being by bringing the highest standards of quality, objectivity, and excellence to bear on the provision of information collection and analysis to its clients.

ABSTRACTS OF PRODUCTS SELECTED FOR THE EVALUATION OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY INTERVENTIONS

Academy of Reading

Autoskills Academy of Reading (first-grade and fourth-grade levels) promotes the acquisition of reading skills through a rigorous training program based on research in the areas of neuroscience, neuropsychology , and educational psychology. Students receive extensive training to master a range of basic reading skills to such a degree that the skills become “automatic.” These essential reading skills include phonemic and grapho-phonemic awareness, phonics, fluent and accurate decoding, and important comprehension skills.

Destination Reading

Riverdeep's Destination Reading is a comprehensive program featuring coursework, standards-based assessment materials, and a broad range of both online and on-site educator support resources. The program is research-based and balances phonics instruction with reading-for-meaning exercises, offering students a blend of direct skills training and authentic reading experience. All lessons and creative activities are student-adaptive, making it easy for teachers to respond to the individual needs of every child within a diverse classroom.

The Waterford Early Reading Program

The Waterford Early Reading Program™ is a comprehensive, research-based curriculum that teaches children how to read, write, and keyboard. The program offers three levels of instruction for emergent, beginning, and fluent readers, and provides a writing and keyboarding curriculum to enable young students to use the computer to develop writing skills. As one of the nation's first research-based, technology-driven models in early reading instruction, the development of the Waterford Early Reading Program spans 14 years of ongoing development.

Headsprout Early Reading

Headsprout Early Reading™ is an internet-based supplemental reading program that effectively teaches the essential skills and strategies required for reliable reading success. With engaging, highly interactive activities, Headsprout serves as an online tutor, providing adaptive one-on-one instruction to each and every learner.

PLATO Learning's FOCUS

PLATO Learning's FOCUS is a complete, integrated reading and language program for beginning, developing, and advanced readers (Levels 1-3).  The program can be tailored to a specific grade level by adjusting the kind and amount of material covered and the degree of support provided in instruction.  The same program components and the same teaching techniques may be used at all grade levels by customizing FOCUS for a particular class as a stand-alone program or as a supplement to other reading and language programs.  FOCUS provides a toolkit of lessons and exercises to enhance phonemic awareness and other core literacy skills at every stage of reading and language instruction-from oral-language development, phonics, spelling, handwriting, reading, writing, and links to a full year of classroom activities to integrate FOCUS across subject areas.  

Read, Write, & Type! Learning System

The premise of the Read, Write & Type! Learning System is that spelling out words develops fluent phonics skills and is a powerful route to reading. Children ages 6 to 9 learn to segment words into separate speech sounds and associate each phoneme with a letter and a finger stroke on the keyboard. Through 40 sequential lessons, they sound-out and spell hundreds of words, phrases , and sentences in engaging activities. Immersed in the meaning of the words, they read without effort as they write. They are using eyes, ears, mouths, and fingers to master reading fluency as they simultaneously master spelling, writing, grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, and touch-typing .

READ 180

Scholastic's READ 180 is a research-based intensive reading intervention program for struggling students in grades 4-12. The program delivers systematic individualized reading instruction through breakthrough technology, teacher led whole and small group instruction, high interest leveled reading materials and on-going assessments. The READ 180 software provides motivating videos that build background knowledge often lacking in struggling readers, and offers individualized instruction through leveled passages and activities in content areas such as History and Geography, People and Cultures, and Science and Math. READ 180's instructional design ensures that students receive the essential components of reading as outlined by the National Reading Panel, such as word study, comprehension, and vocabulary.

KnowledgeBox

KnowledgeBox^® represents Pearson's investment in the first K-6 Digital Learning System for reading/language arts, math, science, and social studies. Pearson is using local and wide-area broadband technology (school and district networks) to bring standards-based instructional content and tools into the classroom, which allow teachers to use and create standards and media-based lessons. KnowledgeBox provides access to a depth of instructional content including full-motion video, animation, interactive software, and electronic text resources that can be organized to suit individual, small, or large group instruction. KnowledgeBox is remotely managed and regularly updated with new content and the most recent state and national educational standards.

LeapTrack

The LeapTrack™ Assessment & Instruction System is an interactive, multisensory program that provides teachers the ability to instantly assess their students, personalize student instruction, and continuously monitor students' progress as they move toward mastery of state standards. At the heart of the LeapTrack System are the LeapPad and Quantum Pad multisensory units, which are designed to administer assessments and deliver engaging instruction. Using these platforms, students engage in self-directed learning that moves them toward mastery of critical skills. The assessment library for use on the LeapPad and Quantum Pad platforms spans grades K-5 in reading, language arts, vocabulary, early literacy, math, science, and social studies. The instructional library includes approximately 500 interactive, full-color, high interest Skill Cards. The LeapTrack System also consists of a software application that manages how content is assigned to students and contains a suite of valuable reports highlighting student, class, school, and district progress against state standards and assigning prescriptive content to each student based on individual assessment results.

SuccessMaker

SuccessMaker^® courseware is based on research begun in the 1960s at Stanford University and continuing through the present by Pearson Digital Learning. The goal of the research is to emulate a human expert tutor who supports the main instruction of the classroom teacher. SuccessMaker's Math Concepts and Skills course contains more than 1,600 learning objectives across grades K through 8.

iLearn Math

iLearn Math by iLearn, Inc. combines the power of the computer to individualize instruction dynamically during each session with the ability for real-time, minute-by-minute monitoring of individual performance by the teacher. Teachers can become effective one-on-one tutors, without increasing their workload. Students exhibit better conceptual understanding, better grasp of number sense, and better ability to apply problem-solving skills to unique situations.

PLATO Learning's ACHIEVE NOW

PLATO Learning's Achieve Now is a research-based mathematics program that includes interactive Adventures^® CDs, school and home learning activities, student assessment, teacher materials, and on-site and technology-based professional development. It is aligned with individual state standards, textbooks, and standardized tests and corresponds to the NCTM standards. Teachers can use Achieve Now, Series 3 interactive software as a tool to support teaching pre-algebra and foster deeper conceptual and procedural understanding. Its cognitive approach to instructional technology provides opportunities to learn pre-algebraic topics that include rational numbers in related organizational patterns, proportion and percent, integers, probability, statistics, problem solving, geometry, measurement, and the foundational concepts of algebra. Algebraic thinking begins early in the curriculum as students use concrete models to understand equations and concepts of inequality and to write simple equations.

Larson's Pre-Algebra

Larson's Pre-Algebra by the Meridian Creative Group is an multimedia mathematics program that provides a thorough review of middle school math concepts and comprehensive coverage of pre-algebra topics. Each of the program's 158 topics includes tutorials, practice, and assessment for both skill building and problem solving. Students are engaged and motivated with interactivity, animation, and sound as they progress through this mastery-based program at their own pace. They receive individualized instruction using customizable content that can be correlated to a state's, city's, or district's standards. Pre-Tests, Post-Tests, Standardized Tests, the Notebook, and print support materials provide teachers with a variety of assessment tools. In addition, a user-friendly Classroom Management System eliminates paperwork and allows for easy evaluation of an individual student or an entire class.

Carnegie Learning's Algebra I Cognitive Tutor ^®

Carnegie Learning's Algebra I Cognitive Tutor ^® curriculum is based on more than 20 years of scientific research on how students think and learn. The software tailors itself to each individual student, assessing prior mathematical knowledge and building a cognitive model of that student's knowledge. The cognitive model is constantly updated, and the curriculum progresses according to the particular learning needs of that student, tailored to his or her individual skill level, right down to decisions about which problems will be presented. This intelligent tutor is paired with a carefully designed print curriculum. The textbook and classroom activities parallel and extend the development of concepts presented in the software, emphasizing written analysis and classroom presentations. Both the Tutor and the text use real-world situations designed to emphasize connections between verbal, numeric, graphical, and algebraic representations.

PLATO Learning's Algebra

PLATO Learning's Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 span 236 objectives, from pre-algebra through advanced. Built with current research in mathematics education and instructional design, NCTM standards, and best practices in mind, the courseware includes scaffolded instruction, practice, and tests along with opportunities to make connections among mathematical concepts and to investigate, reflect, and communicate about math. The courseware includes one module per objective, each with tutorial, application, mastery, and offline activities. Audio support, animations, and interactions using multiple representations are built into the core tutorial instruction, offering students many ways to understand the point at hand.  The curriculum is complemented by PLATO Math Problem Solving, a series of open-ended, authentic problem-solving activities with a Coach using artificial intelligence technology, for individual or collaborative learning use.

Larson's Algebra

Larson's Algebra 1 contains 97 topics that cover the entire algebra 1 curriculum. Each topic includes tutorials, practice, and assessment for both skill building and problem solving. Students are engaged and motivated with interactivity, animation, and sound as they progress through this mastery-based program at their own pace. They receive individualized instruction using customizable content that can be correlated to state, city, or district standards. Students interactively construct verbal models that represent problem statements, identify the “knowns” by matching labels to parts of the model, determine the information to “solve for , ” and then write the necessary equation. Pre-Tests, Post-Tests, Standardized Tests, the Notebook, and print support materials provide teachers with a variety of assessment tools. In addition, a user-friendly Classroom Management System eliminates paperwork and allows for easy evaluation of an individual student or an entire class.