Students in the Marshall (TX) Independent School District who completed at least one Scientific Learning Fast ForWord course achieved measurable gains on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS).
Students showed, on average, more than a year’s gain in reading skills, closing the gap between their reading level and their grade level. Fast ForWord is a family of educational software products that accelerate learning by developing the student brain to process more efficiently.
“We have a population of at-risk students,” said Deputy Superintendent Melinda Jones. “We saw students struggling to read. We also weren’t seeing the gains we wanted to see in our state assessment in reading, which affected math, science, and social studies as well. We selected the Fast ForWord program to help us address these challenges because it is a research-based, proven program.”
Marshall ISD began using the Fast ForWord products in the 2007-08 school year as an intervention for at-risk students in 10 schools. An evaluation of the products’ impact on the reading skills of students in third through 11th grade showed that students who completed at least one Fast ForWord product prior to the 2008 TAKS Reading test made large and statistically significant improvements, achieving an average gain of 25.5 scaled score points in their TAKS reading score. Conversely, students who did not complete a Fast ForWord product did not experience statistically significant improvements on the 2008 TAKS.
