It seems logical that by placing students into materials at their individual instructional level and then pacing them based upon their learning rate would result in greater learning. Not wanting to rely on logic, we ran a pilot study. Through a local public school we used this approach with the poorest math students in 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. Pre-testing indicated that these students were averaging .6 years growth for each year they had been in school. Since it is reasonable to expect a year’s growth for a year in school, these children were obviously having problems. After enrolling these students in this program for one year, post-testing scores indicated an average of 3.1 years growth. That was 3.1 years growth displayed from students typically growing only .6 years for each year in school.
While this pilot data looks impressive, there were limitations. There was no control group. The public school would not allow us to assign students to our group and a control group randomly. Our data simply describes the growth these students displayed, but without a control group, one cannot definitively state that our program caused the growth. Without a control group one cannot account for the influence of other variables in the students’ lives, such as a new cook in the lunch room or a longer recess. While we believe the increase in math scores resulted from our program, we cannot rule out the impact of these other variables.
Our pilot study was done only with math. We have not done a comparable study in reading. While there is substantial data supporting the appropriateness of individualization and self pacing for learning reading, being a small company we have been unable to conduct our own research for reading and spelling.
As we continue to collect data on student
progress we will present these findings in our newsletter that is published four
times a year.