We don't just expect results - we ensure results. If
you don't believe that your child's reading skill has improved
significantly, just ask for a refund and you'll get it! We can
afford to make this offer because our program works so well. But
we don't expect you to take our word for it, so below we present
our results from previous classes.
You may notice that our results focus heavily on measuring the
accuracy and speed of individual word recognition (within the
context of meaningful text). Of course there is much more to
reading than accuracy, speed, and individual word recognition.
However all of these factors are necessary for successful
reading, and we focus on them because most of our students come
to us with difficulties in these areas. The importance of
accuracy, speed, and individual word recognition has been pointed
out in many dozens of research studies
over many decades, and was summarized nicely in an article by
Marilyn J. Adams and Maggie Bruck in the Summer 1995 issue of
American Educator, a publication of the American Federation of
Teachers (referred to as "AA95" below). Because of the
extreme importance of the accuracy and speed of individual word
recognition in reading, we feel that we are justified in
measuring our students' success in terms of these factors.
"In general, skillful readers visually process virtually each individual letter of every word they read, translating print to speech as they go. They do so whether they are reading isolated words or meaningful connected text. They do so regardless of the semantic, syntactic, or orthographic predictability of what they are reading." (AA95 pp. 11-12)
"Readers must read the words just as listeners must hear them. It is only because readers (and listeners) process words so automatically and effortlessly that they have the mental time and capacity left to construct and reflect on that meaning and message." (AA95 p. 12)
"... skillful readers are found to march their eyes through all of the words of a sentence and then to pause at each period. It is during these end-of-sentence pauses that listeners or readers actively construct and reflect on their interpretations; it is during these interludes that they work out the collective meaning of the chain of words in memory and its contribution to their overall understanding of the conversation or text. Yet, in order for this interpretive process to succeed, the whole clause or sentence must still exist, more or less intact, in the listener's memory when she or he is ready to work on it. The quality of this representation is highly dependent upon the speed and effortlessness of the word recognition process. If it takes too long or too much effort for the reader to get from one end of the sentence to the other, the beginning will be lost from memory before the end has been registered. This framework provides a powerful explanation for the findings of numerous studies that poor word identification skills are strongly coupled with poor reading comprehsnsion in both children and adults." (AA95 p. 13)
"The most reliable indicator of difficulties in comprehending what is read is the ability to read words quickly and accurately," (from NICHD Research Supports the America Reads Challenge, a publication of the National Institute of Child and Human Development which summarizes the result of 30 years of credible scientific research conducted by this agency).
"... There are literally hundreds of articles to support these conclusions. Over and over, children's knowledge of the correspondences between spellings and sounds is found to predict the speed and accuracy with which they can read single words, while the speed and accuracy with which they can read single words is found to predict their ability to comprehend wirtten text. Again, readers with fast and accurate word recognition skills have greater cognitive resources to direct attention to the meaning of text. Conversely, to the extent that children expend energy figuring out the identities of individual words, it can only be at the relative expense, in terms of time and mental capacity, of comprehending the meaning of the sentence or text." (AA95 p. 15)
Click here to see results from our Bartlett program.
Click here to see results from our Batavia program.
Click here to see results from our Oak Brook program.