ThinkCERCA today announced results of three studies suggesting that the program improves the teaching and learning of close reading and academic writing. ThinkCERCA offers literacy lessons for English language arts, math, science, and social studies for grades 4–12,
ThinkCERCA was part of the 2014–2015 LEAP Innovations Pilot Network, whose mission was “identifying the most promising innovations, piloting these innovations with educators and students in the classroom, and evaluating the results.”
Students using ThinkCERCA scored 6.29 points higher on the NWEA MAP than the control group did. LEAP’s “Finding What Works” report put that improvement in perspective: “This is equivalent to closing the achievement gap by 264% for low-income students, 456% for black students, and 749% for Hispanic students.”
Additionally, ThinkCERCA was the subject of an extensive study in Chicago Public Schools. Atlantic Research Partners wrote in their report, “Literacy Instruction with ThinkCERCA,” “Overall, students in grade levels with significant use of ThinkCERCA outperformed their peers nationally on NWEA growth at different attainment levels.”
In a recent Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Literacy Courseware Challenge Evaluation conducted by SRI Education, the majority of teachers said that ThinkCERCA led them to give more writing assignments, provided students with more immediate feedback than otherwise would have been possible, and allowed them to differentiate assignments and spend more time supporting the needs of individual students. Two-thirds of teachers reported that they would “definitely” recommend ThinkCERCA to another teacher.
The ThinkCERCA lesson library, which is accessible from any device with an Internet connection, features reading and writing lessons, independent reading lessons, direct instruction lessons, passages, and automated and constructed response assessments.
