After successfully piloting the Lexia Reading® Core5® program in six schools, the La Mesa-Spring Valley School District in California has expanded its use of the program to include all 17 elementary schools in the district.
Developed by Lexia Learning, the program helps students make gains in the five areas of reading including phonological awareness, phonics, automaticity/fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. In addition to La Mesa-Spring Valley, three of California’s largest school districts have expanded usage of the program districtwide: Palm Springs Unified School District has implemented the program as an essential part of their literacy curriculum; Colton Joint Unified School District in Riverside County has expanded usage to 24 schools; and Newport Mesa Unified School District broadly expanded their use of the program for this school year, adding it to 18 schools throughout the district.
La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, located in east San Diego County, serves 12,587 students across 17 elementary (grades K–6) and four middle schools (grades 7–8). Last year, a diverse population of students used Lexia Reading Core5 at six schools, including students working below, at, or above grade level, English Language Learners, and students with learning disabilities.
Marianne Ek, a reading specialist for the district noted, “Many of our students were struggling with a host of different skills, all of which are necessary for them to become strong readers. What we noticed is that Lexia Reading Core5 met each student where they were and helped to fill the gaps for them to achieve individual reading success. We saw great achievement scores with our pilot program—in all, 79 percent of students who used Lexia with fidelity from September 2013 to April 2014 gained at least one grade level of reading skills—and 60 percent of these students made gains of more than one grade level.”
Lexia Reading Core5 is a technology-based reading program for students of all abilities from grades pre-K–5. The program provides personalized learning for each student with scaffolding and explicit instruction. Each of the 18 levels of activities aligns to state standards, including the Common Core State Standards. on-level and advanced students to continue to progress.
Jim Feffer, principal at Two Bunch Palms Elementary School, part of Palm Springs USD, began piloting Lexia Reading Core5 one year ago with his school’s special education students. After finding that the students were making notable gains, he quickly made the decision to expand the program to students of all abilities, schoolwide.
“What makes Lexia such a strong program is that it supports our initiatives for differentiated learning, small group instruction, Response to Intervention and data-driven instruction. The reporting and feedback given to our teachers is a very high quality and helps them to maximize the potential of every one of their students on a continuous basis.”
The program also includes Lexia’s proprietary Assessment Without Testing® technology. This embedded assessment technology gathers student performance data without administering a test, using norm- and criterion- referenced measurements that are correlated to student outcomes on commonly used measures such as DIBELS® and AIMSweb®.
