Alachua County Public Schools, a district serving 27,000 students in North Central Florida, has partnered with Scientific Learning Corp. to help students improve literacy skills by addressing the underlying difficulties that keep students from making progress in school. Initially, the district will deploy Fast ForWord® and Reading Assistant™ online programs in 10 schools.
“One of the major factors contributing to underachievement is not having a mastery of language, which not only affects students’ reading and writing performance but their performance in other areas as well,” said Superintendent of Schools Owen A. Roberts, Ph.D. “What makes the Fast ForWord program different from other language and literacy interventions is that it focuses on cognitive capacity development, rather than content, to address one of the root causes of learning difficulties.”
Alachua County Public Schools plans to roll out the Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant programs over the next five years to all of its schools. Each school will determine which students will participate in the programs, based on their needs.
Reading Assistant uses speech recognition to correct and support students as they read aloud.
