I was at Scientific Learning yesterday, participating in the filming of a Canadian Broadcasting System-produced documentary, and during one break, had a brief discussion with Bob Bowen (the Scientific Learning President/CEO) about state achievement test scores in one Louisiana school district in which we’ve been tracking kid performance over time. Two years ago, the average kid in this district was about standard deviation below the state average, on their overall state achievement test ealuation. Not too good. Near the bottom, in the state. Two years later, after Fast ForWord training, the average kid has passed the normal median and children are still moving upward in performance, against the distribution of kids from all across the state. Gains weren’t limited to language and reading skills; ALL indices (including math scores) move up, sharply.
Think of these children, one at a time, breaking out from a life of limited prospect and achievement, increasingly full of it! It literally sends a chill down my spine. My only disappointment: We’ve only manage to engage about 1.2 million kids in these forms of brain plasticity-based training, up to this date. 30 or 40 or 50 times that many could benefit substantially from its use, in the U.S. alone. Let’s get going, America!
