The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) considers reading failure to reflect not, only an educational problem, but a significant public health problem as well. Recent research findings indicate that as many as 40% of US citizens can be classified as reading disabled. Although powerful technologies for overcoming reading disabilities have been available for some time these strategies have been difficult to implement, because of their complexity and labor-intensive demands. A handful of small private learning academies has functioned as learning laboratories to further develop these effective technologies. Recent research findings indicate that children learn to read through a combination of fluent phonological discrimination, direct instruction of phonics, fluency building and continuous application with a demand for comprehension. For the past fourteen years, The Learning Incentive (TLI) has combined these research-supported elements to achieve success with severely learning disabled students. Most of the development and testing of curriculum has taken place at Ben Bronz Academy (BBA) TLI's school for learning disabled students. TLI has developed a prototype computer support system that helps teachers select the correct intervention and maintain a pace that ensures learning. Through the Internet, parts of this prototype have been tested with parents and teachers in remote locations with excellent results. This grant proposes increasing the sophistication of both the software and the educational assistance strategies, thereby enabling wider distribution of TLI's reading assistance technology to schools or families who wish to teach every student to become a fluent reader.Summary of Anticipated Results and Implications:There is a growing research consensus on the ingredients that are necessary for children to successfully learn to read. Our educational efforts are empirically based and successful in helping students fully overcome reading disabilities. We have developed computer technology that monitors individual progress and provides guidance to coaches. The technology and the Internet have made it possible to effectively use these activities in the home. Both BBA students and independent families have shown that home coaching/practice is effective. We expect to replicate the success we have experienced with a small number of families on a much wider scale. The CyberSlateª project will further enhance our coaching process and will extend our pilot project to 40 families and one classroom. We expect to demonstrate performances at literacy standards as determined by standardized testing among our pilot students. We will develop a plan for Internet distribution of our tutoring software and coaching support process and offer our products and services directly to parents throughout the United States. Based upon our pilot project, we believe we can rapidly help thousands of students through CvberSlateª. We also expect that other elements of our curriculum can be distributed and supported through a similar process. Eventually we expect to have a full spectrum of curriculum and coaching guidance Support products available to parents or schools
