Feature News

DALLAS, Oct. 31 /PRNewswire/ -- Voyager Expanded Learning(R) announced today that students who participated in the kindergarten through ninth grade summer reading program, TimeWarp(R) Plus, and the web-based student independent practice program, Ticket to Read(TM), made significant reading gains this past summer.

Voyager offers TimeWarp Plus to help districts and schools accomplish three things:

    1) prevent summer learning loss,
    2) reduce retention rates, and
    3) accelerate struggling students toward grade-level proficiency.

To determine the impact of participation in TimeWarp Plus with Ticket to Read, three groups of students were evaluated -- those who participated only in TimeWarp Plus without using the Ticket to Read program; those who participated in TimeWarp Plus and read at least one, but no more than nine Ticket to Read online passages; and finally, those students who participated in TimeWarp Plus and read 10 or more Ticket to Read passages.

"We were pleased to see that over the short amount of time summer school interventions were offered, educationally meaningful effects under all three conditions were realized," says Dr. Julia Peyton, vice president of research and evaluation for Voyager. "Also, at each grade level, students who read at least 10 passages on Ticket to Read realized the greatest and most significant gains."

In third grade, participating in TimeWarp Plus alone translated to an effect size of .52, moving the average score just over a half standard deviation. (Sixty-nine percent of pre-test scores were below the average post- test score.) For students who read one to nine passages on Ticket to Read and participated in TimeWarp Plus, the effect sizes was .69, and for those who read 10 or more passages on Ticket to Read and participated in TimeWarp Plus, the effect size increased to .72. An effect size of .72 means that 76 percent of pre-test scores were lower than the average post-test.

"What we learned from our program evaluation was a confirmation that every opportunity of practice makes a difference. The more students are able to read, the more world knowledge they will develop, the more their vocabulary grows, and with more practice, they will become more facile with text as demonstrated through oral reading fluency scores," says Dr. Peyton. "We know when students are more proficient readers, they read more, gain more information, and unlock many more opportunities for their future."

Effect size is a way of determining if an intervention made a difference or had the intended result of improving student performance. The effect size indicates how much the mean or average of the group is moved as the result of the intervention, as measured by the assessments. An effect size of 0 indicates the group made no improvement between assessments. Generally, an effect size of .2 is considered a small effect, .5 is moderate, and .8 is large.

Voyager Expanded Learning

Voyager Expanded Learning provides core, intervention, and supplemental reading programs, as well as math intervention and ongoing professional development programs, for school districts throughout the United States. Founded in 1994, Voyager has delivered extended-time reading and basic skills intervention programs, as well as large-scale reading and math programs, to more than 1,000 school districts in cities such as Buffalo, N.Y.; Miami; New York City; Richmond, Va.; El Paso, Texas; and Los Angeles, resulting in dramatically improved student performance. Voyager Expanded Learning, Inc. is a business unit of Voyager Learning Company (OTC: VLCY.PK) and based in Dallas, Texas. For more information, please visit www.voyagerlearning.com or call 1-888-399-1995.