For Third Straight Year Digital Courses and Personalized Learning Help Brooksville Elementary Students Ace State Standards

Pearson’s SuccessMaker and Waterford Early Learning Keys to Florida Learners’ Success

CHANDLER, Arizona – March 4, 2010 – Since 2007 Brooksville Elementary School (BES) in Brooksville has met Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), the federal measurement of student progress as defined by the No Child Left Behind Act. By implementing the education services and technology company Pearson’s digital courseware products SuccessMaker® Enterprise and Waterford Early Learning^TM, teachers and the principal at BES are able to assess student skills early in the school year and help students reach year-end goals.
BES teachers utilize SuccessMaker and Waterford’s embedded assessments on a regular basis, which enables them to focus on areas where students are struggling and monitor student progress to make sure they are on target.

“The forecast report from SuccessMaker Enterprise has proven itself to have a high validity ratio in terms of true performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test,” explains Mary LeDoux, principal at BES. She added, “We are able to complete prescriptive scheduling as early as September, thereby giving students up to six months to make the necessary gains to score at a passing level on the state test.”

An ongoing problem BES faces is that many students within the lower income segment of the community do not have access to the same resources as other students have before starting school. This disparity results in many under-resourced learners and causes multiple levels of student functionality within each classroom, grade level and across the school. SuccessMaker Enterprise and Waterford Early Learning help to close this learning gap.

In 2005 using Title I funds, BES implemented SuccessMaker Enterprise school wide, thereby giving all K-5 students daily supplemental education in math and reading. With Waterford Early Learning courseware, pre-k through early kindergarten students are learning early skills in math, reading and science. Both programs assess students at the beginning of the year. Once assessed, each student works at his or her own level and pace on the program to master grade level objectives and material. The courseware guides the children through lessons until they reach a level of 80 percent mastery before progressing to higher level content.

“With high standards for our students and teachers, we have worked hard to reach and now maintain our ‘A’ state accountability rating. It is our goal to give every student the resources and the opportunities they need to succeed academically,” said LeDoux. With SuccessMaker Enterprise and Waterford Early Learning, BES has given students great resources to help them succeed and for teachers to predict with more than 90 percent accuracy student math and reading scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). In the 2009 results shown below, the median accuracy is well above 90 percent.

2009 FCAT Passing Levels and SuccessMaker Enterprise Courseware Predictive Levels

MATH: Number of Students Reaching SuccessMaker Courseware Target Levels and Percentage of those Students Scoring Level 2 or Higher, Level 3 or Higher or Level 4 on the FCAT.

READING: Number of Students Reaching SuccessMaker Courseware Target Levels and Percentage of those Students Scoring Level 2 or Higher, Level 3 or Higher or Level 4 on the FCAT.

*** Target is beyond the scope of SuccessMaker’s Foundation reading courseware.

More information about SuccessMaker and Waterford Early Learning can be found at: www.pearsonschool.com/successmaker and: www.pearsonschool.com/waterford.

To view the pdf formatted success story about Brooksville Elementary School: click here.