Pearson Offers Tennessee Students Nation’s #1 Elementary Mathematics Program Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley enVisionMATH Tennessee

Research Confirms Stunning Gains in Test Scores in Just One Year with Instruction that Focuses on Opening Students’ Minds, Creating “Mathematical Thinkers”

Knoxville, TN, January 31, 2011 – U.S. students learning with Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley enVisionMATH rank right along side or ahead of top performers in Asia, China and Europe because they are learning skills that make them “Mathematical Thinkers.” Independent research confirms students using enVisionMATH achieved stunning gains on standardized tests after just one year. Now, Pearson’s customized Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley enVisionMATH Tennessee, benchmarked to the state’s standards and aligned to the new Common Core State Standards, is available to schools across the state in digital, print or blended formats.

Pearson’s Senior Vice President Mike Evans, who heads up the company’s School Mathematics programs, said, “Overall U.S. students’ scores are not measuring up to other countries, but hundreds of thousands of enVisionMATH students certainly are. Our enVisionMATH students can outperform any students on the planet because from the ground up this program is 100% centered on building critical-thinking and problem-solving skills.” He added, “While classrooms in Singapore spend more time on task than students do here in the U.S., Singapore officials are seeking to get at the critical thinking skills that we have successfully addressed with enVisionMATH. enVisionMATH achieves Singapore results quicker and makes the classroom implementation easier for teachers.”

Renowned mathematics expert Dr. Francis “Skip” Fennell, a past President of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and a Member of the Math Writing Group for the: Common Core State Standards Initiative, is an author of Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley enVisionMATH. In serving in a variety of policy-related roles in the field of mathematics education, Dr. Fennell has had numerous opportunities to collaborate with education officials around the world. He said, “As we developed the enVisionMATH program, we were able to draw upon our work and analysis of international curriculum efforts, including programs from Singapore and other Asian-culture countries. The enVisionMATH author team has incorporated principles from this international benchmarking into our program which will assure that schools choosing enVisionMATH will be Common Core ready! With enVisionMATH, from kindergarten onward, Tennessee’s students will have the benefit of an education centered around the importance of thinking mathematically, setting the foundation for success in middle school, high school and on in to college.”

Independent research reveals that students made dramatic gains on standardized tests in the areas of math concepts and problem-solving, computation, and math vocabulary and communication in just one year with enVisionMATH, followed by jumps of up to five grade levels after two years with the program. The #1 school curriculum in the U.S. today, enVisionMATH has achieved astonishing results in schools across the nation:

Burbank School District’s Deputy Superintendent Joel Shapiro said, “From the perspective of the state test, we had not ever seen better results. This was the most dramatic improvement that we’d had in any given year. We essentially had the same teachers teaching math last year as we’ve had in the past; the only difference that was the common denominator was this program. It was generally felt that the rigor of this program raised the bar in conceptual knowledge and in introducing and reinforcing problem-solving skills.”
New Hampshire special education teacher Mary Lou Saxton supervised her school district’s participation in an independent efficacy research study. She said, “I’ve been teaching for 27 years and I have never had a program that reached all levels of learners the way this curriculum does. It challenges the top students and accelerates the bottom learners. The biggest thing I would say to anyone that is looking at this program is that in all the classes that started with enVisionMATH, no students were referred to the special ed team for math. Not one. That’s huge!”
Comments from a teacher in northeastern Tennessee participating in an independent research study of enVisionMATH: “Overall my feeling is that it’s a higher level math approach than what I think we’ve been exposing our kids to and there’s a lot of good in that, a lot of thinking in that, a lot more thinking than what I think I’ve seen in our other programs.”
Joyce Campagna, fifth-grade teacher from Rock Creek Elementary School in Ohio, said, “This is the first really substantive change that I’ve seen in math instruction since I was a student myself in elementary school.”

Dr. Mariam Azin, president of the research group PRES Associates, conducted the independent research of enVisionMATH. She said, “These findings are astounding. In all of my years conducting educational program efficacy studies, I have never seen such consistency in results across all different student populations as I saw with the enVisionMATH curriculum. In our study, we found that the enVisionMATH students significantly outperformed their peers with stronger effects occurring over time, meaning that student gains in the second year were even larger than those seen in the first year.”

The research results indicate that the longer students learned with enVisionMATH, the greater their gains were on the Group Mathematics Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation (GMADE) and the MAT8 in math concepts, problem solving and communication. For example, third graders gained nearly four grade-level equivalents in math concepts and problem solving after two years with the program, which is double the growth that the typical student will see over the course of two years.

enVisionMATH builds critical-thinking skills through its print and digital Visual Learning Bridge which offers students step-by-step visual instruction that makes learning math accessible to all students, regardless of learning styles or abilities, helping them “see” the math. And, because the program is available online, students can access it from home, giving parents the opportunity to see their children’s learning path on a daily basis.

Today, millions of students across all 50 states are learning with Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley enVisionMATH. Not only is enVisionMATH the nation’s #1 math curriculum, it is the #1 curriculum across all subject areas in use in U.S. schools today.

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To learn more about Scott Foresman Addison Wesley enVisionMATH Tennessee:: http://mathfortn.com/

About Pearson

Pearson (NYSE:PSO), the global leader in education services, technology and school solutions, provides innovative print and digital education materials for preK through college, student information systems and learning management systems, teacher professional development, career certification programs, and testing and assessment products that set the standard for the industry. Pearson’s other primary businesses include the Financial Times Group and the Penguin Group. For more information, go to: http://www.pearsonschool.com.