San Jose, Calif. (March 6, 2008) —At the Annual Conference of CABE, the California Association of Bilingual Educators, Pearson, the world’s leading education publisher, today announced plans to offer to California innovative research-based K-12 reading and language arts programs. Aimed at building vocabulary and boosting reading comprehension skills, the April submission will include a parallel Spanish program for elementary grade students, as well as stand-alone intensive English-language development programs for all grades.

In announcing the company’s submissions for the upcoming reading/language arts adoption, Pearson vice president for California Vicky Bush said, “Research tells us that elementary school children should be increasing their vocabulary at the rate of seven words per day on average– that they should know a minimum of 8,000 words by grade three and an average of 45,000 words by high school graduation. Unfortunately, statistics confirm that struggling students are often not even learning one new word each day. There is a huge gap.” She added, “But we know that one of the most effective ways to bridge the achievement gap is to address the vocabulary gap, or what we call ‘word poverty.’ This critical component to reading comprehension is a major focus of the programs we will be offering in California.”

The Pearson programs include an integrated array of instruction, digital media, and assessment aligned to Reading First requirements and revised State standards. Bush said, “This is the first time that Pearson will be offering an elementary reading program for California. We are looking forward to presenting our Reading Street for California customized curriculum to the State Board. Bush said that Pearson invested five years of research and development to create the Scott Foresman Reading Street program. Over the past two years, the core curriculum has been adopted by thousands of schools, and in 2007 was the top-selling reading program in the U.S. Now the program has been enhanced and customized for California, adding a visually-engaging and entertaining digital path, and including California authors and literature.

Pearson is also introducing Pearson calle de la lectura, a parallel reading/language arts program in Spanish. For middle and high school students, the company has published Pearson Literature for California. Both the elementary and middle/high schools programs offer the Pearson Language Central component for intensive English-language development. Instruction is built from Grant Wiggins’s Understanding by Design concepts.

Dr. Connie Juel, Education Professor at Stanford University, one of the chief architects of vocabulary instruction in Reading Street for California , notes, “The chief culprit behind the reading achievement gap is a language gap.” And her fellow author, Camille Blachowicz, Professor of Education at the National College of Education at National-Louis University, says that research studies confirm that “vocabulary deficits can be reversed when children from low-literacy homes are placed in literacy-rich classrooms.”

Bush said, “This is why vocabulary building is such a key focus in all elementary and secondary grades of the Pearson programs. She noted the following statistics:

• Without intervention, by first grade, a child from a low-income community will have one-fourth the vocabulary of their mid-income peer – this is significant because reading ability at age 7 is one of the best predictors of success in high school.
• Reading tests for the last 30 years show boys consistently scoring lower than girls in every age group.
• English learners lack the academic vocabulary needed for success in classroom assignments and state-mandated standardized tests.
• Children with restricted vocabulary by grade three have declining comprehension scores in the later elementary years.
• By fourth grade, many children experience a “slump” in reading comprehension caused by below grade level vocabularies

Bush noted, “We are 100 percent committed to working with the schools and teachers in California to address the issues around “word poverty.” We are doing this not only through the intensive focus in our reading/language arts programs, but through the philanthropic work of the Pearson Foundation, which is equally dedicated to programs which build vocabulary in young children and set them on a path toward a lifetime love of reading.” These initiatives include: the Read for the Record program, Family Book Nights and Book Give-Aways, the Pearson Teacher Fellowship, Jumpstart for Young Children’s College Corps, The One Million Word Challenge in Los Angeles, and other programs described at www.pearsonfoundation.org.

Pearson, the world’s leading education publisher, has been providing education materials to California schools as far back as the 1800s. You may know us individually as Scott Foresman, Prentice Hall, Longman, SuccessMaker, NovaNet, AGS, Pearson School Systems, Pearson Assessment, Learning Teams, Achievement Solutions, and so many more – names in the world of education that are recognized and respected across the State and the globe. In fact, most teachers in California have learned their profession by studying with Pearson’s Merrill or Allyn & Bacon textbooks, and many have benefited from our professional development programs. Today, nearly a thousand Pearson people are living and working in the State, providing educational materials that cover the gamut from birth through professional learning. Whether in science, math, social studies, music, middle/high school language arts, foreign languages, English as a Foreign Language or AP courses, hundreds of thousands of California’s preK-12 students are learning with our Pearson products every day. In addition to Education, Pearson’s other major businesses include The Financial Times Group and The Penguin Group. For more information, go to: www.californiareading.com or www.pearsonschool.com.