Southfield Public Schools, Michigan

The primary focus on improving literacy scores through improved literacy instruction continued into this school year from last school year. However, this year, Southfield Public Schools has sharpened its focus to concentrate on a developmentally appropriate, early literacy intervention for all students as a way to reduce future referrals to special education. The common core balanced reading program is intended to serve as the all-encompassing improvement to the district's literacy curriculum, whereas the newest component is intended as an intervention for early elementary students. The desired result is to have significantly fewer referrals to special education when this cohort reaches grade 3.

The intervention selected by the district was the Waterford Early Reading Program (WERP). The WERP is a software-based early intervention literacy program. The program attempts to improve educational outcomes by addressing the literacy challenges of students at the outset of their educational career and by integrating components for parents, teachers, and students. The program includes materials (audiocassettes, videocassettes, and books) for students to take home, thereby bringing literature materials into homes that may not otherwise have books for students. With the WERP, teachers have a continuous picture of each student's performance and instruction level. The program tracks each student's progress, alerting the teacher to the relative strengths and areas in need of improvement. This additional information can better inform the lesson plans and the concepts that need to be reinforced. Finally, the WERP exposes students to a daily interactive literacy experience. Developed for students as early as kindergarten, the WERP offers three levels of reading instruction for students. The program adjusts to a student's successes and setbacks, providing an individualized experience for each student. Students have the opportunity to achieve success and to increase their skills at a manageable, challenging pace. The three levels of programs (Reading Readiness and Emergent Skills, Beginning Reading, and Fluent Reading) ensure an experience that will continue to challenge students as their skills become more sophisticated.

The WERP distributor's Website has a link to research validating the program as well as excerpts from research studies (www.electroniceducation.com/werp/effectiveness_research.html). The LAs enlisted the assistance and acumen of the TA Liaison to consider the validity of these claims and to locate additional information that either supported or disproved the statements made by the distributor. After considering research conducted independently by the Linking Agents, and the feedback from the TA Liaison, SPS used EMSTAC funds to purchase the WERP for the three pilot schools. Upon purchasing the program, the Linking Agents had to make sure that the schools were equipped with the appropriate hardware and software to accommodate the WERP, coordinate the training, identify technical support for the technology (i.e., someone with the expertise to install and maintain the network necessary for the schools to be linked to Waterford), and help the classes effectively move this intervention into their existing curriculum.

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