Our Early Reading Comprehension Research Project is designed to test the theories of human intelligence and comprehension developed by such brain researchers as Dr. Peter R. Huttenlocher, Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology at the University of Chicago, as they apply to public education curriculum development. (Dendritic and synaptic development in human cerebral cortex: Time course and critical periods, Developmental Neuropsychology, 16, 347-349 [1999]; Synaptogenesis in human cerebral cortex and the concept of critical periods, in The role of early experience in infant development, Johnson & Johnson Pediatric Institute, p. 15-28 [1999])

At the same time, we wish to demonstrate two new reading curricula that successfully teach 4- and 5-year-olds how to read. One is preferred by teachers in our current Pilot Project, but the second, if theories relating to brain function are valid, should lead to greater long-term comprehension capabilities for children.

Funding for this research project has not yet been secured.

Every child is born with about 100 billion active brain cells. These are all the active brain cells they will ever have. So, if Einstein’s or Da Vinci’s brain had the same number of active brain cells as that of a struggling student, how is it that the failing student lacks the same ability to comprehend or develop complex concepts?

The neurological definition of comprehension and higher intelligence suggests that it is not the bits of information that a child has stored in his brain but how well he can make connections between what he knows to comprehend how things interrelate or connect and then make new linkages or composite ideas.

These connections are actual physical connections. Each of the 100 billion individual cells is capable of making up to 20,000 neural connections. That means when a child connects the color of a parrot’s wings with the glow from the planet Uranus, for example, he will have actually physically grown a new connection in his brain. The more he uses that connection to make further connections, the more immediately available the information at the end of that connection will be for his mind to "remember" and the easier the connection or comprehension process will also become. (Denise and Grant Ford, Parents as First Teachers, 1999, pp. 5-6)

Using an electron microscope, Dr. Hutternlocher observed synapse production peaking in three different areas of the developing brain, and he noted: "The production of synapses in the brain is strongly linked to the ability to learn."

While natural growth of synapses during certain periods of childhood may make it easier to learn certain things at certain times, there is also evidence that older people suffering brain damage can grow new connections and recover mental abilities destroyed by trauma (Rethinking Innateness: Brain development, language, and the problem of critical periods, seminar by Elizabeth Bates, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego).

Regardless of when the connections are made, it is believed that the more connections in the neural network, the easier it is for a person to comprehend new concepts – even if the person’s current knowledge base does not appear to relate directly to the new concept being learned.

Two reading curriculum developers also attempt to enhance the development of children’s neural networks to achieve greater comprehension and greater overall intelligence. Glenn Doman of the Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential has been teaching babies and brain-damaged adults how to read and do math for some four decades. One technique to create "baby geniuses" is to build "encyclopedic knowledge" from an early age. Learning a little about a lot of things helps foster the growth of neural synapses. Doman’s institute has developed a series of 10 "Picture Dictionary" computer CDs to help accomplish that purpose. This will be one of our tested curricula.

Grant and Denise Ford, developers of the Reading Master early reading curriculum, have incorporated this same strategy into their readers. The International Education Institute (IEI), a partner in this Early Reading Comprehension Research Project, is already using the Reading Master (RM) curriculum with about 300 pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students in an Early Reading Curriculum Pilot Project. The curriculum includes lessons on such topics as clouds, zoo animals, birds, astronomy, horses and cats – and in all of these subjects, it refuses to speak down to the children. The books include information and vocabulary that most adults do not know. Teachers using this curriculum extensively see it as much more than a reading program because of the way it stimulates students’ interest in learning. This is a "thinking" curriculum – not just a reading curriculum. It teaches children the classifications of heavenly objects, classifications of clouds, and classifications in cat, bird and horse breeds, etc.

The idea behind these curricula is that as they foster synapse development and growth in a child’s neural network, the child is able to comprehend not only the subject studied, but any concept better and easier. This project has two main goals:

1. Evaluate the decoding skills provided by these and a simpler Frontline Phonics early reading curricula that our current Pilot Project indicates can help children to read beyond second-grade level before entering first grade.
2. Determine if the comprehension-enhancement curricula developed by Doman and Reading Master have a significant impact on reading comprehension beyond that achieved by the Frontline Phonics reading curriculum by itself.

Based on the success we have seen in previous implementation of Frontline Phonics and in our current Early Reading Pilot Project, we predict that 4-year-old pre-kindergartners can -- with easy, enjoyable instruction and activities -- reach the mid-first-grade reading level, on the average. They can surpass that level if they begin some initial use of the curricula earlier as 3-year-olds. And they can surpass second-grade reading before entering first grade if the curricula are continued through kindergarten. But also based on observations in our current research, the use of the Reading Master curricula in conjunction with Frontline Phonics enhances reading vocabulary, stimulates intellectual involvement, and, we believe, strengthens the neural network, which should be demonstrated with higher comprehension scores that exceed any differences in decoding scores.

Reading, of course, is the most important skill children need in order to learn all other academic subjects. Without at-grade reading skills, they fall behind in other subjects –even math, since there are more words in math textbooks than there are numbers.

President Bush’s ambitious "No Child Left Behind" Legislation recognizes this but requires revolutionary, out-of-the-box thinking to have much hope for success. The strategy and curricula we are currently evaluating have the potential of helping young children leap ahead a full school year in reading. Indeed, some of the teachers using it in our Pilot Project say that after just five months using the curricula, their students are already 3-4 months ahead of where they would have been.

We won’t have the final test data on the Pilot Project for a few more months, however every kindergarten and preschool teacher testing Frontline Phonics (FP) says it is as good or better than anything they have ever used. And all but one of the teachers says it is significantly better.

For a variety of reasons, few of the Pilot Project teachers are using the supplementary curriculum – Reading Master (RM) -- as fully as we proposed. One of the main reasons is that they have not wanted to send components of it home with the children and risk losing books, videos and computer CDs. Our proposed research would require participating teachers to follow our instructions more precisely in exchange for receiving the curricula free of charge. Another reason some schools are not using it fully is that many classes lack computers. Part of our budget will be to ensure all classes have access to multimedia computers.

While in our current study we are using the curricula primarily with 5-year-old kindergartners, the teachers of the 4-year-old preschoolers involved in the study are equally enthused about it. Both FP and RM claim not only to provide "pre-reading skills" but actual reading skills in a fun, low-stress fashion. Both urge teachers not to push children faster than they are ready to learn. But FP says most 4-year-olds can – in less than 2 hours a week – be taught to read at mid-first-grade level. While the supplementary curriculum, Reading Master, claims that ½-hour a day of its media-driven curriculum can teach children to read as young as 2 years old in a way almost as naturally as children learn to speak.

The third curriculum – the Doman Picture Dictionary CD-ROMs – is not used in our Pilot Project but is important in testing the theories concerning enhancement of neural networks and reading comprehension. RM is also based on the Doman approach.

Frontline Phonics, developed at the Learning Dynamics preschool in Orem, Utah, uses a simple phonics approach to reading that young children are able to comprehend and put to immediate use.

Learning is driven by the lyrics of sing-along music provided on CD. The curriculum's own "Alphabet Song" teaches each letter of the alphabet along with its sound(s). The preschool has also created a separate song for each letter, as well as songs to remember certain rules, such as what to do when two vowels come together. The set of books that comes with the curriculum is created to provide children with almost immediate reading success.

Frontline Phonics starts by teaching one vowel and five consonants, one letter at a time. Then there is a book for the children to read that uses only those six sounds. After a review and some time to absorb, the curriculum goes on to another vowel and then another five consonants. Additional books allow the children to experience gradually increased reading success from Month 1. Most kindergartners could be expected to begin reading their first simple book within their first month of school. Four-year-olds may take a little longer, and 3-year-olds may take most of a year before they are ready to read the simplest books.

On June 7, 2002, five volunteers from the National Reading Foundation, including our Project Director Ken Harvey, conducted a kindergarten pre-reading assessment created by Kennewick, WA, School District and the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) test on the Learning Dynamics preschoolers.

The 19 students tested were randomly selected from the center's about 115 6-hour-per-week preschoolers. (The school also has that many 4-hour-a-week preschoolers.)

In the Kennewick School District's kindergarten test -- which includes letter recognition, letter sounds, beginning word sounds, and rhyming.-- the preschool graduates outperformed Kennewick's outgoing kindergartners, 95.42 to 90.60, out of a possible total of 98.

The evaluators also administered the Developmental Reading Assessment test, used on many first-graders, including Kennewick’s, but not typically on kindergartners. There are 11 books in the first-grade DRA, each representing a gradual increase in reading ability from first month through the ninth month. The Learning Dynamics preschoolers could read -- with 90% proficiency -- beyond Book 6 (6.21) on the average, beyond the halfway point in the tested first-grade reading skills.

In the Pilot Project we supplement the Frontline Phonics curriculum with the Reading Master curriculum, developed in New Zealand. It merges Montessori phonics, Doman whole word recognition, and accelerated multi-sensory learning techniques.

The Reading Master curriculum comes as a package with a book version, videotaped version and computerized version to deliver the same basic curriculum through a variety of media and senses. By providing these three different formats, the three major learning styles – visual, auditory and kinesthetic – are all addressed. The curriculum emphasizes the accelerated learning strategies developed by Glenn Doman to teach 70 minimal sound units (phonograms) and 450 most-used words.

Because of the distance, we were unable to send independent evaluators, but communicated with school and preschool administrators who have used the curriculum. We spoke with a child-care center which confirmed that they have children at their facility learning how to read at age 2.

Principal David Foster, formerly of the Hunua Primary School in Auckland, used the very same curriculum with a group of boys 7-9 years old who consistently tested below the 10^th percentile despite aggressive intervention strategies, including one-on-one tutoring. However, after just a few months using the Reading Master computerized curriculum, the boys’ scores shot up to over the 80^th percentile.

Because of the multi-sensory, individualized approach, Reading Master has been used successfully with dyslexic, autistic, adult, and ESL students, as well. Mr. Foster, the Hunua School principal, confirmed that the program, when used at his school, was able to reach an autistic child and other special-needs children in dramatic fashion.

The Picture Dictionary CD-ROMs make it fun and easy for children to become familiar with a broad range of concepts and to expand their vocabulary, accordingly. Each of the 10 volumes contains 150 colorful images and large-print vocabulary words spoken clearly by native speakers (English and Spanish available). Topics include art, music, nature, biology, sports, crafts, household objects and utensils, domestic animals, wild animals, plants, food, geography, science, anatomy, etc.

Project Director Ken Harvey has created and managed the Early Reading Pilot Project over the past year. The Pilot Project involves 302 preschool and kindergarten students in 18 classes taught by 11 teachers. Classrooms were offered both the Frontline Phonics curriculum and the Reading Master curriculum at deep discounts. All purchased the Frontline Phonics curriculum to serve as their primary reading curriculum, and most of them also purchased the Reading Master curriculum but are only gradually beginning to implement it.

We sent a Mid-Year Questionnaire to all participating teachers in this Pilot Project. Every teacher who has responded says the primary curriculum being tested -- Frontline Phonics -- is as good as or better than the best reading curriculum they have ever used. The teachers were asked to rate FP in each of nine characteristics. With the score of 1 representing "much worse than the best curriculum previously used," 3 representing "about the same as the best curriculum previously used" and 5 representing "much better than the best curriculum previously used," the teachers rated Frontline Phonics overall as 4.3.

Rating on a scale of 1-5 on the following basis:

1 = Much worse than best curriculum previously used.

2 = A little worse than best curriculum previously used.

3 = About the same as best curriculum previously used.

4 = A little better than best curriculum previously used.

5 = Much better than best curriculum previously used.

Teachers participating in the Early Reading Pilot Project were also interviewed about their personal observations. Here are some of their comments:

As of March, the average child in her classes was already midway through the third set of 10 books, suggesting that by year’s end these kindergartners will, on the average, exceed the beginning second-grade reading level.Diana bradshaw, INITIATIVE LEARNING CENTER, 32 4-year-old preschoolers IN 3 CLASSES: "It’s the best curriculum I’ve used. … It’s going wonderfully. The kids are doing fantastic. They are already reading sentences."

"They are definitely learning a lot," says Mrs. Reber. Older students are "in awe" of what the younger students are learning through the program. For example, some overheard the younger children talking about different breeds of horses and how horses are measured in "hands." The younger children were trying to figure out how tall a Shetland pony is, using the hands method.

Our team -- which includes the International Education Institute, Benton-Franklin Community Action Committee, and the Treasure Valley Reading Foundation – proposes to conduct a curriculum evaluation experiment that parallels the PCER projects also being funded through the Institute for Education Sciences. In this way, our data can be used by the IES to compare and contrast with the PCER data, and stand on its own as a test of early reading curricula and children’s ability – once the instruction is completed – to both decode words and to comprehend the concepts they carry.

Statistical analysis will be made on the test and comparison groups as a whole, as well as on socio-economic and ethnic subgroups that are traditionally on the low end of the achievement gap.

This proposal is for grant funding to carry out a 3-year experimental evaluation to determine the effectiveness of the Frontline Phonics program when used with or without the Reading Master and Doman Picture Dictionary curricula.

The curricula will be applied preschoolers and kindergartners. A complete array of assessments will be completed at the start of Year 1 and at the end of Years 1 and 2 and in February or March of Year 3, providing time to make final analysis of data by the summer of Year 3.

The experiment will involve about 300 preschoolers and 300 kindergartners randomly selected to be part of one of three groups, as described below:

The Treatments would be applied in the following manner over the three-year experiment:

The primary questions we will answer with the research data have already been suggested, but let us review the questions of concern:

For this experiment, researchers will randomly select students and classrooms from among volunteer schools. Most of the schools have a large number of children from lower socio-economic families; others have very few. Some have a large proportion of bilingual Hispanic children; others have mostly monolingual Caucasian children. According to estimates by the school directors, we can expect at least 45% to be from the lower socio-economic strata and 15% to speak English as a second language. No monolingual Hispanics will be used in this evaluation project.

Since the number of classes is fairly small, results could be skewed if through random selection too many classes representing one extreme of the socio-economic scale, for example, were selected for one particular treatment. Therefore, approximately 27 classes will be divided into three groups – the 9 with the highest socio-economic profile, the 9 with the lowest, and the 9 in the middle. For schools that have three classes in the project, their classes will first be randomly divided for Treatments 1-3, with each in a different group. Then schools with two classes will be randomly divided, but ensuring that the two classes do not receive the same treatment. And then any remaining classes within the three socio-economic groupings will be randomly selected for Treatments 1-3. When the process is completed, each Treatment Group should have 3 classes from the higher socio-economic schools, 3 from the center, and 3 from the lower socio-economic schools.

Our intent is to use the same assessments as the Preschool Curriculum Assessment Research Projects, also being conducted by the Institute for Education Sciences, so children in our study can be included in the PCER cross-site analysis. If PCER does not choose to include our data in their analysis, then we will secure its data to complete the analysis ourselves.

The national assessment contractor in the PCER project is conducting an extensive assessment on all participating children and their classroom learning environments, using direct child assessment tools, observation, teacher reports and interviews, and parent interviews. The PCER national evaluation contractor uses all or portions of the following assessment tests: FACES, Woodcock Johnson Achievement Test, Test of Language Development Primary, Test of Early Reading Ability, Child Math Assessment – Abbreviated, developed specifically for the PCER program, the Assessment Profile for Early Childhood Programs, ECERS-R, and the teacher- and parent-scored Social Skills Rating System.

We feel these tests should provide adequate data to assess cognition, reading, overall language development, and socio-emotional development until the children reach the end of kindergarten. At the end of kindergarten and in first grade, we will also use the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) to measure both decoding and comprehension skills. The DRA has been used in over 300,000 classrooms and is designed to measure decoding and comprehension skills in young readers. The DRA is a required assessment in several states, including Vermont and Louisiana.

Our own Early Childhood Education Specialists will administer the assessments, including the Developmental Reading Analysis, to provide consistent data. However, since the DRA requires some subjective judgment exercised by the evaluators, our evaluators will conduct all assessments "blind," not knowing to which Treatment Group the children they are evaluating belong.

We understand the necessity of follow-up testing not only during Years 2 and 3 but beyond. We will continue tracking students in this experiment yearly until they complete the 4^th grade, and then at 3-year intervals at the end of 7^th and 10^th grades.

Prior to Year 1 we will meet with the families one-on-one in an effort to persuade them to sign a legal contract granting us permission to involve their children not only in the experimental research, but to provide us access to student records and to the students themselves during their subsequent school years for the purpose of follow-up tracking and testing. They will be excluded from the research if they do not.

It is not known at this time what method of statistical analysis will be performed by the PCER national assessment contractor to analyze cross-site data. Our preference will be to use the same method in order to maintain consistency in comparing our data with that collected in the PCER curriculum evaluations. However, if that is not possible for any reason, we will use the Pearson Chi-square Test for Association. This is one of the most commonly used tests of statistical significance for bivariate tabular association analysis. Typically, the hypothesis is whether or not two different populations are different enough in some characteristic or aspect of their behavior based on two random samples. We can use chi-square to check for significance (at .05 level) between Treatment 1 and each of the test treatments. And we can check for significance between Treatment 1 and Treatment 2, as well. We also have two subgroups to calculate into the mix. In Year 2, half of the Year 1/Treatment 2 students continue with Treatment 2, whereas half do not. Same for Treatment 3 students from Year 1. So we can see if having two years of Treatment 2 or Treatment 3 makes a significant difference, as well. Our projection is that it will. Kindergartners in Year 3 will also be in their second year of Treatment 2 and 3.

The project team will include the following personnel:

Ken Harvey, Project Manager & President of the International Education Institute: Ken has been involved in education for 25 years, starting at the college level where he was involved in extensive communications education reform research and implementation of a multimedia instructional approach. Then about 10 years ago he became involved in educational consulting, developing an interest in media-based early childhood curricula. He has worked with curricula developed by such companies as HomeQuest, Jostens Learning, Plato, Advantage Learning, NovaNet, Virtual Classroom International, SystemX, ElearnExpress, 21^st Network and Brain Garden. While serving as Managing Director of Virtual Classroom International and later as Managing Director of the National Children’s Reading Foundation (NCRF), he became acquainted with the Reading Master, Frontline Phonics and Doman curricula, beginning independent research on the curricula, eventually leading to the Early Education Pilot Project. That research was begun while he was with the NCRF and then spun off to the International Education Institute, which Ken founded and directs.

Judith Gidley, Authorized Representative and Financial Administrator on the PCER Project & BFCAC Executive Director: Thirty-two years experience in the Social Service, Workforce and Economic Development area as a principal executive in complex public and non-profit human services organizations and network systems. Management of the contract processes, grant proposals, requests for proposals, writing and reviewing proposals, contract negotiations, awarding contracts, quality assurance, budgeting, auditing, reporting and program maintenance. Judith has been the Executive Director of BFCAC for the past four years. Judith provides management and financial oversight of $8.5 million dollars, operating 42 different federal, state and local contracts and jointly networks with community partners and provides a wide variety of services with a staff of forty. Experience in building teams, networks, collaborations, and strategies between a diverse variety of players. Skills in the development and implementation of goals, objectives, structures and time lines. BFCAC operates a variety of Child Care Programs that educate and/or provide support type services to home and center child care providers, i.e. Child Care Resource and Referral, STARS Training for Child Care Licensing, Child Care Micro-Loan, Child Care Recruitment and Retention, Nutrition, Seasonal Child Care, and Homeless Child Care.

Jennifer Martinez-Tyndall, PCER Project Representative and Trainer & BFCAC Training, Education and Early Learning Director: Oversees numerous child-care-related programs at the BFCAC, providing services to over 600 child-care providers, and dealing with a variety of federal, state and local agencies. Jennifer has worked with children in various aspects for the past 18 years. She majored in Psychology at San Francisco State University, with a focus on child/adolescent development and counseling. She worked in case management, responsible for assessment and providing supportive services to special needs children prior to moving to the State of Washington. And in Washington started her own child-care service before joining the BFCAC staff.

Scott McDonald, Executive Director of the Treasure Valley Reading Foundation and Director Assessment and Quality Control for IEI’s PCER Project: Scott is a former executive for the Nampa School District, former Executive Director of the Association of Idaho Cities providing services to 200 Idaho cities, and former Director of the State of Idaho’s Department of Employment and Labor with responsibility for the management and operation of a state agency of over 1,000 employees. His responsibility with the IEI PCER Project will be to work with his Reading Foundation’s contracted CPA to administer grant funding. He will also chair the Research Advisory Committee overseeing technical aspects of the research project and ensuring Quality Control. In founding the Treasure Valley Reading Foundation, Scott has partnered with some of the top executives in the state, as well as Boise, Caldwell, Homedale, Kuna, Melba, Meridian, Mountain Home, Middleton, Nampa and Vallivue School Districts, which provide the basic funding for the TVRF.

Dr. Charles J. Shackett, Superintendent of Bonneville School District, Idaho Falls, ID: Dr. Shackett has over 20 years experience in education, beginning his career in elementary and special education. He will serve as a member of our Research Advisory Committee overseeing the project.

Donna Blackwell, Lead Teacher for Learning Dynamics, Orem, UT, with over 200 4-year-old preschoolers: Mrs. Blackwell has a B.S. in Elementary Education with a minor in Child Development, and has 20 years of teaching experience, mostly at the preschool level. She is one of the developers of the Frontline Phonics curriculum. She will serve as a member of our Research Advisory Committee overseeing the project.

Dr. Ralph M. Kern, Professor of Education at Brigham Young University - Idaho: Dr. Kern was a former school principal and administrator with Nampa School District. A primary responsibility as a district administrator was school reform. He will serve as a member of our Research Advisory Committee overseeing the project.

Denise Ford of New Zealand, a trained educator and co-developer of the Reading Master curriculum: Has provided consulting services to numerous schools and preschools, helping children to read as early as age 2.

Dr. Gary D. Jones, Director of Curriculum and Assessment for Bonneville School District, Idaho Falls, ID: Dr. Jones directs the school district’s curriculum and assessment activities, implements levels testing, constructs and implements standards-based curriculum, serves as district test coordinator, trains administrators and teachers in assessment and test analysis, analyzes test data, constructs student learning profiles, evaluates district education programs, and manages department budget of $1.2M. He will also serve as a member of our Research Advisory Committee overseeing the project.

The Benton Franklin Community Action Committee, based in Pasco, Wash., is a certified 501C3 private non-profit agency established in 1966 to assist low-income families and individuals to achieve self-sufficiency. BFCAC is debt-free and provides services under 42 different contracts valued at $8.5 million a year, including numerous child care-related programs. Through these programs, BFCAC maintains an ongoing working relationship with hundreds of preschools and child-care providers, including nearly 600 in Benton and Franklin Counties, plus hundreds more in other counties covering most of Eastern Washington where BFCAC administers the Child Care Micro-Loan, Nutrition and Seasonal Child Care Subsidy Program.

Other child care-related programs include the Homeless Child Care Program, the Child Care Block Grant Resource and Referral Program, the Dependent Child Care Program, the Child and Adult Care Food Program, the Nutrition Incentive Program, the Healthy Child Care Project, the Infant Care Project, the DASA and STARS Child Care Provider Training, Women Helping Women Non-Traditional Child Care Program, a Child Care Micro Loan Program, Community Jobs Program, and the Division of Child Care Early Learning Program. BFCAC and its 42 employees are well positioned to ensure that this PCER project is carried out successfully.

Meanwhile, both the Treasure Valley Reading Foundation and the International Education Institute essentially spun off from the National Children’s Reading Foundation. The NCRF has created one of the major reform movements that eventually led to President Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation. State agencies and top school districts in Texas, Washington, Idaho, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Hawaii and other states around the country have been greatly influenced by the foundation’s book, "The 90% Reading Goal," which provides basic strategies and support for at least 90% of all children learning to read at grade level by fourth grade. The book emphasizes the importance of assessment and accountability, as well as the vital role of parents before and after children begin school. The book argues that the "90% reading goal" must be a national standard as important and as visionary as President Kennedy’s declaration that we would put a man on the moon in the 1960s. Certainly President Bush shares that vision and has made it the focus of his presidency.

The Treasure Valley Reading Foundation is a regional affiliate of the NCRF, and is funded primarily by allied school districts. The TVRF helps the districts rally the entire community – media, parents, schools and social agencies -- behind the 90% goal.

The Early Reading Pilot Project, which is providing the initial scientific evaluation of Frontline Phonics and Reading Master in a classroom setting, was launched by Ken Harvey while serving as Managing Director of the National Children’s Reading Foundation. But when it became clear that the NCRF Board of Directors wanted to maintain focus on the issues addressed by its book rather than evaluate or recommend specific classroom curricula, Reading Foundation co-founder Lynn Fielding, a tax/business lawyer, helped Ken establish the International Education Institute.

The strengths of BFCAC, TVRF and IEI complement one another in providing an ideal team to carry out the Early Reading Comprehension Research Project. BFCAC offers strong ties with child-care providers throughout Eastern Washington and a successful track record administering millions of dollars in federal child care-related grants. TVRF provides strong research and assessment oversight, offering not only an early childhood education specialist but also a strong research advisory committee. And, finally, IEI’s Ken Harvey offers strong experience in education, including many years working with cutting-edge curricula. He combines Project Management with the commitment and vision he demonstrated by developing the Early Reading Pilot Project without outside funding. His experience recruiting and coordinating kindergartens and preschools in the Pilot Project is invaluable as he now oversees the use of the same curricula by schools in this proposed project. An expanded listing covering the division of duties among the partnering agencies is included in the Budget Narrative.

Above  is our proposed budget, followed by an item-by-item narrative justification:

In Year 1, this experimental research project will involve a total of 600 students in 27 classrooms at 10 schools in four western states. In Year 2, the number of students will increase to 900. This large number of students certainly warrants a budget close to the maximum allowed.

The Personnel and Fringe Benefits categories only cover the employees at the Benton Franklin Community Action Committee who are involved in the project. As indicated in the chart below, the BFCAC staff will put in about 1,200 hours a year.

All other wages are reflected under the Contractual category, which includes Project Director Ken Harvey, his part-time secretary, and the Reading Foundation staff, including Scott McDonald, ECE specialist Michelle Benitez and four additional evaluators hired on a seasonal basis.

Below is a chart reflecting estimated project hours, including the contracted personnel:

Below is the organization division of labor among the BFCAC, IEI and TVRF:

Project Director Ken Harvey and his IEI staff will:

Judith Gidley, BFCAC Executive Director, Jennifer Martinez-Tyndell, BFCAC’s Training, Education and Early Learning Director, and other BFCAC staff will:

Scott McDonald, TVRF Executive Director; ECE specialist Michelle Benitez and TVRF associates will:

Equipment is the category where we placed nearly $100,000 in computers and other educational equipment to be donated in Year 1 to the schools as enticement for agreeing to participate in this research project and for signing contracts committing themselves to maintain fidelity to the assigned curricula. In addition there is $15,000 budgeted for Years 2 and 3 for staff equipment and to maintain the donated classroom computers.

The Supplies category includes the curricula purchased for use by students in the various experimental treatments. In Year 1, one Frontline Phonics kit will be purchased for each of the 400 students in Treatments 2 and 3 at a cost of $350 per kit ($140,000 total). For Years 2 and 3 another 200 kits will need to be purchased at a cost of $70,000. Reading Master kits valued at $200 per student will have to be purchased in Year 1 for use by the 200 students in Treatment 3 ($40,000 total), and in Years 2 and 3, another 100 kits will need to be purchased ($20,000 total). There will also need to be purchased one set of the complete series of Doman’s Picture Dictionaries for each class, costing about $600 per Treatment 3 classroom (up to $30,000 total during the three years).

The cost per student involved in this 3-year project is less than $1,700 – far less, I am sure, than in any other proposal you may approve. But more important is the relatively low cost for a project that can have such great national impact. Consider just three of the questions we are considering:

1. Can children of diverse ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds learn to read at second-grade level before they enter first grade without hindering socio-emotional and other important childhood development?
2. Will the use of curricula that acquaints children with a wide range of concepts and reading vocabulary, such as Reading Master and Doman’s Picture Dictionary CD-ROMs, help develop greater comprehension across the ethnic and socio-economic spectrum of students?
3. Will the anticipated improvement in comprehension achieved by Treatment 3 significantly exceed the improvement shown in decoding skills – verifying the value of acquainting young children with a little knowledge about a broad range of concepts, and thereby enhancing the development of their neural network.

Considering the tremendous significance of just these questions, this research could yield immediate and significant impact on education across the country, help close the achievement gap, and help achieve the revolutionary mandates of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind program. Yet from the evidence we are already gathering in our Early Reading Pilot Project, we feel our projections are conservative.

PO Box 48350

Olympia, WA 98504

(360) 725-2800

PO Box 15940

Seattle, WA 98115-0940

(206) 527-7336

1334 Jadwin

Richland, WA 99352

(509) 943-1040

Old Capital Building

PO Box 47200

Olympia, WA 98504-7200

(360) 753-3580

1009 Cottage St. SE

PO Box 45445

Olympia, WA 98503-5445

(360) 413-3318

Nancy Lotze, Curriculum Director (nlotze@selkirk.k12.wa.us)

509 442 3725

P.O. Box 129, Metaline Falls, WA 99153

Bob Nolan, Superintendent (bnolan@wilsoncreek.org)

509 345 2541

Dorothy Fanning, Principal (fanndo@ksd.org)

Debbie Clayton (clayde@ksd.org)

Bonnie Moorhouse (moorbo@ksd.org)

509 585 3371

2514 W. Fourth, Kennewick, WA 99336

Rebecca Fountain (rebecca.fountain@kelso.wednet.edu)

Butler Acres Elementary (1609 Burcham Street, Kelso, WA 98626)

1609 Burcham Street, Kelso ,WA 98626

Kari Arlint (kari.arlint@kelso.wednet.edu)

Rose Valley Elementary

Raeanne Bailor, K-8 Reading Specialist (rbailor@entiatschools.org)

1817 Valley Vue Rd., Wenatchee, WA 98801

509 663 5417

Paul Rumburg Elementary

509 784 5091

Rich Apperson, Superintendent (rapperson@boistfort.k12.wa.us)

Kathy Gjelten (kgjelten@boistfort.k12.wa.us)

Cindy Dykstra (cdykstra@boistfort.wednet.edu)

360-245-3343

983 Boistfort Rd, Curtis, WA 98538

Jon Lant, President (jlant@frontlinephonics.com)

P.O. Box 970280, Orem UT 84097-0280

801-225-2255

Gary D. Jones, Director of Curriculum & Assessment

208-525-4400

3497 N. Ammon Rd., Idaho Falls, ID 83401

Ralph M. Kern, Professor of Education (kern4@byui.edu)

208-496-1589

HIN 243, Rexburg, ID 83460

208 465-0825

607 11th Avenue South, Nampa, ID 83651