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After the reading level of mothers, neighborhood income level was the next largest determinant of children’s academic achievement, observed analysts in a study funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and published in a recent edition of Demography.

The researchers undertook the study to isolate factors contributing to the disparity in academic achievement observed between children in low-income and affluent neighborhoods.

Merit Software reading programs have long been used by both adults and by children in late elementary and secondary schools to improve basic literacy skills.

Merit programs are effective because they provide personal, immediate, descriptive feedback to learners. Users learn strategies that they can apply to subsequent after using the programs.

Additionally, Merit’s new web-based programs provide flexibility to deliver content at multiple locations to suit the needs of a variety of users.

Learn more about the study at the NIHCD web site.

In recent years, cognitive scientists have shown that a few simple techniques can reliably improve what matters most: how much a student learns from studying.

The following are among the techniques that have been shown to be effective for motivated students:

• Alternating study locations, which improves retention.

• Mixed-practice: that is, the idea that studying distinct but related skills in one sitting is more beneficial than focusing intensely on one skill at a time.

• Spacing study sessions, which improves later recall without requiring students to put in more overall effort.

• Tests and quizzes, which can be very effective tools for learning. The process of retrieving an idea improves later recall.

In addition, the article challenges the idea that “forgetting” is bad for learning. Forgetting offers opportunities to relearn something and to reinforce awareness and understanding of the subject.

This article also helps explain why Merit Software is such an effective learning tool for so many users – from school students to adult learners.  The design of Merit programs is aligned with all of the cognitive techniques outlined in the article and facilitates maximum learning.

• Merit programs provide both focused and mixed practice of a variety of related skills.

• The programs are organized with logical stopping points. Progress monitoring enables students to stop and then resume working on skills over several sessions.

• Students are given many opportunities to apply and reinforce their learning with Merit. If students forget a skill or need to refresh their knowledge of a skill, the programs will direct them to suitable activities to relearn it.

• Merit’s learning platforms enable students to alternate their study locations with ease. Networked versions let students log on to different computers in the lab or classroom. The online versions may be accessed anywhere, anytime.

 
Learn more about Merit Software at www.meritsoftware.com

Read “Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits”.

According to Carolyn Reicher, Adult Literacy and Learning Advocate for the Calgary Public Library, approximately 40 percent of adults in the province of Alberta do not have the literacy skills they need to reach their full employment potential in a knowledge-based economy.

“It’s not that these individuals can’t read at all, but they may not be able to read well enough to follow instructions in an e-mail from their boss, navigate the Internet well enough to search for jobs, read a map, or understand a company’s safety manual,” she explained.

Not everyone is convinced employers should be asked to take on the role of offering literacy programs.

“Taxpayers spend billions of dollars each year on the kindergarten to Grade 12 education system and if students are coming out and they can’t read and write then that’s probably where more attention needs to be placed,” said Colin Craig, Canadian Taxpayers Federation prairie director. “School boards should explain why that’s happening.”

Merit Software programs have a strong track record of helping schools and tutors improve literacy skills of students. However, these programs have an equally long history of helping adults in workplace settings improve their literacy skills.

Merit is effective for adults because the programs tutor them while they work. Built-in feedback and automatic scoring help learners’ review and relearn concepts they may have once been taught, but have now forgotten.

In addition, the content of Merit programs is not juvenile in any way. The structure of the programs is designed so students can learn at their own pace and advance when they demonstrate readiness.

Read the complete Calgary Herald article here.

Core academic skills, employability skills, and technical skills are three broad sets of skills students need to be career ready, say the authors of the report.

Students need to be able to apply academics in context, and some academic skills need more attention and development. For example, employers often cite deficiencies in English and written communications, such as memos, letters, and complex technical reports. Too often, these skills are not emphasized in traditional academic classrooms.

Not only are these skills not emphasized, many students have been advanced to higher grades without grasping the fundamentals they need for the workplace.

To keep up with their classmates, lagging students need to build and refresh their skills. These students need a way to build skills that is self-paced, self-advancing, and provides practice, depth, support, and reinforcement.

Many educators have turned to Merit Software to help students learn and practice core academic skills they need for career readiness.

Specifically, programs like Business Letter Punch and Reading Strategies for Career Success provide opportunities to help students learn academics in context.

The review praised the program’s clear, simple, user-friendly features. Click here to watch it.

The goal of the new GED test is to help more students improve their college and career readiness.

The GED exam will not change for several years, and no firm date has been set to introduce the new test. This announcement supercedes prior announcements to change the exam in 2012.

Merit Software is an experienced publisher of GED prep materials. The company is going to update its products to meet the needs of GED students and instructors as the exam evolves.

Learn more about the upcoming changes to the GED test on the American Council of Education web site.

The report calls for policy makers to fund programs focused on the use of computer-assisted instruction because these programs have developed a strong track record of helping all adults become more effective in the workplace.

Adult literacy programs benefit from using computers because they help students meet their learning goals, provide effective self-study opportunities, satisfy the persistence and motivation of students, and facilitate access and connectivity. Computers also enable literacy programs to ramp up to scale.

Merit Software programs have a strong track record of using technology to help adult learners improve their literacy skills.

We endorse the findings in this report so that computer-assisted instruction can be used to help all students improve their college and career readiness.

 The full report is available on the CAAL web site.

All grants must help close the achievement gap, be scalable and sustainable, and be supported by prior evidence.

With these goals in mind, the DOE has said that there will be three tiers of grants. The Department has also outlined funding priorities.

Based on our review of the new guidance we believe there are opportunities for educators to use all Merit programs and remain within the i3 guidelines.

 All Merit products are researched based, and several of them have been subjected to rigorous studies. The research that has been conducted on Merit shows that it has been effective in closing the achievement gap.

To discuss ways to work with us and learn how to apply for the i3 grants using Merit programs, please contact us.

To learn more about the Investing in Innovation (i3) grants, click here.