The report, Mind the Other Gap! The Growing Excellence Gap in K-12 Education, concludes that closing the “excellence gap” and making excellence a focus needs to become a national priority.

The goal of guaranteeing that all pupils will have the opportunity to reach their academic potential is called into question, says the report, if educational policies assist only struggling students, while the needs of others, such as high-achieving students, are not addressed.

Appropriate interventions need to be identified and researched for their effectiveness. Finding effective, easy-to-use strategies to differentiate classroom instruction will be part of the solution to this problem.

Merit’s process writing programs have a strong track record of helping students with a wide span of abilities reach their academic potential.

Paragraph Punch and Essay Punch are self-paced, self-advancing writing tutorials. Students receive built-in tips and step-by-step suggestions while they work.

Struggling students benefit greatly from the personalized and intensive support in the Punch writing programs.

Advanced pupils are engaged through suggestions for strengthening communication skills, such as encouraging them to add more ideas on a topic and giving them opportunities to edit, revise, and refine their writing.

When writing with the Punch programs, students of a wide range of abilities are able to experience success.

The complete Mind the Gap report is on the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy web site.

The study, an interim report, from the University of Coventry, was based on a sample of 63 children in England, between the ages of 8 to 12.

“If we are seeing a decline in literacy standards among young children, it is in spite of text messaging not because of it,” researcher Clare Wood. The use of text language “was actually driving the development of phonological awareness and reading skill in children,” she said.

Although this is just an interim report, we find these conclusions somewhat misleading.

Spelling and word recognition are just one aspect of literacy. Practicing language skills is valuable, however most text messages are short comments or responses.

Today’s students, more than ever, need to learn to organize their ideas, make coherent arguments, and present information in ways that are clear and concise.

Students who need help with their literacy skills benefit immeasurably from personalized and intensive support. This is where educational software programs like Paragraph Punch and Essay Punch fit in.

When writing with the Punch programs students are guided step-by-step through the writing process. They receive individualized help and feedback throughout. Students of a wide range of abilities are able to experience success.

Researchers Marcel Just and Timothy Keller say that after just six months of intensive remedial reading instruction, children who had been poor readers were not only able to improve their skills, but grew new brain matter.

To arrive at this conclusion, the researchers first scanned the brains of students with a wide range of academic abilities.

The group of the poor readers enrolled in an intensive remedial reading program showed improved reading as well as changes in their connecting tissue.

The follow-up scans also showed that some white-matter connections in the struggling students’ brains became just as strong as those of students in the top reading group.

White matter gets its name from the fatty myelin sheaths that encase the nerve fibers that connect one “thinking” area of the brain with another. It makes up half the brain’s volume.

According to Dr. Just, the Carnegie Mellon study cements the idea that learning can actually change the physical contours of the brain.

Merit Software users have been saying for almost twenty-five years that intensive reading assistance can make a significant difference in the helping struggling readers make lasting gains.

Reading comprehension software programs such as those produced by Merit help make intensive reading assistance more effective by breaking passages down into understandable parts for students.

This process helps struggling readers learn to respond to essential questions, determine the main idea of a passage, identify the sequence of details, and connect ideas and recognize themes in texts.

Click here to read more about the Carnegie Mellon study.

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.

The research shows that if students make errors while trying answer questions, they remember the information better than in a control condition in which they simply study the information.

This study helps explain why teachers and students find Merit Software to be extremely effective as a curriculum supplement.

The design of Merit learning programs incorporates a variety of features that help students figure out answers to questions.

In particular, in Merit’s Basic English Fitness, Grammar Fitness and Vocabulary Fitness students learn essential English language concepts by finding common errors in sentences.

The software gives students multiple opportunities through different scenarios to answer questions. Built-in hints and tips help students while they work. In most questions learners are given an explanation to their answer, whether their response is right or wrong.

Furthermore, the Fitness programs are self-paced, and self-advancing. The programs progressively place students in the appropriate level of challenge.

The U.S. education system has had many successes in improving the reading skills of younger children, say the authors. However, the evidence is clear that gains fade as students move through the middle grades.

Time to Act calls for U.S. school administrators to focus their efforts towards improving reading and writing skills in late elementary, middle, and high school grades, and teach these skills within the context of specific subject areas.

According to the report, “Beyond grade 3, adolescent learners in our schools must decipher more complex passages, synthesize information at a higher level, and learn to form independent conclusions based on evidence.” 

Merit reading and writing programs  have a strong track record of improving the reading and writing skills of upper elementary and secondary pupils.

Merit scaffolds the learning process, provides contextual feedback, and continuously reinforces knowledge as students work through lessons at their own pace. The software is intuitive, easy to use, and requires minimal training.

Teachers love using Merit, and built-in tracking allows them to follow students’ progress and intervene when a student is having trouble.

Merit provides insights gained from the many instructors who have used the materials with a variety of types of pupils. Teachers are not left on their own when determining the best ways to use the software with learners.

Still too many high school graduates cannot adequately perform some of the essential college-ready skills in English, writing, reading, mathematics, and/or science, according to a new report from the publishers of the ACT college entrance exam.

In writing, for example, approximately 40 percent of 2009 ACT-tested graduates were not able to use the correct adverb or adjective form in a sentence, use the correct preposition in a phrase, or make sure that the subject and verb agree in a sentence.

In reading, 30 percent of the graduates were unable to evaluate the contribution that significant details make to the text as a whole.

And, in math, nearly 40 percent of the 2009 graduates could not solve multi-step problems involving fractions and percentages.

ACT’s research shows these types of skills are needed by students to be ready for college and work.

Merit Software has been used successfully in many college preparation programs to help teach each of these skills.