Case Study: Preschoolers
Out-Perform Kindergartners
Frontline Reading Program was developed over the course of 17 years by educators who used and tested Frontline methods in their classrooms. Frontline Reading Program is the result of teaching thousands of children to read, and contains what teachers found to be the most fun and successful teaching tools. The program was piloted in Learning Dynamics, a preschool that has now used Frontline Reading Program for well over a decade. Learning Dynamics continues to have success using the Frontline Reading Program for their reading instruction exclusively. The following case study was submitted by Ken Harvey, president of the International Education Institute in Kennewick, Washington, who compared reading scores for several kindergartens in Kennewick School District with reading scores for students in the Learning Dynamics Preschool.
On June 7 2001, five other educators and I administered Kennewick’s kindergarten and DRA first grade tests on a random sampling of Learning Dynamics preschoolers. The 19 students tested were randomly selected from the Learning Dynamics’ approximately 115 6-hour-per-week preschoolers. The preschool also has about that many 4-hour-a-week preschoolers, but we specifically requested the 6-hour group, since that would more closely approximate 15-hour-a-week kindergartens.
In the Kennewick School District’s own kindergarten test – which includes letter recognition, letter sounds, beginning word sounds, and rhyming – the preschool graduates outperformed Kennewick’s outgoing kindergartners, as shown below.
SCHOOL ENTERING SCORE FINAL SCORE
Canyon View 40.13 89.64
Edison 27.01 82.43
Vista 36.91 96.47
Westgate 28.21 93.86
KENN.
KINDERGARTEN
AVERAGE
33.07
90.60
LEARNING
DYNAMICS
PRESCHOOLERS AVE. n/a
95.42
The only individual school whose end-of-year kindergartners outperformed Learning Dynamics’ end-of-year preschoolers was Vista Elementary, a national award-winning school.
Additionally, we administered the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) test, used on Kennewick first-graders. There are 11 books in the first-grade DRA test, each representing a gradual increase in reading ability from first month through the ninth month. The Learning Dynamics preschoolers could read – with 90 percent proficiency – through Book 6 (actually 6.21) on the average, slightly above the half-way point in the test first-grade reading skills.
The Learning Dynamics preschoolers only attend class a maximum of 6 hours a week, of which less than 2 hours is spent on the reading curriculum. Most kindergarteners in the US are in school approximately 15 hours per week, of which at least 5 hours can be spent on reading-related curriculum. So, if kindergartners could spend 2-3 times as much classroom time on the Frontline curriculum and could achieve only the same level of reading as the Learning Dynamics preschoolers, that would still have a tremendous impact on reading levels in US public schools.
Since that time, several schools in Washington have been purchasing Frontline Reading Program and have seen increases in their reading scores across the board. One reading specialist in Entiat, WA, said,
"I am currently testing our Kindergarten students with the Kennewick Kindergarten Test and Reading Level Assessment that tests decoding skills. In the PM class, I have one at a grade level of 3.7 and another at 2.5, and I’m just getting started! We are thrilled with the program and its results."