About Waterford Institute
Waterford Institute is a nonprofit research center dedicated to providing every child with the finest education, through the development of high-quality educational models, programs, and software.
Waterford was founded by Dr. Dustin Heuston more than 30 years ago in New York City. Soon thereafter, Dr. Heuston moved the Institute to Utah where its headquarters are now in Salt Lake City.
As an educator, Dr. Heuston’s goal is to provide both educational excellence and equity to all children through harnessing the power of new technologies in order to supplement the school experience. Following that vision, Waterford has been a pioneer in interactive training using computers and videodisks. Waterford built the first educational videodisk in history for McGraw Hill as well as the first educational videodisk for the National Science Foundation.
For over 30 years, Waterford has invested more than $135 million in its software and programs. Today, Waterford is the nation’s leader in pre-K–2 software for reading and math and science programs, and a half million children across the United States use Waterford programs.
Waterford Institute founded the Waterford School located in Sandy, Utah, over 25 years ago. The school is independent and is supported by parent tuitions. It is located on 45 acres and has approximately 1,000 students enrolled from preschool through high school. The school has the highest scores in the state and serves as a platform for Waterford to test its products.
Both the School and the Institute have budgets of approximately $12 million per year, giving the combined operation a budget of $24 million.
Major Accomplishments
| 1976 | Waterford Institute, Inc. founded in New York City. |
| 1977 | Waterford Institute, Inc. moves to Utah. |
| 1978 | Pioneered interactive training using computers and videodisks. Used a grant from the National Science Foundation to produce the world’s first educational videodisk, The Development of Living Things. Received contracts from the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, and various industrial clients. |
| 1980 | Began developing the Waterford School model. |
| 1989–1993 | Implemented a test model using serious computer-assisted materials in several New York City public schools as part of the New York City Public Schools Integrated Systems Project. Foundations, civic leaders, and the New York City system raised over $10,000,000 for the project. The data suggested (1) that it was imperative to work with the youngest children, as early as preschool and into Kindergarten; (2) that the software need not be adapted to foreign languages; in fact it was preferable to have the children work directly on the software in English to accelerate their learning; (3) that the reading software needed by the market would have to be much richer and deeper than previously thought; and (4) usage is the key to success, but only about 15 minutes a day is needed (2700 minutes a school year). |
| 1991 | Began development of the Waterford Early Reading Program™ to develop the first third-generation reading program to fit the research findings from the NYC experiment. |
| 1992 | Introduced Mental Math Games Classroom Edition, a software package that increased students’ speed and accuracy in recalling basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts. |
| 1992 | Received Technology and Learning’s 1992 Award of Excellence for Mental Math Games (precursor to Waterford Early Math and Science™). |
| 1994 | Mental Math Games received a Codie Award from the Software & Information Industry Association for Best Elementary Education Program. |
| 1995 | Launched Waterford Early Reading Program™. Level One was installed statewide in Idaho Kindergarten classrooms. |
| 1995 | Initiated development of Waterford Early Math and Science™. |
| 1996 | Signed a distribution agreement for the United States with Addison Wesley Longman which was owned by Pearson, the world’s largest educational publisher. |
| 1996 | Selected by Microsoft—after a nationwide evaluation of available education software—to provide an education product for Microsoft’s software offerings. |
| 1997 | Released Waterford Early Reading Program™ Level Two (beginning reading). |
| 1998 | Released Waterford Early Reading Program™ Level Three (fluent reading). |
| 1999 | Established the Waterford Family Literacy Program, a multi-site community project focused on empowering families with fundamental literacy skills. |
| 2000 | Released Waterford Early Math and Science™ Level One. |
| 2002 | Began planning for first fourth-generation reading program, Central Park™. |
| 2004 | Released Waterford Early Math and Science™ Level Two and Level Three. |
| 2005 | Waterford Early Math and Science™ receives TechLearning Awards of Excellence for Best Educational Software. |
| 2006 | Developed Rusty and Rosy Learn with Me™, a home-based platform for the Waterford Early Reading Program™ and Waterford Early Math and Science™. |
| 2006 | Converted Waterford Early Reading Program™ from C++ to Java to match Waterford Early Math and Science™ management and architecture (release 4.0). |
| 2007 | Released Rusty and Rosy Learn with Me™ in Canada. |
| 2008 | Released Waterford Assessments of Core Skills™ (adaptive reading test for young children). |
| 2008 | Released Camp Consonant™ (multi-sensory reading intervention program). |
| 2008 | Waterford Early Reading Program™ received a Codie Award from the Software & Information Industry Association for Best Course/Classroom Management Solution and Waterford Early Math and Science™ received a Codie Award for Best Science Instructional Solution. |
