Featured Research Studies
This multi-year study, started in 1996, implemented Waterford Early Learning Program (WERP) in a number of schools across the Dallas ISD. After a one-year trial with 668 kindergartners, highly significant differences (p<0.001) were found in favor of the students using the Waterford program. Markedly, the Dallas study found that the lowest-performing students benefited from WERP instruction most: the greatest achievement gains, an average of 51.2 percent, were found among this group. A statistically significant correlation was also found (r= .79, p<.01) between total time spent using the software and the average pre-test to post-test gain.
Glenridge Elementary chose the Waterford Early Learning Program (WERP) program as part of a Challenge School grant from the Maryland Department of Education; results were recorded and analyzed by the independent firm Research, Assessment, & Measurement, Inc. After a one-year implementation of the software (1996–1997), kindergarten students at Glenridge significantly outperformed comparison classes in reading, concepts about print, rhyming words, and learning songs and nursery rhymes; overall growth from pre- to post-test scores was 309 percent. When disaggregated by primary home language, it was again found that ESL students benefited even more from the Waterford software, with a test-score percentage increase of over 600 percent.
In 1998, Waterford Early Learning Program (WERP) was implemented in nearly every kindergarten classroom in the state of Idaho. Of those using Waterford, eight districts were selected as a representative sample for a three-year study. Each year, student performance was tracked relative to a historical control group. The results were measured using a kindergarten inventory created by Dr. Marilyn Adams and Dr. Philip B. Gough.
This study produced some of the most dramatic gains ever recorded for children in the lower third that used the program for 15 minutes a day. Specifically, a .25 effect size means that a program is beginning to have some impact. A .5 is a medium effect size, and a .7 is a large effect size. The Waterford program demonstrated a 1.2 effect size for children in Idaho who had previously scored in the lowest third on initial tests.
Dr. Herbert J. Walberg was hired by the J. A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation Board of Directors to report the facts of the Idaho study. In his report to the foundation, Walberg explained that “the effects of the Waterford program are impressive . . . the Waterford program appears spectacularly effective for beginning readers who initially scored in the lower third of the group when they began to read.”
Dr. Steven Hecht and Dr. Linda Close of the Division of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University, reported their findings after investigating the effects of Waterford Early Reading Program Level One on 42 kindergarten students of low socioeconomic status and concluded: “The amount of time that children used Waterford Early Reading Program Level One (WERP) was correlated with all post-test measures of emergent literacy skills. Importantly, intervention time was uniquely associated with growth in phonemic awareness skills, even while controlling for initial levels of phonemic awareness, letter knowledge, invented spelling, vocabulary knowledge, and print concepts. Similarly, the amount of time using Waterford Early Reading Program Level One was also uniquely related to growth in invented spelling, letter knowledge, and print concepts.”
An Indiana school implemented Waterford Early Reading Program (WERP) in its kindergarten classes to work in conjunction with existing literacy instruction. Researchers used test scores from three points during the trial year (beginning, middle, end) to measure the acquisition of literacy skills—including phonological awareness, an important predictor of later reading success—and compared the results with those of a school which had not implemented the program. Teachers in both schools, as participants in the Intentional Reading Project (IRP), were engaged in ongoing professional development activities, and both schools received various other resources throughout the year to support effective literacy instruction. Implementation of the Waterford Program was the principal curricular difference. Despite no significant differences in pre-test scores, students using WERP experienced a faster acquisition of phonological awareness skills than students who did not (Figure 2). The researchers go on to suggest that the program will yield its best results when coordinated with a school’s existing curriculum.
As a follow-up to the previous study, researchers examined the effect of Waterford Early Learning Program (WERP) on reading achievement gains during the first-grade year. Again, students who used the software experienced significantly greater reading skill gains on standardized testing—in this case the CTBS Terra Nova assessment—than the comparison group, (F (1, 91) = 10.61, p < .002, η2 = .10). Furthermore, the researchers found that it was the lowest-performing students who benefited most from the program, dramatically outperforming the low-performing comparison group, F (1, 21) = 15.67, p < .001, η2 = .43. By the end of the first-grade year, the researchers note, the test scores of this “at-risk” group were equivalent to those of the moderate-performing students in the comparison. classes.
Figure 2. Kindergarten students’ phonological awareness growth with and without access to Waterford Early Reading Program (adapted from Cassady & Smith, 2003)
Waterford Early Reading Program (WERP) was implemented in a sample group of three pre-kindergarten classes in the Merced City School District, California. As in the first Cassady and Smith study (2003), the program was implemented in conjunction with a preexisting curriculum; teachers in both the treatment and comparison groups utilized Houghton Mifflin’s Where Bright Futures Begin. Children who used the Waterford software gained an early advantage in phonological awareness skills and outperformed the comparison (non-program) group on the MCSD phonological awareness assessment to a statistically significant degree. The researchers also note an enthusiastic response from educators in the survey group: all three teachers who used the software indicated that they would do so again, and school administrators expressed excitement for WERP’s performance-tracking functions and the level of student engagement.
For this study, educators implemented the Waterford Early Reading Program (WERP) in fifteen kindergarten classes from the Tucson Unified School District, Arizona; the results showed that the group of students who used WERP outperformed an equally-sized comparison group on pre- to post-test gains. The researchers then disaggregated the data by school, gender, ethnicity, primary home language, and other measures. WERP was found particularly effective for students whose home language was Spanish or who were classified as English language learners; these groups posted greater gains than the English home language and English-proficient groups, respectively, in the comparison schools. The researchers also note that the effectiveness of the software increases with increased usage: “The greater the use of WERP content, the greater the reading gains.” The study also includes the finding that after 1,100 minutes of using the WERP, student scores began to accelerate against the controls and continued to accelerate up through 4,000 minutes without showing any sign of leveling off.
The Tucson Unified School District implemented Waterford Early Math and Science (WEMS) in five largely Hispanic kindergarten classes during the 2005–2006 school-year; researchers compared performance gains in math and environment (science) assessments to those of a control group. Students using WEMS outperformed their non-treatment counterparts to a statistically significant degree. Bilingual children who spoke Spanish as a home language as well as English language learner (ELL) groups experienced particularly dramatic gains while using WEMS; in fact, the Spanish home language and ELL treatment groups scored above the national mean on both the math and environment tests.
