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For Immediate Release
Voyager Honors Cottonwood Public Schools
Superintendent with Voyager Founder's Award
Dallas, December 19, 2006− During a visit on November 9, 2006, to the corporate offices of Voyager Expanded Learning®, Cottonwood Public Schools Superintendent Teri Brecheen was presented with the Voyager Founder's Award for her outstanding leadership in helping students in her district achieve success.
The Founder's Award is given to educators who, through the implementation of Voyager programs in their districts, demonstrate heroism in winning the battle to achieve unprecedented, measurable gains in moving low-performing students and schools to standard, and substantially closing the achievement gap.
Ron Klausner, president of Voyager Expanded Learning, and Donna Wear, regional director, presented Ms. Brecheen with the award. The award included a donation of $1000 to Cottonwood's district foundation.
"I felt very shocked, humbled and honored to receive the Voyager Founder's Award. We believe wholeheartedly in this curriculum and the people at Voyager," says Ms. Brecheen. "For four consecutive years now our classes have excellent scores on the state tests in every subject area. We attribute much of this to the integration of science and social studies in Voyager," she says.
Cottonwood was also honored this past February with the Title I Academic Achievement Award for reading and math during the 2005-2006 school year. The Academic Achievement Award is given to Title I schools with student poverty rates of 75 percent or higher that either:
- Exceed the state's Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standard in mathematics and/or reading (as calculated by the scores of all students tests) for the last two consecutive school years, or
- Make the most gains in mathematics and/or reading achievement (as calculated by the scores of all students tested) from the 2003–2004 school year to the 2004–2005 school year.
Cottonwood was one of the top five Oklahoma schools in these categories to exceed the No Child Left Behind Adequate Yearly Progress requirements in both reading and math for two consecutive years. In fact, the school has exceeded the AYP requirements for three school years in a row, and also received the Title I Academic Achievement Award in 2005.
Cottonwood implements the Voyager Universal Literacy System® as its core reading program and Voyager Passport™ for reading intervention. The district recently added Voyager's math intervention program, Vmath®.
The Founder's Award is given in honor of Voyager co-founder and former vice-chairman Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, U.S. Navy (ret.). One of the nation's true heroes and patriots, Admiral Hayward was the driving force behind Voyager's growth as a mission-driven company dedicated to making a difference in reading for millions of children. Admiral Hayward remains the guardian of Voyager's commitment to quality educational programs and services that deliver unprecedented results for historically low-performing students, schools, and districts. It is in his honor and in recognition of his efforts that the Voyager Founder's Award is presented to educators responsible for initiating change and increasing student achievement.
About Voyager Expanded Learning
Voyager Expanded Learning provides core, intervention and supplemental reading programs, as well as math intervention and ongoing professional development programs for school districts throughout the United States. Founded in 1994, Voyager has delivered extended-time reading and basic skills intervention programs as well as large-scale reading programs to more than 900 school districts in cities such as Dallas, Phoenix, New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, resulting in dramatically improved student performance. Voyager Expanded Learning, Inc. is part of ProQuest Education, a business segment of ProQuest Company, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. For more information, please visit www.voyagerlearning.com or call 1-888-399-1995.
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