Orlando, FL - As the state of Florida works to close the achievement gap between disadvantaged students, English Language Learners and their peers, schools are being held accountable for improving the reading achievement of each and every one of their students. A new study released today shows that Florida's kindergarten and first-grade students can achieve immediate and dramatic improvements in their reading skills - the foundation skills for all future success - using the Voyager Universal Literacy System® (ULS), a comprehensive, scientifically-based reading program. Evaluation of 813 kindergarten students in Orange County Public Schools shows that schools using the Voyager Universal Literacy System® for four months experienced:

• A dramatic increase in kindergarten students reading at or above grade level, from 30-percent to 63-percent.

• A marked decrease in kindergarten students identified as struggling readers, from 38-percent to 11-percent.

• A classroom literacy rate of 80-100-percent achieved by 33-percent of teachers after only four months.

Evaluation studies conducted during the 2001-2002 school year tracked kindergarten and first-grade students that used ULS in Orlando as well as in Augusta, GA, Birmingham, AL and Richmond, VA. In total, more than 9,000 kindergarten and first-grade students from 384 classrooms in 96 schools were measured. The results of these studies, reported by Greg Roberts, Ph.D., a program evaluator at Evaluation Research Services (ERS) in Austin, Texas, provide conclusive evidence that the Voyager Universal Literacy System® is highly effective in teaching children to read.

The full report is available here.

"The Voyager Universal Literacy System's® results are impressive," said Dr. Roberts. "In the school districts studied, a significantly greater percentage of this year's first and second graders have begun school reading at grade level, compared to last year."

Additionally, Dr. Steven Hecht from Florida Atlantic University and Dr. Joseph K. Torgesen from Florida State University conducted a control and treatment study of economically disadvantaged students in Orlando who used the Universal Literacy System.

Their independent evaluation found that kindergarten students using the Voyager System for a three-month period made significant gains over students not enrolled in the System. Voyager students showed up to a 22-percent advantage over the control group in literacy related skills that are crucial for the normal development of reading.

English Language Learner (ELL) students also achieved dramatic results using the Voyager System. The percentage of ELL students in Orlando identified as established readers jumped 33-percent in just four months. These reading gains prove that research-based reading instruction and curriculum can quickly and effectively close achievement gaps in inner-city schools.

Based on these proven gains, the Voyager Universal Literacy System® has been expanded in the 2002-2003 school year to include more than 1,300 kindergarten, first- and second-grade Orange County Public School students.

Teachers and administrators found the program easy to use and extremely beneficial to students.

"I have been teaching for 31 years and this is better than any program I have ever seen," said Linda Berry, kindergarten teacher at Lake Weston Elementary School. "Our original projections for children to be retained have decreased significantly, and there are more kids ready for first grade than ever before."

As a component of the Universal Literacy System, students who are still struggling at the end of the school year are automatically enrolled in an 80-hour summer reading intervention program. After participating in ULS's reading intervention component, 73-percent of Orange County students identified as struggling readers at the start of the program progressed in the summer and are no longer struggling. This intervention provides a safety net under every student in the Universal Literacy System to assure that no child is left behind.

Dr. Don Richardson, principal of Lake Weston Elementary School in Orlando, strongly recommends that fellow school leaders and reformers give the Voyager Universal Literacy System® serious consideration as they search for and evaluate scientifically-based literacy systems.

"The two hours a principal or curriculum specialist spends observing and experiencing Voyager will be time well spent," Dr. Richardson said. "They will see a literacy system in action that isn't the latest programmatic silver bullet to cure the literacy issue. The Universal Literacy System fundamentally changes adult paradigms and skill sets, and most importantly, changes kids' lives in meaningful and permanent ways."

The Voyager Universal Literacy System® curriculum is built upon the five essential reading skills for K-3 reading curriculum, identified in the 2002 No Child Left Behind law. ULS is the most comprehensive system of its kind, bringing together all of the elements schools need to immediately improve students' reading skills. The Voyager System is explicitly designed to achieve what research maintains is possible - 95-percent of children reading.

Created with teachers for teachers, the Universal Literacy System combines proven strategies to engage students and motivate them to succeed, including the use of small skill-alike groups to target and support instruction; extended time for struggling readers; progress monitoring to identify student needs early and customize instruction; explicit and systematic teaching of reading skills for students who need support; and literature-rich adventures that engage students in cooperative learning and build oral language, vocabulary and listening comprehension skills. Voyager's focus on professional development ensures that teachers are provided the necessary skills and support to effectively teach children to read.

Dr. Roberts' evaluation report and the published results of the study by Dr. Hecht and Dr. Torgesen are part of a series of quantitative and qualitative research studies evaluating the effectiveness of the Voyager Universal Literacy System®. Forty-one school districts throughout the nation have conducted independent studies on components of ULS, and five separate universities have participated in the evaluation of the overall program or of one of its major components. Additionally, in partnership with the Council of the Great City Schools, a four-year longitudinal study of ULS is being conducted in two large, urban districts by Westat, an independent research firm in Rockville, MD.

"Learning to read is the single most important factor determining a child's success in school and progress in life. Not to be a reader in the 21st century is as disabling to a child as any of the diseases against which we regularly inoculate. Today, the reality is that 70-percent of children in many high-poverty schools cannot read," said Randy Best, Chief Executive Officer, Voyager Expanded Learning. "The Voyager Universal Literacy System® has been thoroughly evaluated by numerous evaluators and researchers. The outcomes are consistent - ULS provides immediate and dramatic improvement in children's reading skills. Using ULS, schools can change the reality and dramatically improve the future for children who today are unable to read."

For the 2002-2003 school year, schools in several states including Texas, Georgia, New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania, as well as in Washington, DC, are implementing the Voyager Universal Literacy System®.

Voyager Expanded Learning is a provider of K-3 in-school reading programs, as well as K-8 reading intervention programs for school districts throughout the United States. Creating the first comprehensive reading system to consistently deliver success, the Voyager Universal Literacy System® ensures that students who begin using ULS in kindergarten will read at grade level by the end of third grade. Founded in 1994, Voyager has delivered extended-time reading and basic skills intervention programs to more than 1,000 school districts and large-scale reading programs in cities such as Houston, New York and Washington, DC, resulting in dramatically improved student performance. In partnership with institutions such as the Discovery Channel and the Smithsonian Institution, Voyager provides the most timely and powerful curricula available in the American classroom.