Nov 21, 2002

BY JASON WERMERS
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

Pupils at 10 Richmond elementary schools have posted dramatic gains in reading skills in one year, and they have something in common - the Voyager Universal Literacy System®.

"It's a good program for our kids because they can do group work together, learn a lot of socialization skills," said Melanie Agee-Wade, a kindergarten teacher at Norrell Elementary School.

Voyager's Universal Literacy System® is a program designed to help children who are below-average readers to catch up with their peers. It relies heavily on phonics, which teaches pupils how to sound out letters.

Agee-Wade's pupils posted bigger gains on Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening than before her class participated in the program. The screening, known as PALS, is a standard reading test given to pupils in kindergarten through third grade at the beginning and end of each school year.

She attributes the difference to Voyager.

So does Yvonne W. Brandon, Richmond's associate superintendent for instruction and accountability.

Brandon said the 10 elementary schools that used Voyager last year had higher mean PALS scores in kindergarten and first grade than did the four traditionally higher-performing schools - Fisher, Fox, Munford and Southampton - that did not use Voyager.

"It's showing magnificent gains for us, and it has also gotten our teachers excited," Brandon said. "We had some teachers who were reluctant to do it at first, and they are now some of our biggest fans."

Voyager Expanded Learning is a company based in Dallas that produces programs designed to help children pick up basic skills, like reading and math, while studying different themes, such as nature or ancient Egypt.

Richmond last year purchased the program for about $317,000 for roughly 1,300 kindergarten and first-grade pupils, largely based on Voyager's guarantee that pupils who complete it will read on grade level by the end of third grade. Voyager will provide free extra help for pupils who do not meet this goal.

Last week, Voyager released results of its own literacy tests from Richmond and the other three school divisions - Birmingham, Ala.; Richmond County, Ga.; and Orange County, Fla. - that signed up for the program.

This year, 21 school divisions are participating, said Jeri Nowakowski, Voyager's executive vice president in charge of curriculum and evaluation.

Here are the numbers from the 10 Richmond schools using the program:

• First-graders reading on grade level - 61 percent, up from 33 percent a year earlier;
• Kindergartners prepared to learn to read in first grade - 73 percent, up from 57 percent.

Agee-Wade said her kindergarten class does Voyager instruction two hours a day.

During that time, the pupils are divided into groups who work at stations and rotate - a game centered around letters, an activity involving letter cards and one that has children putting pictures of a story together in sequence.

The pupils run each of these activities, leaving Agee-Wade free to teach five or six pupils at a time, instead of the entire class.

Brandon said, "It empowers the students and the teachers because the teachers are using strategies - that perhaps they have used in isolation - now at the same time."

Richmond has added four elementary schools to the Voyager program this year: Chimborazo, Fairfield Court, Mason and Whitcomb Court. The program also has been expanded to include second-graders - those who went through the program as first-graders.

Brandon, the associate superintendent, said that brings the number of pupils in Voyager to about 2,400, excluding Mason, which just recently entered the program thanks to a corporate grant.

At a cost of about $244 per pupil, the division will pay nearly $600,000 for the program this year.

Greg Roberts, a program evaluator at Evaluation Research Services in Austin, Texas, said results in Richmond and other school systems that have adopted Voyager show the program is "highly effective in teaching children to read."

Voyager commissioned Roberts to evaluate the program. Roberts cited results of Voyager's pre-and post-tests, which for first-graders measure pupils' proficiency in naming letters, reading sentences and identifying letter sounds.

"The Voyager Universal Literacy System's® results are impressive," Roberts said. "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."