Founding Story
Why Shouldn’t Every Student Have This Advantage?
A Message from Gary Smith…In 2006, I first heard about a remarkable clinical model for cognitive skills testing and training that had changed the life of my neighbor’s young daughter, Breanna, who had struggled for years to read and learn. The schools had no solution. The family sought help outside of the school system out of desperation.
The private cognitive skill testing had pinpointed the cause of her learning deficit, the intensive one-on-one training fixed the problem, and Breanna’s life was transformed.
When Breanna had finished the training, I offered to help her catch up in courses where she had fallen behind over the years, including math and physics. I was impressed by how ready she was to learn.
It struck me that the training she received should be made available to every student who needed it, but the cost put it far beyond the reach of most students. I decided to work with the developers of the clinical model to computerize the training and make it affordable. Why shouldn’t every student have the advantage Breanna had?
Around the same time, I learned about research that demonstrates most reading strucggles result from weak auditory processing skills – in particular, phonemic awareness.
Since an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, I decided to focus on helping make sure kids were ready to learn to read when they entered first-grade. CogRead LLC was born and new members joined the team.
We knew how important it was for students to reach the third-grade reading milestone. Yes, that’s the big year for standardized testing, but more importantly it’s the year the curriculum transitions from learning-to-read to reading-to-learn.
Research shows that students who are not reading at grade level by the conclusion of third grade are likely never to catch up and are more at risk of dropping out. That’s also when students with learning challenges begin making accommodations in earnest. These short-cuts and strategies can become traps over time and are difficult to unlearn. What would be the best way to reach all of these students?
Our implementation breakthrough came through the efforts of the experienced educators who led our first full-fledged demonstration project. As much as we learned about implementation from them, they in turn fully appreciated the foundational value of auditory processing skills for reading and the power of our online training program.
We recently discovered that building cognitive skills alone may not be sufficient. Success also requires building social emotional skills and making sure each student receives the proper reading instruction. We have teamed with Reading Kingdom to deliver fantastic reading instruction. Parents can do the program at home to ensure their child succeeds at reading.
With large class sizes, teachers are hard-pressed to do one-on-one what our software could accomplish by drilling carefully-staged and incrementally-adjusted challenges. Project PASS, the blended, well-focused, appropriately-targeted, cost-efficient, resource-optimized implementation strategy proved to be the key to unlocking reading potential, and its absence the reason other interventions had failed.
We are pleased, now, to be able to offer this program widely and help many more children overcome their struggles to read. We look forward to working with your school.
Sincerely,
Gary Smith, CEO
Why Shouldn’t Every Student Have This Advantage?
A Message from Gary Smith…In 2006, I first heard about a remarkable clinical model for cognitive skills testing and training that had changed the life of my neighbor’s young daughter, Breanna, who had struggled for years to read and learn. The schools had no solution. The family sought help outside of the school system out of desperation.
The private cognitive skill testing had pinpointed the cause of her learning deficit, the intensive one-on-one training fixed the problem, and Breanna’s life was transformed.
When Breanna had finished the training, I offered to help her catch up in courses where she had fallen behind over the years, including math and physics. I was impressed by how ready she was to learn.
It struck me that the training she received should be made available to every student who needed it, but the cost put it far beyond the reach of most students. I decided to work with the developers of the clinical model to computerize the training and make it affordable. Why shouldn’t every student have the advantage Breanna had?
Around the same time, I learned about research that demonstrates most reading strucggles result from weak auditory processing skills – in particular, phonemic awareness.
Since an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, I decided to focus on helping make sure kids were ready to learn to read when they entered first-grade. CogRead LLC was born and new members joined the team.
We knew how important it was for students to reach the third-grade reading milestone. Yes, that’s the big year for standardized testing, but more importantly it’s the year the curriculum transitions from learning-to-read to reading-to-learn.
Research shows that students who are not reading at grade level by the conclusion of third grade are likely never to catch up and are more at risk of dropping out. That’s also when students with learning challenges begin making accommodations in earnest. These short-cuts and strategies can become traps over time and are difficult to unlearn. What would be the best way to reach all of these students?
Our implementation breakthrough came through the efforts of the experienced educators who led our first full-fledged demonstration project. As much as we learned about implementation from them, they in turn fully appreciated the foundational value of auditory processing skills for reading and the power of our online training program.
We recently discovered that building cognitive skills alone may not be sufficient. Success also requires building social emotional skills and making sure each student receives the proper reading instruction. We have teamed with Reading Kingdom to deliver fantastic reading instruction. Parents can do the program at home to ensure their child succeeds at reading.
With large class sizes, teachers are hard-pressed to do one-on-one what our software could accomplish by drilling carefully-staged and incrementally-adjusted challenges. Project PASS, the blended, well-focused, appropriately-targeted, cost-efficient, resource-optimized implementation strategy proved to be the key to unlocking reading potential, and its absence the reason other interventions had failed.
We are pleased, now, to be able to offer this program widely and help many more children overcome their struggles to read. We look forward to working with your school.
Sincerely,
Gary Smith, CEO