February 6, 2000
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Dawn Sheffey monitors Tiffany Dunning's progress in the Fast ForWord program at Franklin Elementary School. Officials described the program as "glasses for the ears."

By EVAN BRANDT
Mercury Staff Writer

POTTSTOWN - Imagine you are a school district superintendent who has announced an ambitious and potentially controversial program to institute tough national standards in your semi-urban school district. Now imagine that you've discovered a computer learning program which has the potential to not only divert many students from costly special education programs, but also could make them better students and more likely to achieve those standards.

Pottstown Schools Superintendent Frank Heifer need not draw on imagination to consider these scenarios. For the past several months, the district has been testing a program called Fast ForWord which, judging by initial results, is just short of phenomenal.

Over the summer, the district took 39 children, ranging in age from six to 17, who seemed to be headed for or already in difficulty with their reading and language skills. Pottstown put them in the intensive computer-based program. Within 29 days, 37 of them were at the language level they belonged and even those who were still behind had improved their scores, said Heifer. Those results were enough to convince Heifer, who in turn convinced the school board, to fund a pilot project at Franklin Elementary School. In the five months Fast ForWord has been used there, speech pathologist Tern Spitko said she has seen enormous gains by her students and is singing the program's praises. "I'm incredibly impressed, overwhelmed by the results, "said Spitko who has been a speech therapist for 14 years. She's not alone.

"We are totally in awe of what we're seeing," said Myra Forrest, Pottstown's assistant superintendent for curriculum. Spitko said during the time the program has been running at Franklin, she has seen improvements which under previous speech therapy methods would have taken one to two years. To achieve these results, the research of Berkeley, California- based Scientific Learning Corp. revealed that success is in the ear of the beholder. In other words, it all revolves around sound. A phoneme is the most-basic unit of sound. There are 44 phonemes in the English language. And sometimes they can be hard to tell apart, especially if your brain has something scientists call central auditory processing problems (CAPP). Imagine your brain as having neural circuits, much like a computer, which process sound into information. Children with CAPP have poorly-connected and/or weak connections among those circuits. This means children have trouble discerning the difference between like-sounding words. For example, the brain must identify and process a difference of 30 one-thousandth of a second to tell the difference between the words "day"and "bay." Without the basic circuitry to understand these sounds, taking instruction, following direction or learning to read becomes more and more difficult. "These kids just don't have the electronics to learn these skills, "Heifer explained.

As a result, learning suffers, self-esteem falls and behavioral problems often surface. It's a textbook case of a child headed for special education. "They learn to cope rather than learn the skills," said Heifer. Heifer understands these problems on a level beyond one earned by decades as an educator. "I had a terrible time learning to read and I know that 'try harder' just isn't the answer, "he said. Scientific Learning's theory is that, like any other muscle, by rigorously exercising the auditory processing connections in the brain, they can be strengthened and children can process sounds more rapidly.

Some estimates range as high as 16 million children nationwide having this problem. Heifer likened programs like Fast ForWord as being "glasses for the ear. "He said, "This is all based on breakthrough discoveries about how the brain learns. This attacks not the symptoms, but the underlying problems. "The idea for Fast ForWord is deceptively simple. Although the results are speedy, the program owes it success to slowing down. "The computer does something I can't physically do, it slows the sound down consistently," explained Spitko.

The children make use of this idea for 100 minutes a day by playing different games which test, stretch and reinforce the basics of sound recognition which form the basis of language skills and therefore all forms of communication and learning. At the end of each session, a child's results are sent via the Internet to a database in San Francisco.

As you might expect, something which improves language skills and boosts learning and thus self-esteem has benefits which make themselves felt in all areas of education. "They get a whole different attitude about learning, "said Forrest. "The comments I'm getting from the teachers are that the kids are following direction, they're more accountable, they're picking up vocabulary, all sorts of things, "Spitko said. "They're blossoming."

Although the primary beneficiaries, students aren't the only ones who come out winners with the potential advances from Fast ForWord. It costs Pottstown taxpayers about $8,900 a year to educate a student in the normal curriculum. On average, it costs $13,000 a year to put that same student through the district's state-regulated special education program. Fast ForWord can identify problems and resolve them before many students even start down the special education path. Although enthusiastic about the program and its potential savings, Heifer said he prefers to be conservative in his estimates. While Scientific Learning Corp. projects Fast ForWord being able to keep 20 percent of the student population out of the special education program, Heifer prefers to low-ball projections at 10 percent....

Can it work? It's too soon to be sure, said Heifer, but It promising. When Spitko started the Fast ForWord program this fall, one of her groups included 10 out of 15 children who would qualify for special education. By the first of February, there were only three students left in that class who would need special education. "It makes the kids accountable and they're motivated to learn, "said Spitko. "I'll tell you another thing, it's motivating.

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