Dr. William Jenkins and Sherrelle Walker will present one-day summit on how brain fitness can help students improve one to two years in reading levels in eight to 12 weeks
7/20/11
Media Contact:
Jessica Lindl
Senior Vice President, Marketing and Product Management
Scientific Learning Corporation
(510) 625-6784
[email protected]
Investor Contact:
Bob Feller
Chief Financial Officer
Scientific Learning Corporation
(510) 625-2281
[email protected]
Oakland, Calif. — July 20, 2011 — Scientific Learning Corp. (NASDAQ:SCIL), makers of the Fast ForWord® and Reading Assistant™ family of products, will host a New Science of Learning Brain Summit at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel & Towers on July 26. The Brain Summit is being held in coordination with the Building Learning Communities (BLC) Conference, sponsored by November Learning. The BLC conference, which is designed to have an immediate and long range impact on improving teaching and learning, will be held at the same hotel in downtown Boston with pre-conference sessions July 24-26 and main conference sessions July 27-29.
At the Brain Summit, Scientific Learning’s founder and chief scientific officer, Dr. William Jenkins, and chief education officer, Sherrelle Walker, will discuss how current neuroscience research is contributing to viable, innovative and impactful solutions for improving academic performance. They will describe the importance of brain fitness in education and explain how students can exercise their brains to overcome literacy challenges and improve their capacity to learn. Participants will learn how schools can accelerate learning for students of diverse ages and ability levels by combining good teaching, good content, and exercises that stimulate the brain to build brain fitness in the areas of English language arts and reading.
In the Boston area, school districts such as Everett Public Schools, an urban district located a few miles north of Boston, are realizing positive results by helping students build brain fitness with the Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant programs from Scientific Learning. After participating in the programs in 2009-10, elementary and middle school students who were struggling with their reading skills made statistically significant gains on their Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) English/Language Arts scores. After their first year of use, there was a net increase in achievement level by 27 percent of the participants. In a longitudinal study of students who first used the products during the 2007-08 school year, by 2010, there was a net increase in achievement level by 44 percent of the students.In addition, in a study conducted with limited English proficient students in grades K-12, 69 percent of students who used the Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant programs improved their English proficiency by one or more levels between the 2009 and 2010 administrations of the Massachusetts English Proficiency Assessment (MEPA).
About Scientific Learning Corp.
We accelerate learning by applying proven research on how the brain learns. Scientific Learning’s results are demonstrated in over 200 research studies and protected by over 55 patents. Learners can realize achievement gains of one to two years in as little as eight to 12 weeks and maintain an accelerated rate of learning even after the programs end.
Today, learners have used nearly 3 million Scientific Learning software products, which apply “Brain Fitness” principles to the areas of English language and reading. We provide our offerings directly to parents, K–12 schools and learning centers, and in more than 40 countries around the world. For more information, visit www.scilearn.com or call toll-free 888-358-0212.
