The birthplace

The birthplace

Highland Academy was a private elementary school in the Dallas metropolitan area. We had a special mission of serving students with average or above intelligence who have for varying reasons fallen behind their grade level in conventional schools. Our mission with these students was to bring them up to appropriate levels and enable them to return to the “mainstream” as soon as they became ready. About one-third of our students moved on each year, meaning that an individual student was likely to be with us three years.

Highland Academy was also the birthplace of America’s Phonics. Deficiency in language is the most common problem that our students have, and we needed a superior language training program to accomplish our goals. The development period for America’s Phonics was a little more than four years, but the base of knowledge came from years of work in bringing students “up-to-speed.” As the mother/daughter team who authored America’s Phonics, we had about 35 years in teaching and administration in specially oriented elementary education at the time of authoring America’s Phonics.

Our concentration on remediation cannot be described as a “crash program.” The children who come to us had often been pressed too much already. While we are interested in their academic performance, usually there is an associated need to restore their self-concepts. We cannot accomplish academic improvement by just demanding more school work in quantity and quality. Instead we conduct a program of close and caring instruction. Considerately keeping our students “on task” was our constant objective.

With the foregoing as an introduction, we present in the following chart the experience of our pilot class in America’s Phonics. These students were grouped as a class and they happened to be at the right place to serve as a pilot class. You can see the progress of each student and we think you will agree that such results are most impressive. We will agree that this is a small “population” if used to make curriculum decisions, but in our minds it does validate America’s Phonics and its concepts. We have gone on to enroll other students and results from this group and others are shown in the graphs on following pages.

TEST RESULTS FROM AMERICA’S PHONICS PILOT CLASS
CHILD	STARTING POINT		11/01/94	02/06/95	05/16/95	02/01/96	05/12/96	0VERALL
	RATING	DATE	RATING	RATING	RATING	RATING	RATING	PROGRESS
A	2E	9/94*	3B	3E	5B	6E	8B	Up 5 1/2 grades (In two years)
B	2B	2/94	4B	5E	7E	Above 8	Above 8	Up 6+ full grades (In two years)
C	3E	2/94	4E	5B	5E	7E	8B	Up 4 1/2 grades (In two years)
D (1)	7B	8/94*	8E	Above 8	Above 8	(1)	(1)	Exceeded the chart (In one year)
E	2B	2/94	2E	3B	5B	8B	Above 8	Up 6+ grades (In two years)
F	3E	2/94	4E	5B	7B	8E	Above 8	Up 5+ grades (In two years)
G (1)	1E	2/94	3B	4E	6B	(1)	(1)	Up 4 1/2 grades (In one year)
H	1E	2/94	2E	3E	4E	5E	7E	Up 6 grades (In two years)

It should be noted that the students in this pilot class were fourth graders at the time of the 05/12/96 tests.

The WRAT test was used to arrive at these ratings. (These results were confirmed in part by word skill scores of three of these
students using Woodcock Johnson tests).

Each grade level is divided into two sectors as B=BEGINNING, E=ENDING. The ratings show the grade level and the sector within it.

(1) These two students have left the program. They were deemed by parents and counselors to be ready to move on.