Research

This report summarizes the most recent research, surveys, and advice from educational experts to outline the best criteria for administrators to use when making their curricular decisions for next year.

While many solutions have been proposed to address the performance gap, the most effective approach has been to focus on early intervention for all readers to bolster students’ knowledge of five fundamental components of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and reading comprehension. Read more about how Smarty Ants is specifically designed to meet these needs.

Want a better understanding of how Lexile levels are identified and growth is predicted within Achieve3000’s core literacy platform? Increase your knowledge about how and why Lexile measures are such an effective tool for measuring and accelerating students’ literacy growth.

This paper from Actively Learn explores how achieving depth in reading means getting beyond the gist and making the text one's own. Depth entails understanding the reading thoroughly and being able to discuss it, analyze it, and question it in a sophisticated way.

Achieve3000 partnered with MetaMetrics^®, developers of the Lexile Framework for Reading, to help educators gain a deeper understanding of new challenges presented by college and career readiness standards, identifying strategies for setting growth targets, and analyzing student gains.

Achieve3000 provides any International Baccalaureate program with the support needed to reach every learner through embedded reading intervention, critical thinking supports, argumentative writing and speaking practice, and an inquiry-based approach.

Achieve3000 Literacy is built on decades of scientific research into how learners develop essential reading and writing skills from widely respected researchers in the field of reading, including Dr. Robert Marzano, Dr. R.C. Anderson, Dr. Carol Ann Tomlinson, Dr. Michael Kamil and more.

The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL^®) is widely regarded as one of the most respected assessments of English language skills. The family of TOEFL tests is used by more than 9,000 colleges, universities, and agencies in more than 130 countries, including Australia, Canada, the U.K., and the United States.

Achieve3000’s mission is to work together with educators to unlock potential and accelerate learning for every student, including those with dyslexia and other reading challenges. Used as a complementary solution to the Orton-Gillingham's direct and explicit instructional approach, our Smarty Ants and Achieve3000 Literacy solutions deliver age-appropriate texts on each student's reading level to build comprehension and fluency as they also develop excitement about reading.

Whenever a particular trait of an individual has been assessed multiple times, the individual has several scores to characterize his or her reading achievement. This is what we mean by multiple measures. Some people would assume that more information is better; therefore, multiple measures of reading ability would be a great thing for students, parents, and teachers. However, it is usually the case that scores from multiple measures differ for the same individual

Achieve3000 is the leading literacy platform in today’s blended learning programs, with cloud-based solutions that serve nearly three million students worldwide. Based on decades of scientific research, Achieve3000’s patented and proven differentiated instruction for grades PreK-12 to university and adult education reaches all students at their individual reading levels to accelerate learning, improve high-stakes test performance, and drive university and career success.

Seventy-five percent of students in Aldine, Texas are identified as at-risk for dropping out of school according to state criteria. Despite challenges, they nearly tripled the number of RtI students passing the STAAR in one year. See their results here.

Achieve3000’s brand-new rapid intervention solution, Achieve Intensive, was piloted as part of a large urban school district’s summer program during the summer of 2016 for students in 3rd, 6th and 8th grades. This summer program specifically targeted students who performed in the bottom quarter on the state’s summative assessment – below grade- level learners who were especially at risk for summer reading loss.

In January 2014, Achieve3000 and Carlsbad Unified School District started a partnership in which the Achieve3000 Literacy platform would be available to the students for literacy acceleration. After several successful years of usage, Carlsbad and Achieve3000 initiated a study to assess the impact Achieve3000 Literacy has had on student performance on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) test.

Student records from the Actively Learn and Achieve3000 Literacy databases were merged to produce an analytical file containing 17,285 individual student records. Data were then analyzed to examine the relationship between Actively Learn usage and improvements in reading ability.

Following the 2017-2018 school year, Achieve3000 conducted an analysis of Bay District Schools students’ performance on the NWEA MAP (Grades K-2) and the Florida State Assessment for English language arts (FSA ELA) (Grades 4-10) tests in relation to students’ usage of Smarty Ants and Achieve3000 Literacy during the 2017-2018 school year.

This report relies on internal Achieve3000 Literacy usage and Lexile data as well as IAR ELA data for 5,245 students in grades 4-8 from Fall 2018 and Spring 2019.

Fort Worth began using Achieve3000’s PRO literacy solutions in the fall of 2016 with grades K-12 as part of the city-wide “100x25” initiative. The initiative aims to support schools in making sure that 100 percent of third grade students will be reading on grade-level by 2025. The district set the expectation for all schools to include one Achieve3000 lesson in students’ English language arts and science or social studies classrooms, for a total of two lessons completed each week.

Glynn County School District initially partnered with Achieve3000 in 2012 to provide differentiated literacy instruction for their struggling readers in grades 6-8. During the 2017-2018 school year, Achieve3000 Literacy was incorporated into the instructional strategy for struggling readers in grades 3-5 as well as students with limited English proficiency.

A real-time national education study of more than one million students by two leading not-for-profit education groups has found that continued engagement with technology-enabled instruction during COVID-19 school closures has significantly reduced students’ loss of potential reading growth.

Real-time data for 1.6 million students across 1,364 districts engaged in remote instruction since schools were forced to close due to the coronavirus pandemic shows that students are on track to lose up to 49% (about 5 months) of their potential reading growth by the start of next school year. In addition, this study revealed that the achievement gap between students from lower- and higher-income schools is predicted to widen by up to 18%.

This report is a continuation of the annual summative analysis exploring the impact of Achieve3000 Literacy usage on Lexile® growth and acceleration. In addition, it is a continuation of previous analyses designed to uncover the impact of the COVID pandemic on American schools. Get clear insight into how the pandemic impacted students across race and ethnicity, reading level, and English learner status. 

Sixteen schools, 46 teachers and 1,012 students in four suburban and city districts across the US implemented participated in a 2015 third-party evaluation of the effectiveness of Achieve3000’s solutions using randomized controlled trials. Overall, the learning gains of treatment students who used Achieve3000 were statistically significant and substantively important—based on the What Works Clearinghouse threshold of .25—for all areas assessed: the GMRT-4 Vocabulary, Reading Comprehension, and Total Reading tests, as well as the LevelSet Lexile reading assessment.

In 2016 and 2017, Digital Promise conducted an independent third-party research study of the impact of Achieve3000 usage on the reading outcomes of English language learners in Cajon Valley Union School District in California. Cajon Valley USD piloted Achieve3000 during the 2016- 2017 school year with EL students at five elementary and middle schools. The goal of the pilot was to improve reading outcomes for EL students at risk of becoming long-term ELs (LTELs). A total of 521 students, 99 percent of whom do not speak English at home, and 13 teachers participated. This report summarizes the findings.

The Houston Independent School District completed a 2015 study focused on ninth and tenth graders to assess the impact derived from the use of Achieve3000’s reading solutions on students’ scale score performance on the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness End-Of-Course (STAAR EOC) for the English I, English II, and Biology exams. Results demonstrate that student performance is strongly correlated with increased usage of Achieve3000 Literacy.

Eight hundred and twenty-eight (828) students and 20 teachers, in sixthand seventh-grade classrooms in three states participated in the study. Students in classrooms using Achieve3000 Math showed significantly greater improvement in mathematics skills than comparable students in classrooms that did not use Achieve3000 Math. Achieve3000 Math users in sixth-grade showed 40% more growth than expected and seventhgrade Achieve3000 Math users showed 66% more growth than expected. Teachers reported that the Achieve3000 Math application is an effective tool for delivering mathematics instruction and both teachers and students were observed to use the application as prescribed.

Seven hundred ninety-two (792) students and 13 teachers in sixth- and seventh-grade NJ classrooms participated in the study. The results indicate that students in New Jersey using Achieve3000 Math showed significantly greater improvement in mathematics skills than students in New Jersey classrooms that did not use Achieve3000 Math. Sixth-grade Achieve3000 Math users showed 53% more growth than is typically seen and seventhgrade Achieve3000 Math users showed 57% more growth than typically seen.

After using a statistical technique to create matched groups of students who used Achieve3000 Math and students who did not use Achieve3000 Math, 438 students in sixth- and eighth-grade Florida classrooms participated in the study. Students in Florida using Achieve3000 Math showed significantly greater improvement in mathematics skills than students in Florida classrooms that did not use Achieve3000 Math. The effect size for sixth graders was .45 and the effect size for eighth graders was .28.