A Principal’s Perspective… Jefferey Lagozzino "Our reading scores on the California Standards Test have risen by over 30%, due primarily to our teachers' comprehensive understanding of early literacy development, effective research-based pedagogy and the Waterford Early Reading Program." "Waterford completely compliments our mission here to make students confident, successful learners. Teachers report that it both sets the stage for new lessons, and helps reinforce lessons previously taught. We’re way ahead on achieving our NCLB objectives, with scores more than double of where we are minimally expected to be according to our state's accountability timeline. After having it for three years, we can't imagine not having Waterford as part of our daily instruction. It is an integral component of our core literacy program."
|
Student Population Demographics
The ethnic makeup of the student population is approximately
Student Population Demographics
Challenges Presented
La Primaria Elementary School implemented Pearson Digital Learning's Waterford Early Reading Program in 2002 as an integral part of its comprehensive language arts curriculum for all students in kindergarten through second grade. There are four, 3-station set-ups in full-day kindergarten and four, 3-station set-ups in first grade. There is also a 10 station "mini lab" that is used for second grade. This mini lab is also used by the After-school Program and for third grade Reading Intervention. Students utilize the Waterford program for phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, writing and English language development.
The Waterford take-home materials play a key role in the school-to-home connection to learning. Given to parents as part of the school's Student Success Team (SST) process, the materials have been an effective way to involve parents in the education process, especially when assigned as an intervention through the SST. La Primaria tracked English Language Learner (ELL) gains with the use of Waterford. The school's kindergarten and first grade ELL students achieved significantly higher test scores, compared to ELL students across the district, in all the district reading benchmark exams. For kindergarten ELL Waterford students, 87.3% averaged at or above benchmark in rhyming, phonemes, and CVC Words; compared to 63.7% district-wide displayed in the graph below.
For first grade ELL students, 69% averaged at or above benchmark in fluency, reading comprehension, and spelling; compared to 53.3% district-wide displayed in the graph below.
In addition, La Primaria's second graders scored a 54% overall proficiency rate on the California Standards Test (CST) in Language Arts displayed in the graph below. This far exceeded the government target of 24% set by No Child Left Behind for the 2004–05 school year, and the district average of 25%.
La Primaria Elementary School was selected from 13,000 Waterford installations around the country as a “2005 National Best Practice Site Winner” for their innovative, replicable implementations and measurable results with the Waterford Early Reading Program. This honor is awarded annually to schools that effectively integrate the award-winning Waterford courseware, teacher guides, student books, and take-home materials with their curriculum; demonstrate strong long-term parental involvement; implement a clear evaluation plan; show measurable results; and present an innovative and replicable implementation. La Primaria met the highest standard with quality research, implementation, and results. Their applications provided evidence of unique replicable implementations and strong evaluation design. The longitudinal results from this school show a measurable impact on student achievement. They use effective curriculum integration and strong long-term parent involvement and administrative support. |
||||||
|
|||||||
Find
a Success Story 
