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Pearson Offers Virginia Students Nation's #1 Elementary Mathematics Program Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley enVisionMATH VirginiaRichmond, VA., Feb 07, 2011 (PRWeb.com via COMTEX) -- U.S. students learning with Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley enVisionMATH rank right alongside or ahead of top performers in Asia, China and Europe because they are learning skills that make them "Mathematical Thinkers." Independent research - based on the rigorous standards designed by the Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse - confirms that students using enVisionMATH achieved stunning gains on standardized tests after just one year. Now, Pearson's customized Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley enVisionMATH Virginia, benchmarked to Virginia's Standards of Learning, is available to schools across the Commonwealth in digital, print, or blended formats. Pearson's Senior Vice President Mike Evans, who heads up the company's School Mathematics programs, said, "Overall, U.S. students' scores are not measuring up to other countries, but hundreds of thousands of enVisionMATH students certainly are. We want everyone in Virginia to know that our enVisionMATH students can outperform any students on the planet because from the ground up this program is 100% centered on building critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. While classrooms in Singapore spend more time on task than students do here in the U.S., Singapore officials are seeking to get at the critical thinking skills that we have successfully addressed with enVisionMATH. enVisionMATH achieves Singapore results quicker and makes the classroom implementation easier for teachers." Well-known mathematics educator Dr. Francis "Skip" Fennell, a past President of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and a member of the Writing Teams for the NCTM Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, the Curriculum Focal Points, and the Common Core State Standards, is an author of Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley enVisionMATH. In serving in a variety of policy-related roles in the field of mathematics education, Dr. Fennell has had numerous opportunities to collaborate with education officials around the world. He said, "As we developed the enVisionMATH program, we were able to draw upon our work and analysis of international curriculum efforts, including programs from Singapore and other Asian-culture countries. The enVisionMATH author team has incorporated principles from this international benchmarking into our program. So, with enVisionMATH, from kindergarten onward, Virginia's students will have the benefit of an education centered around the importance of thinking mathematically, setting the foundation for success in middle and high school and on in to college." Independent research reveals that students made dramatic gains on standardized tests in the areas of math concepts and problem-solving, computation, and math vocabulary and communication in just one year with enVisionMATH, followed by jumps of up to five grade levels after two years with the program. The #1 school curriculum in the U.S. today, enVisionMATH has achieved astonishing results in schools across the nation: Burbank School District's Deputy Superintendent Joel Shapiro said, "From the perspective of the state test, we had not ever seen better results. This was the most dramatic improvement that we'd had in any given year. We essentially had the same teachers teaching math last year as we've had in the past; the only difference that was the common denominator was this program. It was generally felt that the rigor of this program raised the bar in conceptual knowledge and in introducing and reinforcing problem-solving skills." -Jennifer Winkler, third-grade teacher in Pflugerville, TX said in the first year of introducing enVisionMATH to her class: "My number of A's and B's has gone up about 40 to 50 percent; our district's benchmark tests show that the students have done phenomenally well this year-better than any other year in the past, passing with flying colors. enVisionMATH provides tools to help determine what level the students are performing-on-level, needing extra help or advanced-to help me figure out when I need to re-teach a topic for some children or raise the bar for others." Rosalind Forber, fifth-grade teacher at Miller Elementary School, Holliston, MA reports that research results showed that her students jumped the equivalent of an astonishing five grade levels in math computation achievement in just two years. Students' pre-test scores in 2007 on the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT8) were at a fourth-grade level; by 2009 they were posting scores equivalent to ninth grade. New Hampshire special education teacher Mary Lou Saxton supervised her school district's participation in an independent efficacy research study. She said, "I've been teaching for 27 years and I have never had a program that reached all levels of learners the way this curriculum does. It challenges the top students and accelerates the bottom learners. The biggest thing I would say to anyone that is looking at this program is that in all the classes that started with enVisionMATH, no students were referred to the special ed team for math. Not one. That's huge!" Comments from a teacher in northeastern Tennessee participating in an independent research study of enVisionMATH: "Overall my feeling is that it's a higher level math approach than what I think we've been exposing our kids to and there's a lot of good in that, a lot of thinking in that, a lot more thinking than what I think I've seen in our other programs." Joyce Campagna, fifth-grade teacher from Rock Creek Elementary School in Ohio, said, "This is the first really substantive change that I've seen in math instruction since I was a student myself in elementary school." Dr. Mariam Azin, president of the research group PRES Associates, conducted the independent research of enVisionMATH. She said, "These findings are astounding. In all of my years conducting educational program efficacy studies, I have never seen such consistency in results across all different student populations as I saw with the enVisionMATH curriculum. In our study, we found that the enVisionMATH students significantly outperformed their peers with stronger effects occurring over time, meaning that student gains in the second year were even larger than those seen in the first year." The research results indicate that the longer students learned with enVisionMATH, the greater their gains were on the Group Mathematics Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation (GMADE) and the MAT8 in math concepts, problem solving and communication. enVisionMATH builds critical-thinking skills through its print and digital Visual Learning Bridge which offers students step-by-step visual instruction that makes learning math accessible to all students, regardless of learning styles or abilities, helping them "see" the math. And, because the program is available online, students can access it from home, giving parents the opportunity to see their children's learning path on a daily basis. Today, millions of students across all 50 states are learning with Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley enVisionMATH. Not only is enVisionMATH the nation's #1 Math curriculum, it is the #1 curriculum across all subject areas in use in U.S. schools today. Video about enVisionMATH efficacy in the classroom: http://www.pearsoned.com/envisionmathvideo Full Research Report: http://www.pearsoned.com/RESRPTS_FOR_POSTING/MATH_RESEARCH_STUDIES/envisionmath-efficacy-report-year-2.pdf To learn more about Scott Foresman Addison Wesley enVisionMATH for Virginia: http://mathforVA.com/ About Pearson - Pearson (NYSE:PSO), the global leader in education services, technology and school solutions, provides innovative print and digital education materials for preK through college, student information systems and learning management systems, teacher professional development, career certification programs, and testing and assessment products that set the standard for the industry. Pearson's other primary businesses include the Financial Times Group and the Penguin Group. Go to http://www.pearsonschool.com. Contact: kate.miller(at)pearson(dot)com - 800.745.8489 ### Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/02/prweb5035174.htm PRWeb.com |