The most extensive evaluation of ABeCeDarian has been conducted on the kindergarten level of the program. This evaluation provides data on student performance for 5 years at an urban kindergarten center in Wilmington, Delaware that used ABeCeDarian for decoding and spelling instruction. Virtually all of the students involved in this project are African-American; approximately half of the students attended Title I classes.
All students were pre-tested in the fall and post-tested in the spring using the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP) and the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery-Revised (WLPB-R). The CTOPP measures a variety of phonological processing abilities that have been found to be strongly associated with beginning reading proficiency. The scores listed are for the Phonological Awareness Composite, which reflects performance on three separate subtests. The Phonological Awareness Composite is a standard score with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. The WLPB-R measures reading performance. The Letter/Word Identification subtest measures a students ability to recognize letters by name as well as to read high frequency words. The Word Attack subtest measures a students ability to read nonsense words, which indicates whether students have phonics knowledge, oral blending skill, and an effective strategy for reading unfamiliar words. The scores reported are grade equivalent scores. A score of K.3, for instance, indicates that a student achieved the same score as the average student in the norming sample who was in the third month of kindergarten.
As the data in the table below indicate, the students as a group scored well below average level on the CTOPP. By the end of the year, the group had achieved performance at the average level in these critical phoneme awareness skills. Moreover, their actual reading achievement, as indicated by the WLPB-R, was at the beginning first grade level.
| Comprehensive Test
of Phonological Processing (CTOPP) (N=284) |
Fall mean standard score | Spring mean standard score |
| Phonological Awareness Composite | 86 | 99 |
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| Woodcock Language
Proficiency Battery-Revised (WLPB-R) (N=284) |
Fall mean grade equivalent score | Spring mean grade equivalent score |
| Letter/Word Identification | K.3 | 1.1 |
| Word Attack | K.7 | 1.4 |