the Woodcock-Johnson III Cognitive
Battery. We used the same tests at the
conclusion of the program. In this
pilot study, we did not have a control
group because the initial published
research on the program had included
a control group and had shown that
the observed changes were due to the
intervention, not to test recognition.
Thus, we were comfortable that any
results we would see would be attributable to the program we were putting
in place. What we wanted to show
was whether intensive cognitive-skill
development could produce the same
kinds of dramatic improvements as the
research conducted by the company
that had developed the program. After
all, we tell our students not to believe
everything they read on the Internet,
so we shouldn’t either.
Teaching Students to Think
The teachers were skeptical. They
wanted to know what kind of math,
reading, and science the kids were
going to be doing in this after-school
program. It took some doing to explain that we weren’t working—at
least directly—on literacy or math.
Instead, we were testing a tool to help
kids think better. We explained that
we were developing underlying cognitive skills—the building blocks of
thinking—and we invited the teachers
to visit our after-school sessions. It
would be several weeks before any of
them took us up on it.
In the meantime, I checked in on a
weekly basis with each of the teachers
who had a student in the cognitive-
skills development program. “How’s
school coming?” I’d ask. “Nothing
different,” they’d answer, at least for
the first six or seven weeks. Then, one
teacher who had said “nothing differ-
ent” to me one day came back the next
day. She told me she’d checked her stu-
dent’s daily work. The changes in this
student’s performance had been subtle
and gradual, so it hadn’t jumped out at
her, but upon review, her grade book
told her that the student’s performance
was rising. And that improvement was
starting to accelerate.
Learning to Take Notes
One of the students in the pilot pro-
gram came to me one day and said
he’d gotten an A on a test for the first
time in his life. When I asked him
what he had done differently, his ini-
tial reaction was, “Nothing.” But it
turned out that, for the first time, he
had taken notes and reviewed them.
Now, taking notes may not be remark-
able—it’s something all teachers want
their students to do—but this student
had never been able to take notes be-
fore. It used to be that whenever he
tried to write down what the teacher
said, he’d get lost. Six weeks into our
intensive cognitive development pro-
gram, something different was hap-
pening with this student.
Getting Results
The anecdotes from the teachers and
students were borne out when we analyzed the results of the posttest. On
average, these 10 students improved
their intellectual ability by more than
three years in those 10 weeks. Equally
as impressive, every student experienced cognitive growth ranging from
slightly more than a year to more than
seven years.
The next year, Harbor Beach implemented the program with junior high
and high school students, again with
positive results. We were validating
what the brain researchers had been
telling us: Our brains have the capacity
to change with the right kind of training, and each brain is unique, benefit-ting in different ways depending on
individual strengths and weaknesses.
One student stands out—a high-performing senior who took his ACTs
and scored in the low 30s except for
a 22 on his reading score. He retook
them and received a 21 on the reading
section. The superintendent called me
in to discuss how the district had failed
to enable this student to achieve to his
potential (the underlying presumption
being that it is the district’s responsibility to help every student succeed
to his or her potential). He asked if I
thought the cognitive development
program would help this student. I
told him I didn’t know, but we had the
