By Dan LaFountain

At Speak Agent we have worked diligently over the past few years to create a product which could help students learn the academic language that they have trouble acquiring today in schools. Research has shown us that this is a key element in the lower student achievement that we see in many underserved and diverse learner populations. Our initial focus was on English language learners who perform at levels far lower in most measurements of student achievement. One data point we looked closely were the NAEP scores and when we did were shocked to see just how substandard these results were.

National Assessment of Educational Progress (2017 for Math/Reading, 2015 for Science

And these results have been occurring while we are seeing an increase of over 50% in the number of ELLs in US schools (while the general student population grew by under 10% over the same period of time). Looking at these numbers you can easily see that only 1 out 20 ELLs are proficient in math and science by 8th grade. As a result, these students get locked out of high school STEM courses due to their low achievement levels and are eventually locked out of college and future careers.

Student achievement is an equity issue.

Our CEO, Ben Grimley, recognized that language is a major component of this achievement gap for diverse learners. As he began to research this more closely he learned that academic language acquisition is the greatest barrier for the underserved. And while this is a significant problem for students and schools, it goes far beyond that. Language has been used for millennia to identify whether you are a part of the IN group or whether you are OUT. This can lead to different outcomes for students who are being left out because of their lack of language skills.

Language is an equity issue.

We’ve always believed that providing students with educational solutions that have been tested and proven to enhance and accelerate their learning is essential in improving the achievement levels. As we have built the Speak Agent platform we are always looking at effective strategies based on research that allow all students to improve their achievement. We also felt it was imperative to test our product for efficacy to be certain that what we thought was working was independently validated. We were fortunate to have funding from the National Science Foundation to have an independent research group conduct a study on our product over the course of the year. Those results validated our product as one that works! We know that all learning challenges are solvable and we start with the proposition that everything related to academic language learning has a solution and we now know that our solution helps students learn.

Efficacy is equity.

Trend in eighth-grade NAEP reading achievement-level results, by race/ethnicity

Speak Agent is a breakthrough digital platform that empowers diverse learners of all ages to quickly and deeply master challenging academic language and concepts critical for success in schools and careers, accelerating learning by 3x with only 30 minutes of use per week.

Speak Agent is working with KIPP Endeavor Academy during the K12 Fellowship.

Dan LaFountain
Dan has been in the field of education for his entire career beginning as a classroom teacher in the Boston area. His career has seen him work for LEGO Education, Teaching Strategies, Children’s Creative Learning Centers and Blackboard in a variety of capacities spanning product and curriculum development to sales and marketing.