Accelerated Reader

**School Comments**
Ridgecrest Elementary : We've had it for three years down here at Ridgecrest. It has had a positive impact on the school. It is also a lot of work! I will be glad to share our ups and downs with AR.
Spring Branch Elementary : Here is my 2 cents worth-- buying the book guide has been a big advantage to us-- We can customize our disks ordered to match the already existing good books in our collection that teachers and I want the students to be reading anyway-- and also use it to select good books that we have tests for but not the book. But it still takes someone with a knowledge of books and our collection to use it effectively. It is a good money saver and selection help when you get beyond ordering just the basic startup disks.
Terrace Elementary : It only took me 2 hours at the most to set up all 600 kids. I don't think that is alot of time. It does not take alot of intense labor to maintain. A student enrolls, I get the info, the cafeteria sends me the lunch number (password) and I put into the program (did 3 this am and it took 30 seconds). To load the tests, it takes a trip to the server and installing the disk---I don't find that time consuming. Our teachers and students do not focus only on AR books. But a way to take care of that problem is to customize tests to match your collection.
Wilchester Elementary : Wilchester plans on dropping AR due to many problems we've been having with this program. We have the PC (4.0 program) and Monty continuously has to upgrade due to points shifting from one student to another, points not recording under students names, points being left off, or the program saying the child has no points when the teacher and student both know they have taken X number of tests! The only support you get is through the phone; no human ever comes! Brandi Crouch (IT) and Monty Miller can give many other technical problems that have arisen due to this program that they personally have had to tackle!
Woodview Elementary : 1) Relative to the problem with back-up and corrupt files - every school which uses this program needs to have an automatic tape back-up system which archives the server daily. That way if there is a problem the data can be recovered. 2) After the initial crunch of marking books, etc. the maintenance is not that bad. Many of our vendors will now provide AR labels as part of the processing. 3) Pro: gives students immediate feedback gives teachers a way to assess whether students are really reading their books or just looking at the pictures helps lower level students choose books with appropriate leading levels so they can really read them and not just look at the pictures 4) Rewards should focus on recognition of student's achievement and not on "getting stuff" 5) Even though we cannot change the % for passing, it is important to emphasize that accuracy counts as well as number of points. We require 80% accuracy for all intermediate students in order to get any of the rewards, even if they have the required points.
Spring Woods High School: Advantages: We have added 3,000+ books. All of them are shiny, new titles that are popular. New books do attract and circulate. We would not have received $20,000 for new books in one shot! We would not have ordered as many easy and picture books if this was not in effect. Along with the books because this was a grant we also received 20 new Imacs. This has made our teachers real happy that computers are available for research. Disadvantages: Students only want to check out books that are in the AR section. We have attempted to turn this around and fixed spine labels on ALL of our Fic and Non Fiction that have AR tests. We have also pencilled in the RL and PV in those books and taught students to check the card catalog and look for books in other areas besides the AR section. That has helped. Preferred situation in the future: We could work towards introducing genre based selection to the students. Budget for test development for popular titles that are not available. Work towards integrating the collection, but to start a program one almost has to have two separate sections.