Program Facts & Figures

Nemours BrightStart! Personnel have completed nearly 9,000 screenings for early literacy skills among Duval County’s pre-kindergartners. Over 1,500 of these children have received intensive intervention to improve their pre-literacy knowledge and increase their chance for reading success in kindergarten and beyond. Table One shows the program’s growth since its inception. All of these screens and the intensive intervention are free to the community, as a bold demonstration of Nemours’ commitment to child health and community benefit.

While providing a tremendous service to many children at risk for reading failure, Nemours BrightStart! also strives to contribute to the science of early detection and treatment for dyslexia through high-quality research. Rigorous statistical analysis of at-risk children’s response to intervention has demonstrated significant benefit for the majority of participants. Figure One above shows the relative fall to spring gains on a widely used early literacy measure, Get Ready To Read, for the “at-risk” intervention participants and the children who were not “at risk” during the 2008-2009 school year. These results replicated nearly identical results from the previous three years. These results are demonstrating real-world meaningful gains: Two-thirds of the at-risk children who received Nemours BrightStart! Intervention moved into the normal range after scoring well below average at their fall pre-intervention assessment.

Each year, the talented Nemours BrightStart! educational staff enhance their curriculum to strive for even better outcomes.

Among the children participating in Nemours BrightStart! during the 2006-2007 school year for whom longitudinal data is available, 70% percent of the 'at-risk' children receiving BrightStart! intervention met the Florida Kindergarten Readiness Screener benchmark for letter naming fluency in 2007-08 school year. This compares favorably to the Duval County pass rate of 78% percent and the State of Florida pass rate of 71%, statistics which aren't focused on 'at-risk' children, but the entire kindergarten population.

In describing these results, Dr. Bailet stated, “I am extremely pleased with the phenomenal work of the Nemours BrightStart! team and the results that are emerging from our research. However, in many ways we still are in our infancy. We have only barely begun to plant the seeds that we hope will yield a wealth of knowledge in the next several years, and enable thousands of children to benefit from this unique program.”