Hope Academy, a private boarding school for abused girls in rural Kenya, began using Corrective Reading (Comprehension and Decoding) and Spelling Mastery in place of the Kenyan English curriculum in 2012. The students, girls in grades three through six whose third language is English, immediately began outpacing national performance on the standardized Kenyan national assessment in Reading.

When comparing student standardized test scores, the Kenyan government posts the country's results with how many pupils are above the mean. At the end of the academic year (November), all Kenyan private and public schools take the standardized achievement test. Scores are released to the public to determine the best private and public schools. Both the students and schools are ranked, and students scoring over 250 marks out of 500 can continue on with their education into secondary or high school.

In 2012, only 51.35% of the eighth grade student population in Kenya, taking the final standardized test, passed the 50% mark required. In the following two years, scores continued to decline nationally with 50.29% of students achieving the250 cut score in 2014 and 49.71% in 2014. (See Figure 1).

The story is much different for the girls at Hope Academy, though. After just one year of DI, 70.59% of students at Hope Academy achieved the 250-point mark. By last year's testing period, all but one student at Hope Academy exceeded the 250 points required!

Hope Academy continues to see growth in these students' skills and plans to continue using DI. The academy is increasing enrollment and will see it's first 8th grade graduating class this year. They have also expanded to two campuses where a mix of nationalities will come together for instruction, including students from South Sudanese, Ethiopian, Somali, Ugandan and Kenyan backgrounds.

The academies run off of donations, including support from the Engelmann Foundation and are registered nonprofits in both Kenya and the US. On-going training support from independent consultants and through NIFDI Outreach events has helped to build the academy's success with DI. For more information about Hope Academy, contact Cindi Murphy at worldoutreach.kenya@gmail.com.