The Patterns Behind Progress

A Question That Started a School

Peter Gow, Jr. (1888–1947) had a sharp, analytical mind, a deep understanding of language, and a strong desire to do right by his students. His school grew out of one question.

"Why did bright children who paid attention in class and did their homework sometimes fail in the classrooms of competent teachers?"Peter Gow, Jr.

In May 1927, a mutual colleague introduced him to the neurologist Dr. Samuel T. Orton. The two worked together for the next twenty years.

In Gow's earliest years, they used hand-drawn testing graphs to study each student's learning profile. They looked for patterns, not just overall scores. The question was never only what score a student earned. It was what the scores showed across skills, and how that changed over time.

Those graphs were an early form of what researchers now call longitudinal analysis. It is still how we think about your child's progress.

Adapted from "The Patterns Behind Progress" by Dr. Mari Jo Renick, Director of Research and Assessment at The Gow School.

Now: From Profiles to Pathways

Just as in the days of Peter Gow, Jr. and Dr. Orton, data on each student's skills gives us a starting point, shapes teaching, and shows growth over time.

We assess literacy skills during a student's admissions visit and again each spring. So far, the data on more than 900 students tested at admissions since 2000 have been digitized, and earlier records are still being entered.

How Students Read When They Arrive

Students come to Gow with different reading profiles. We compare two things: reading rate, or how quickly a student reads, and accuracy, or how correctly they identify words.

• Rate ahead of accuracy: 253 students (28%). They read faster than they identified words accurately, the same pattern noted in the hand-drawn records.
• Balanced: 541 students (60%). Reading rate was about even with accuracy.
• Accuracy ahead of rate: 112 students (12%). They read slowly, but more accurately.

Reading profiles at admissions, 2000 to the present, for 906 students.

Two Pathways from the Same Start

We then followed 186 students who arrived reading faster than they read accurately, and measured their accuracy at admissions, after Year 1, and after Year 2. By Year 1, the group had split in two.

• Shifted to BalancedThe gap between rate and accuracy narrowed.
• Stayed Rate Ahead of AccuracyThe gap remained.

Accuracy rose in both groups between admissions and Year 2. Knowing which pathway a student is on tells their teachers where to focus next.