If Your Child was Administered the Program Language Live, this Article is for You
In most cases, if a product fails, we return it. But when an intervention program fails a child who has a disability, there are no do-overs. Lost time can’t be refunded—and our children can’t wait.
This article is for every parent whose child was placed in Language Live, a reading intervention program licensed by school districts across the country from the company Voyager Sopris. The examples below are drawn from Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) in Virginia, but the issues—and legal implications—are nationwide.
What is Language Live?
Language Live is a program that school divisions license from the company Voyager Sopris. FCPS uses Language Live as a tier 3 “comprehensive specialized reading program” for students with Dyslexia.
At the beginning of the 2017-18 school year, FCPS Curriculum Resource Teacher Caroline Tuss emailed Voyager Sopris account rep Theresa McKee to clarify which placement chart teachers should follow:
“We are having training tomorrow and I want to make sure we are using the correct placement chart.
“The new teacher guide placement chart (page 142) is different from the placement recommendations chart you gave via email. We assume the one you gave via email trumps the one in the book, correct? The difference is that the newest doesn’t ever place students in to Level 2 Unit 7. Do you have an understanding of why? Teachers are asking . . .”
Theresa replied to Caroline:
“From editorials: After we got some initial feedback and data from past implementations, it became clear that if students needed Level 2, they needed all of it. Those students who would have placed in the second part of the level really didn’t need an intervention like LL and could perform pretty well in their core. Thus, we now only have 3 entry points for new students: L1U1, L1U5 and L2U1.”
In other words, students either received a program they didn’t need or needed more of—and became data points.