Writing in the The Age of Melborne, Denise Ryan explains to Australian readers about advances in the neuroscience of childhood learning and the translation of those advances into commercially-available literacy programs, specifically Oakland California-based Scientific Learning's Fast ForWord.  She points out that there is debate over how well the program works, with what kids, and under what circumstances.

What's of interest to your editor is the fact that few commercially-available reading programs have evidence of efficacy under any circumstances with any kids. Fewer still can trace their offering through basic and applied research to product development and ongoing use.

Our k-12 market is (hopefully) in a transition, where government allow the purchase of both programs, and indeed where the U.S. Department of Education will allow state and local agencies to use fderal taxpayer funds to buy them. It is as if Medicare now covered payments for the treatment of brain injuries by merely drilling holes in patients heads as well as the latest laser surgey.

For the publishers referred to in today's other posting and their relationship to SBR it's a matter of getting out of patent medicine and into products that can pass something like an FDA review.