Some Recent Background...

In 1988, deeply concerned that for the first time in more than three decades the city’s public schools produced no National Merit Scholars, then-Superintendent of the Washington, D.C. schools Andrew Jenkins charged Dr. Eugene Williams, at the time an assistant high-school principal, with turning things around. Williams had heard of a small black college in New Orleans, Xavier University, that was dramatically boosting student performance with a program named SOAR — Stress on Analytical Reasoning. Xavier is clearly doing something right. The small Roman Catholic college has become the nation’s leading producer of black medical students, and it has become a major source of black science graduates, with over half of its nearly 3,500 students pursuing health or science degrees. Impressed with the Xavier program after a closer look, Williams brought Dr. Arthur Whimbey, a Consultant to Xavier on the SOAR program and author of several books on analytical reasoning and thinking skills, to Washington. Over the course of the next year, Williams adopted many of Whimbey’s methods for use in the Washington schools. Whimbey described his methods as designed to teach students "how good thinkers reason."

Over the past several years, Williams has watched with satisfaction as Washington has produced one National Merit Scholar after another. Most of these achievers have come through Williams’ tough and intensive six-week special summer program. Several key elements of the Xavier and Washington programs use what Dr. Whimbey describes as Text Reconstruction methods — which are central to the New Intelligence Outstanding African-Americans software content for improving writing, reading, and reasoning skills. These methods have been further refined in the past three years by a collaborative effort between Dr. Whimbey, Dr. Myra Linden, and software specialists at New Intelligence Inc., to design and develop software that successfully implements these text reconstruction methods on Windows-based computer systems such as those used in the majority of classrooms. The New Intelligence software and supporting print materials represent the outcome of these development and testing efforts, and offer exciting promise with new software approaches based on proven methods using text reconstruction. (Xavier and D.C. schools information from Newsweek Magazine, August 21, 1995.)