Some Central Nebraska schools are participating in an experimental education program developed by the University of North Carolina. It's called Targeted Reading Intervention, or TRI.

Used by three elementary schools in Kearney, it's helping kindergartners and first graders learn
how to read.

"Really and truly, reading is the key to literacy," said Judy Shield, a first grade teacher at Meadowlark Elementary School. She's just one of the teachers in the district implementing the program.

Elementary schools all over the country are participating in TRI, but Kearney Public Schools is setting the curve.

"After [The University of North Carolina] did research on the first year, our scores blew the tops off anything they'd done all over the U.S." said Shield.

In the program, students get 15 minutes of 1-on-1 interaction with a teacher every day  until the student shows marked improvement.

"I try to keep it as challenging as possible," said Shield,"but yet at their level of feeling comfortable of meeting success."

It seems simple enough, but it's giving kids the step up they need.

Mark Stute is the Principal at Meadowlark, and he couldn't be more convinced of the program's success. "It's definitely an advantage having our teachers working with some students that don't get extra help and it's giving them that advantage. What we've seen is TRI is taking those kids to the next level and above the benchmark and putting them in the higher category."

The culmination of dozens of teaching strategies, TRI is bringing education into the 21st
century.

"When I started 46 years ago," recalled Shield,"children came in to first grade and they were not able to read at all. Nowadays, they're exposed to a couple years of preschool and all other kinds of outside stimulus and it's a changed world."

It's because of those changes that literacy is more important now than ever.

"If children can't read, they will not succeed," said Shield. "As an educator, I want my kids to be able to read, and I want them to be successful."

One of the success stories of the program; last year, a student in Special Ed was introduced into TRI. This year, he's at the top of his class.

Although only three schools in Kearney use the program, there are plans to implement it district wide as soon as next year.