In 2013 the Waterford Institute was awarded a validation grant from the Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) to fund the validation of "Utah Preparing Students Today for a Rewarding Tomorrow (UPSTART)", a pilot project that uses a computer-based preschool program to develop the school readiness skills of preschool children in rural Utah. Researchers used a randomized control trial design to evaluate the impact of the UPSTART program in advancing children's early literacy skills. Preschoolers in the experimental group were randomly assigned to the UPSTART Reading software program with a recommended use of 15 minutes per day, five days a week, while students assigned to the control group participated in the UPSTART Math software program with identical usage requirements. Two standardized tests, the Brigance Inventory for Early Development and the Preschool Early Literacy Indicators (PELI) were administered at baseline and a year later to assess early literacy skills: letter knowledge, phonological awareness, decoding, oral comprehension, visual and auditory discrimination, and oral language and vocabulary. Results from independent sample t-tests revealed that children in UPSTART Reading had higher scores on letter recognition, phoneme manipulation, phonological awareness, and ability to decode common words and pre-primer vocabulary compared to their counterparts enrolled in UPSTART Math. There were no differences between the two groups on subtests that measured visual or auditory discrimination, oral comprehension, vocabulary, and oral language. This report previews information to be submitted to the National Evaluation of i3 (NEi3) and provides the foundation for future impact analyses of the UPSTART preschool program. (author abstract)