California Charter School Hopes to Build Grammar Stamina

California Charter School Hopes to Build Grammar Stamina

An elementary school within a large district is rolling out a blended learning model in grades 2-5 in order to differentiate instruction so that they can proactively close the gap in skills for lower performing students.

State: California Number of Students: 239
School Type: Charter School Free and Reduced Lunch: 70.3%
Grade Level: K-8 English Language Learners: 43.1%

School Context

This school district serves roughly 47,000 students who attend five high schools, ten middle schools, 33 elementary schools, and two alternative learning centers. They are focused on student achievement as measured by growth, focusing on core instruction while providing opportunities for intervention and enrichment. They serve a large percentage of economically disadvantaged students who often start off behind their peers, and therefore, this district is piloting a blended learning initiative for their elementary schools, focused on student achieving success in math.


State of Technology

While students, teachers, and principals are working as hard as they can, working harder is not resulting in changes in their math classrooms. Teachers and students alike want to know where students are performing in the mastery of specific objectives and content and where they need to go in real time to both challenge and support all learners.

The existing model is one size fits all math, whole group instruction with little software support and this is not meeting the individual needs of their students as evidenced by their STAAR rate of growth in Math.


Tech Needs & Requirements

They would ideally need software with actionable reporting data they can see in real time so their teachers can make instructional shifts as soon as possible. In order to effectively implement this station rotation model, the school is looking for a tool that encompasses as many of the following features as possible. In this model, students will be rotating through stations where one station will focus on gap-filling through adaptive software. Therefore, the technology solution they are looking for is adaptive, able to accelerate beyond 5th grade and if possible, to accommodate accelerated students. The tool should provide scaffolding, but makes it so that students are not quickly going for the help button immediately. They want to avoid learned helplessness.

There are several other features that they are looking for in an ideal solution. The tool should provide resources for teachers who may want to develop their content area knowledge. The tool should have TEKS aligned data and questions. The tool should support ELL like read-alouds. The tool should group students based on TEKS.

Students should have little control over the path and sequence, but they should be able to see where they are in progress of skill-acquisition.

Teachers will primarily be focused on small group instruction and will not require to override the pace and sequence in this tool. They will use the data generated from the tool to build interventions to help students.

The tool must: be TEKS Aligned, accelerate students to middle-school level math; be adaptive to student skill-level; operate in real time (or close to it); and provide progress reports. The company should be able to speak to this non-negotiable directly by providing an example of how the reporting is actionable. The district provides Chromebooks 1:1. The tool must provide teachers with progress reporting on the TEKS objectives, time on task and a report that can shows whether students are guessing. In additional to the above, the tool must provide administrators with reports by teacher, by class and by student. The district does not require technology requirements or integration. They currently use TAC and EschoolPlus.

*Content From 2016

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