| State: California | Number of Students: 111 |
| School Type: County Office of Education | Free and Reduced Lunch: 66.4% |
| Grade Level: PK-12 | English Language Learners: 26.1% |
School Context
This school supports 6 - 12th graders who have been expelled or come from the juvenile hall program. 35% of students are on an Individual Education Plan (IEP), 80% qualify for free and reduced lunch and 30-40% are English language learners.
State of Technology
Many students are several grade levels below where they should be, particularly in reading and writing. The average reading levels range from 3rd to 5th grade. The goal is to establish basic competency so that students feel confident reading and writing.
They currently use Achieve 3000. Teachers have students use the program at different times throughout the the week. However, this program does not seem to be moving students along because students are not engaged. The content is outdated and it lacks multi-media enrichment. In a lot of ways, it is a never ending test for reading comprehension. They need something that is engaging to students and gets them to actively learn and practice reading skills.
Tech Needs & Requirements
The ideal solution would involve a tool that students could work on 3 days a week for 40 minutes with relatively little teacher involvement. The tool would be Common Core aligned in some way and cover vocabulary, basic reading and close reading skills. The program must have engaging nonfiction content that incorporates different multimedia elements and content that is relevant to middle to high school age levels. Ideally this is a tool that can help us close the gap between very remedial skills to fluent readers.
Students should have control over the pace.
Teachers will have very little control over the tool, but be on-hand to support students that are struggling. It would be nice if the tool included supplementary in-class activities that the teacher could use during their regular instruction time so that they can build a connection between what the learn on the tool and what they learn in class, but this is not required.
The school provides students with 1:1 Chromebooks. The tool must contain engaging content that's age appropriate (middle and high school), cover Common Core reading standards, cover a wide breadth of skill levels (grades 3-12) and be web based. This school would like to be able to track how students are improving their skills through the tool. Ideally, the too would include some sort of pretest and post-test that they could use to benchmark their growth, however, this is not required. The tool must be web-based