| State: Washington DC | Number of Students: 1,420 |
| School Type: Charter Management Organization | Free and Reduced Lunch: N/A |
| Grade Level: 6-12 | English Language Learners: N/A |
School Context
This traditional public college-prep charter school system made up of four schools is looking to fast forward into the 21st century. They are just beginning to implement blended learning and slowly rolling out a 1:1 initiative. This charter believes that students will be the change agents in their community and world. The school population are largely first-generation college students who do not have the supports to navigate the college system and culture and the school is taking the responsibility to make these opportunities for students available.
State of Technology
The school reports that a significant portion of students have gaps in learning math skills. Some are significant while others are not. The school is frustrated with the current solution because feeling that it does not have a user-friendly interface and the reports are difficult to pull in time for action. They want to explore more intuitive platforms for identifying learning gaps with fidelity.
Currently, the school uses i-Ready and IXL. They feel these solutions are not appropriate for their students in that they fail to engage students with age-appropriate content. They want to make sure that students engage in age-appropriate content while also working on material that is traditionally taught in an elementary school grade level should that particular student need that remediation.
Tech Needs & Requirements
In their ideal solution, the school would have actionable data from the tool that would empower teachers to transform learning for remediation, intervention, and within the context of daily class. The school is looking for two significant solutions, a solely intervention tool that would be scaled to 400 students and a supplementary to re-think learning in all math classrooms. The school would ideally like to hear about how the tools satisfies the following ideal features; content that is scaled back to elementary math (3rd through 8th algebra and geometry, preferred); aligned to established national assessments; a way to compare scales; Criterion referenced to determine ability; provides resources or links for students to go to for extra help; has high rigor, but accessible to give students multiple opportunities for success; intuitive design/dashboard so that teachers can easily navigate the program so that teachers can accurately and efficiently aggregate student-level progress; has the ability to group students by skill-level to inform instruction more efficiently; helps facilitate the formation of instructional group based on data and student performance by domain and skill; students should be able to see where they are in skill and progress; and data should be exportable to CVS. Alongside, the school would like a customizable date range to look at data.
The school requests several vendor features. Can the vendor show evidence that their product is backed by research, such as fidelity metrics, especially for intervention tools? For example, how many lessons does it take for a student to progress to next skill level? Where can the administrator access product success data? The administrator is considering more than one program solution.
The students should be able to see where they are in skill progression, but it is not necessary for them to control content and pacing. If they have choices, then that would be a nice-to-have.
Teachers for the smaller intervention classes may act like coaches, helping students along the way. However, the hope is that enough work in the core classes will lead to better scores and so they will not need intervention courses. The teachers in the core class, will work the supplemental tool to complement the lesson to reinforce skills.
The tool must have age-appropriate design for high school students regardless of skill-level, actionable, easy to understand data for teachers to inform instruction and aligned to Common Core Standards. The school provides students with 1:1 Chromebooks. All data should be available to teachers and to administrators. They will use it to inform instruction. They would ideally like to be able to manipulate and customize reports in math as much as possible. The more flexible the tool, the better. All reports must be able to export to CSV. All data should be available to teachers and to administrators. They will use it to inform instruction. They would ideally like to be able to manipulate and customize reports in math as much as possible. The more flexible the tool, the better. All reports must be able to export to CSV. The tool must be Common Core aligned and integrate with Powerschool and Clever.