| State: New Jersey | Number of Students: 1,368 |
| School Type: Charter Management Organization | Free and Reduced Lunch: N/A |
| Grade Level: PK-12 | English Language Learners: N/A |
School Context
This is a highly influential charter school network of schools that supports schools across multiple states. They focus on developing a personalized learning model that utilizes adaptive playlists and student agency. They have also built their own learning management system and consult with other organizations to adopt their model across the country.
State of Technology
The network of schools has tried several tools that did not fit well into their model. Additionally, their data revealed that teachers need more resources to help students see more gains in their literacy skills.
Schools in this network have a great group of curriculum writers and teachers that have developed the breakdown of literacy standards by microschool, but need guidance around a logical progression of skills. They use a variety of supplemental tools to guide student practice, but are now looking for something a bit more robust
Tech Needs & Requirements
This network would like to build out their ELA resource tools, relying on a few to build their foundational curriculum. The elementary schools in this network would like students to work on being independent learners from the get go and hope that a few good tools will help them build these skills alongside their literacy skills.They are looking for content that has a scope and sequence built in. While curriculum writers will be putting together the modules, they are looking for the tool to provide structure to the sequence of skills. This tool would be the foundation and heart of the lesson, but the writers could add to the lesson with supplemental tools if need be. They need the content to be accessible and scaffolded for nonreaders It needs to have the ability to change lexile or reading levels for the needs of every individual student. They are particularly interested in tools that help build phonemic awareness. It is really important that this tool be aligned with Common Core Standards. They will be tracking this to determine skill mastery.Ideally, this tool has an open API to integrate with their LMS, SPARK. They would like to be able to break up the content units into modules. If there is no way to integrate into their LMS, but can still be modified to accommodate modularization, that is a good work around.
Students will work independently on this tool. They should not have much control over the pace and content within the tool, but they should be able to navigate independently.
Teachers will be coaching small groups of students in reading groups. So while students are working on this tool on their own, the teacher will be working with groups or individual students. Teachers will primarily be looking at student performance within the tool to determine intervention strategies.
The tool must be available for iPads. The tool must provide a list of content tagged with standards (CCSS). The vendor must provide excellent customer service and use train the trainer method of training, if needed for professional development. The tool must provide a strong, sequence and scope for content. The tool should be modularized to fit their instructional model. The tool must provide scaffolding and geared toward non-readers. Also, the tool must provide level setting capabilities to account for different reading levels. The network provides iPads and some Chromebooks. The network would like to see data for progress toward goals and gap analysis of struggling students. The networks wants integration with custom LMS preferred.