| State: New York | Number of Students: 449 |
| School Type: Charter School | Free and Reduced Lunch: 70.0% |
| Grade Level: PK-12 | English Language Learners: 6.0% |
School Context
This public charter school's mission is to prepare students for high-performing high schools, colleges and beyond through a rigorous academic program that develops critical thinkers who demonstrate a love of learning. They serve a student body that is 98% on free and reduced lunch, 24% have IEP services.
State of Technology
As this school grows and evolves, the English teachers have been seeing an increase in difficulty differentiating for students at varying reading levels. The teachers feel they cannot specialize instruction or provide students with the personal attention they need.
Currently, teachers are paired with co-teachers and differentiation occurs through the co-teachers' shared planning. However, the school and the teachers agree that implementing a station rotation model, where a class can be divided into three groups - two groups with teachers and one with computers, will help teachers individualize and personalize their students' education more effectively. They also feel that the software programs they currently use are good, but they want more engaging content to engage student interest while meeting them at their appropriate skill level.
Tech Needs & Requirements
This school is looking for ELA software for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade, ideally single software solutions that accommodate all three grades, that can help personalize their reading in terms of both content are interest and skill-level. They are seeking tool(s) that focus on youth requiring remediation and on youth that are above grade level. The tool should be designed so that students can easily engage with the material without much assistance from the teacher. Additionally they would like software that provides the biggest bang for the buck and are considering purchasing multiple tools that could be implemented simultaneously as long as it is at a reasonable cost. In terms of assessment and data, the school requires that the tool be able to show student progress. It also should be aligned to literacy standards so that they can clearly see what students are working on and where they might need support. They would ultimately like a tool that can be flexible by changing lexile level and if it adapted to their skill-level that would be a nice to have.
Students do not need to have control over content and pacing, but if they have the choice it would be nice so students do not need to be working on the same thing at the same time.
Teachers are facilitators, and could assign work to students or groups of students within the tool. They should be able to look at and analyze the data for their students, and modify lessons to meet the needs of their class.
The tool must provide content, have an formative assessment feature and report on progress on basic literacy standards. The school provides Chromebooks on a cart. For this tool, it would be 1:1 for those students in the station. The tool should provide progress monitoring. However, the school will definitely use the data the tool provides as a means of intervention. They believe that the more data the better. The school does not have any requirements. They do use TeacherEase.