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State: Rhode Island |
Number of Students: 23,983 |
| School Type: Public School District | Free and Reduced Lunch: 86.0% |
| Grade Level: PK-12 | English Language Learners: 25.0% |
School Context
This is a new public high school being rolled out this year with 100 9th graders. It will eventually grow to 400 9-12th graders in the next four year. This school has a high number of English Language Learners and many students are significantly below level in math and reading.
State of Technology
They are trying to give students independence, remediation and acceleration. However, it is hard for high school teachers to do it on their own and create all that differentiated content. They are creating a new model that personalizes learning through an autonomous learning model. Students move at their own pace through playlists to learn content. For our new model, they are looking to create playlists of students that will live on their LMS, Empower. While they are accessing the Summit playlists, they also want to infuse adaptive software that can help students with remediation. It is also hard to create fluid groups of students and level kids without the right kind of data. They want to be able to give students the right level of independent work so they are not frustrated, while giving teachers time to focus on students who need extra support. Students who will be in this model have never been exposed to so much independence. That is why it is also important that whatever tool the put in front of them scaffolds and guides them through the path of learning.
While this will be the school's first year, the approach most of them are used to involves the traditional chalk and talk lecture style. However, students are not graduating under this model and they are not filling in their learning gaps. That is why it is so important that they are able to diagnose learning gaps, support students to find the right resources for those gaps and deliver it to them.
Tech Needs & Requirements
An ideal solution for would be something that is either adaptive or offers differentiated materials through high levels of scaffolding. The program should support students to learn foundational math knowledge, remediate basic algebra and allow them to move through material at their own pace. It is important that they practice computational skills and practical application. They will use this solution from 30 - 90 minutes each day. It would be nice if there was some voice and choice involved, but they can solve for that in other ways the first couple years. If that component exists, it would be nice to know. It is also important that the tool is highly engaging and delivers content to a 9th grade audience.
Ideally, having some voice and choice built in is great because it is important that students are owning their work as much as possible. Most importantly, students should have access to their own data.
The role of the teacher depends on the level of adaptability. They are flexible. Ideally, they would have some control over the sequencing or be able to make tweaks to the path when necessary. However, they do not want to count on teachers to have to customize everything. They need to be able to set it up and let kids go, without much teacher involvement. If there is flexibility to have teachers get more involved, that is good too.
The school offers students 1:1 Chromebooks. The tool must be highly scaffolded, must support foundational math knowledge and basic algebra, must allow students to move at their own pace and must support remediation when necessary. They would like to track mastery data. They will use data to regroup and further target instruction. If it is the right tool, then it is ok if it does not do CSV exports, but CSV exports are preferential. They would like to be able to import the data into their LMS, Empower, to track mastery there. Google single sign on would be a plus or if there was anyway to build an API to have a single sign on into Empower. However, these are not a non-negotiable.