| State: Texas | Number of Students: N/A |
| School Type: Charter Management Organization | Free and Reduced Lunch: 50.0% |
| Grade Level: 5-8 | English Language Learners: N/A |
School Context
This charter school opened a middle school last year and is opening a second middle school this fall to serve 5-8th grade. Eventually, they will open a high school as a feeder for our middle schools. They support a mixed income model, so students come from a broad range of backgrounds and skill levels. This makes personalized learning a critical part of our model when it comes to academics and social emotional needs.
State of Technology
Because their students come in from so many different backgrounds, they have a range of skill levels in our skill, many of whom are significantly behind in their math skills. Also, their state guidelines say that Response to Intervention (RTI) services need to be above and beyond the traditional math course. Therefore, they cannot call small group instruction part of RTI services. They need to find a way to fit RTI time into the school day, but without over burdening the capacity of our teachers. Therefore, they would like to use a digital curriculum solution during our learning lab time 47 minutes three days a week. This solution needs to incorporate the following: include instruction and practice; must be standards aligned; include progress monitoring assessments; have some data reports; and be adaptable. The content needs to cover students whose RIT scores range from Kindergarten to 5th grade, even though most of our students are in either 5th or 6th grade. Having adaptability is primarily important. Assignability is an added benefit. The most important thing for them is that they do not have to monitor every single student every single day on the program. It should respond and give students lessons and problems on their level according to their performance on the program.
Currently they have learning lab time, where they fit in RTI time. This year, they used iReady, but they thought the adaptability was not based on kids continued performance. It put kids on a predetermined pathway, but never changed that pathway as a student continued through the program. They need something that is much more adaptive ad responsive to the student's continued progress.
Tech Needs & Requirements
The teachers should be able to monitor progress of individual students, check in with those students and alter their pathways if needed. It is a nice to have, but not necessary. The biggest thing is that teachers should not have to be in and out of the program every day in order to see strong results. The students should be able to progress at their own pace as much as possible.
The tool must be adaptive, standards aligned and include both instruction and practice. The school provides students 1:1 Chromebooks. The tool should have the ability to export data is preferential, but not a non-negotiable. They have to show a certain number of data points for intervention period, so it is important that there are ongoing formative assessments built into the tool that can demonstrate the skills students are working on and their progress on those skills. When viewing data, it is most important to see each individual. Seeing data aggregated as a group is not as important.