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State: Texas |
Number of Students: 214,891 |
| School Type: Public School District | Free and Reduced Lunch: 76.5% |
| Grade Level: PK-12 | English Language Learners: 30.3% |
School Context
This school has about 65% English Language Learner (ELL) students and about 90% of the student body is on free and reduced lunch. They are a Title 1 school. The school's priorities are centered around raising achievement for their ELL population. Currently, their biggest priority is for ELA support and intervention.
State of Technology
This school has identified serious learning gaps and declines in their students' reading scores due to the high percentage of ELL students, know that this is and will be a serious area of concern for the district. They are working on implementing more and more blended learning to use personalized learning as a way to reach struggling students, and as such, are looking for ELA content and supplementary tools to support all ELA classrooms, but they are also seeking an intervention tool as well, for those with serious learning gaps.
Teachers at this point have not had the time to make a concerted effort in implementing a truly personalized learning environment in the district. Currently, they are using the American Reading Company as a way to incorporate more independent reading, but scaled to individual students' reading level.
Tech Needs & Requirements
The tool(s) that this district is looking fall into two categories of needs, but are similar. Thus, if there is a way to combine these needs into one, that would be ideal; however, they understand that to solve these problems, they may need to provide a multi-tool solution for these needs. Companies should try to address each need either in concert or individually.
All core ELA classes are moving toward blended learning. The tool that needs to provide supplementary support, should be competency-based and support students individual needs. They are looking for tools that have formative assessment features that support multiple forms of student submission answers (open ended, multiple choice, etc). In this tool, students may have choice or agency with what they are learning, but the tool should provide data so that the teacher can assign (or the tool assigns) the appropriate level of content.
The second part of this ELA need is focused on intervention. They would like something like iStation but for high school students. They would like students to move through the content at their own pace and ideally teachers would like to form small groups based on data given from the tool.
Students should be able to see where they are in sequence and path. They should have a high degree of visibility of their own data. Students can work largely independently in the tool. If students could work collaboratively, that would be a nice to have.
Teachers will need a high level of visibility of data and the teacher-facing side should be user friendly. Teachers should be able to assign content. Teachers should be able to group students based on ability and progress if possible. They will be the primary facilitator of the tool, designing where and when students will be accessing the program.
The tool must offer engaging content. Also the tool must provide actionable data, provide teachers to have access to all their students' data and allow students need to see their own data. The tool needs to support competency-based standards and be tagged with State Standards. The school offers 1:1 HP Elitebooks. Data is important to the school. They was immediately actionable data with which they can use group students. As well, data should be downloadable to a CSV. The tools must integrate single sign on to itslearning.