| State: Texas | Number of Students: 35,246 |
| School Type: Public School District | Free and Reduced Lunch: 55.8% |
| Grade Level: PK-12 | English Language Learners: 34.6% |
School Context
This small district is located near Houston, TX, as serves about 700 students. They have a large population of LEP students and those who are in a low socio-economic bracket. They have educational goals of closing the gaps for their LEP students in reading and in math.
State of Technology
This district discovered through a freemium model of a math tool that their students are able to accelerate faster in school when there is structured differentiation; therefore, in order to close the skill gap in math skills, they want to use a data-driven, differentiation model and a tool to support that.
Texas provides and pays for some software for the districts; however, this has been met with mixed results. The administrator believes that while implementation is part of the problem, they just need a more structured approach to math intervention and they are looking for something that is truly adaptive.
Tech Needs & Requirements
This district plans on implementing a station rotation model where students attend class and have about 30 minutes at each station. They are looking for a tool with several features.The tool should be adaptive so that it meets students where they are. They are ultimately looking for something very engaging, possibly gamified. The tool should be adaptive, creating a learning path for the student. Teachers, however, need to be able to override the path. This is a non-negotiable.The tool should have a variety of ways for students to interact with the content. Question types should include and not be limited to multiple choice answering options. They do not want the assessments/questions to look like test prep. If there are process questions that would be a nice to have. The tool should provide students with feedback if they miss a question. This could look like helper text, link to a scaffold, or even something that explain why the student may have missed the question. Ideally they would like the tool to present information in multiple ways so that each student can learn in the way that helps them best understand.The tool should provide scaffolding. If there is scaffolding like a vocabulary helper, visuals, or read aloud for LEP students, that would be "close to a non-negotiable." The tool should be designed to help students build skills beyond what is expected. They are hoping the tool goes beyond simply offering intervention or gap-filling.The district would like for the tool to offer a variety of reporting options. They would like a teacher dashboard so that teachers could quickly and accurately address student progress. All questions should be aligned with TEKS standards.
While the teachers want to teach students to have control over their learning, they currently believe that controlled choice is best. Therefore, students could have some choice over elements offered in the tool, but largely the tool should control pace and path.
Teachers will be leading students through stations. Teachers will work with small groups to reinforce difficult concepts. Teachers will use this tool to inform instruction and hopefully to fill learning gaps for all students.
The tool must: be TEKS aligned; provide adaptive software with the ability for teacher override; provide close to real time data so that teachers can create intervention strategies; provide scaffolding for LEP and struggling students built into the tool; and integrates with its LMS and Google apps. The district offers Chromebooks for this 1:1 station rotation. The tool must provide progress and growth data, data by class, grade level, and student, progress in terms of RTI tiers and TEKS objectives data. The data must be available to download to CSV. The tool must integrate with its LMS and Google apps.