BrainHoney’s open API enables seamless integration with Gregg Rosann’s enterprise technology. Integration is quick and easy.
The Making of a National Curriculum: Setting Standards
by Cheri Lucas
In striving for more accountability in schools, policy-makers keep bumping up against the same problem: a lack of consistency between what we expect children to learn from state to state. If there is no nationally accepted curriculum, then there can be no national standards by which to measure student learning. A new project called the Common Core State Standards Initiative is out to change all that, with a set of proposed standards in math and language arts for kindergarten through grade 12. The goal of these standards is to establish more uniform expectations for students across the nation, in order to make them more college and career ready. Forty-eight states are involved in the effort, led by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, the Council of Chief State School Officers, Achieve, ACT, and the College Board.
This is the first step in what will be a long process to reach an agreed upon set of national standards, but, according to the Parent Teacher Association, it’s a step in the right direction. “The great benefit of the standards is that they will ensure a level playing field among states, school districts, and schools that will give all students the opportunity to be ready for their college and career,” said PTA President Charles J. Saylors.
Some believe that this will lead to greater access for parents. “Right now, parents are informed of progress, but not part of the instructional conversation,” said Mark Luetzelschwab, PhD, the senior vice president of product development and marketing at BrainHoney, an organization that assists teachers in organizing lesson plans, tracking student progress, and ensuring they’re teaching to state standards. “Having access to these standards makes it easier for you to be part of the instructional conversation. If you knew what objectives your child is covering this week, and were provided relevant information for these objectives, you could be significantly more involved in your child’s learning,” said Luetzelschwab.
What would these proposed standards mean for your child? In language arts, your child would be expected to show mastery in reading, writing, speaking and listening – interrelated skills needed for success not just in college, but also in the workplace. Students must read and evaluate literature; the document cites the novel Pride and Prejudice as an “illustrative text,” or an example of material that shows the level of complexity your child must tackle when she reads. (The document authors chose the Jane Austen novel as exemplary material because of its multiple plotlines, style and word choice particular to a time period, and subtleties in the characters’ relationships.) Other illustrative texts include a Walt Whitman passage, a sample business memo, nonfiction (or “informational text”), and multimedia sources, such as a web version of the front page of the New York Times.
“Text analysis is a critical skill, and these are all valid examples of text that need to be analyzed in college and the workplace,” said Luetzelschwab. Other material he suggests for textual analysis includes “threaded” discussions, email chains, and disconnected conversations – day-to-day correspondence your child will encounter in college and in the 21st-century workplace.
In mathematics, students would be expected to develop a deep understanding and mastery of linear and exponential functions, familiarity with other families of functions, and apply algebraic, modeling, and problem solving skills – but not develop in-depth technical mastery. According to the authors’ research, the U.S. curriculum in math is a “mile wide and an inch deep,” compared to standards in other countries in which students master fewer topics. Surveys of college faculty show the need to move away from high school math courses that survey advanced topics, for example, and toward a deeper understanding and higher mastery of fewer, but more fundamental skills at the core of advanced mathematics.
This proposed shift in mathematics means that your child would be expected to have a solid grasp of essential math concepts, giving her the foundation she needs to apply knowledge to real-world problems. “One of the most critical skills we can teach is the connection of the abstract world of math to the physical world,” said Luetzelschwab. ‘It’s very different to ask someone to find the maximum y-value of a quadratic function than to ask them to figure out how high they can throw a baseball based on measurements – and then make them validate it, model it, and find out why or why not the model and reality match up.”
While language arts and math standards are divided into sections “for the sake of clarity,” the document says, the skills outlined are truly interrelated. Reading, writing, and speaking and listening, for example, are modes of communication applied at once. But while all skills are interconnected, breaking down the objectives into categories is reasonable, said Luetzelschwab, to simplify the process of measuring if the objectives are being met. “However, just because the objectives are organized in this manner does not mean the curriculum should also be organized in these neat little buckets,” he added. With these standards, your child’s teachers should align their activities to standards from multiple categories and implement a multi-model strategy that includes observation, homework, quizzes, and standardized assessments to track her progress, he suggested.
According to the draft, students who meet the core standards are ready to compete and collaborate in a global, media-saturated environment. “The skills outlined are clearly aligned to skills that modern employers are looking for and the skills that are required to excel in college-level courses,” said Luetzelschwab. But what’s lacking, he added, are objectives addressing cooperation, teamwork, leadership, information retrieval and analysis, creativity, and problem solving.
While the proposed Common Core Standards help define what your child is learning, standards alone do not change things, cautions Luetzelschwab. “If you look at improvement in five steps – define, measure, analyze, improve, and control – the standards provide the most critical ‘define’ step,” he said.
So, what happens next? Research- and evidence-supported feedback from the public is being accepted until October 21st. After this, the standards will be reviewed by a committee. To put in your two cents on the standards initative, click here.
Cheri Lucas was a writing aide at Corte Madera Middle School for six years. She is currently working as a freelance writer and editor in San Francisco.
Here’s what Robyn Bagley, Board Chair for Parents Choice in Education, has to say about BrainHoney:
Parents for Choice in Education is dedicated to ensuring every child has equal access to a quality education by empowering parents, increasing choice, and promoting innovative solutions to Utah’s educational challenges.
Vision
We envision a day when all forms of education are open to parents so that every child in Utah has equal access to the quality education that allows them to reach their full potential.
Values
Learn more about Parents for Choice in Education
Although this article is from September 2006, I think it does well in highlighting the parent-directed mentality coming into conflict with public school mentality and regulations.
Posted on: Wednesday, 20 September 2006
Charter School Survives Rough Debut, Looks Toward Smoother Year:
TWINDLY BRIDGE: Parents and School Staff Struggled to Set Roles.
By Becky Stoppa, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska
snip:
Sep. 20–WASILLA — While an internal power struggle and low test participation made for a bumpy first year at Twindly Bridge Charter School, hopes run high that a new principal can help the school right its course.
Twindly Bridge serves about 210 students. Its doors opened in August 2005. It is one of three charter schools operating in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District. Its founder, Anna Roys, said the school blends the independence of home-school study with traditional public-school structure.
Twindly Bridge parents choose a curriculum and manage most of their children’s education at home. They must develop a learning plan for each child and maintain monthly contact with one of the school’s two teachers.
Parents must submit samples of their children’s work in math and writing each quarter and see to it that their children complete all state-mandated tests each year.
Twindly Bridge in turn offers workshops for parents and on-site activities for students to enhance home-based programs. It offers guidance and support in helping students meet state standards and fulfill high school graduation requirements.
“The whole idea was to try to bring into the school what the home-school community has learned and to bring into the home-school community the best of what (traditional) schools have learned,” Roys said.
Richard Webb, chairman of the Academic Policy Committee, said Twindly Bridge parents, teachers, supervisor and governing board spent the first year struggling to define their respective roles and deciding how best to run the school.
“Some people were saying we need more structure, we need more accountability, we need to be in classes more. Others were saying, ‘No, we need to be independent,’ ” Webb said.
Twindly Bridge determines much of that on its own, said assistant superintendent George Troxel. But it consumed anywhere from five to 20 hours of the School District administration’s time last year, he said.
Troubles at Twindly Bridge proved so time-consuming that district administrators cited them as one reason the School Board should deny an application for a fourth charter school, Highland Tech Valley High Charter School, in August.
snip:
But Twindly Bridge was at a disadvantage, Roys acknowledges. Roys, who wrote the school plan and was the school’s supervisor last year, has no public school experience. (end of snips)
Other articles for background information:
Home-school support is on the way
March 25, 2005
JOEL DAVIDSON/Frontiersman reporter
MAT-SU – Public home-schooling in the Valley is popular and growing fast. Roughly 1,100 kids are enrolled this year in the Mat-Su Borough School District’s home-based education programs and at least 200 more are expected to join when the new Twindly Bridge Charter School opens in the fall. In an effort to accommodate families that want to home school..
snip:
Parents who opt to home school through the MSB School District receive assistance from certified teachers to develop curriculum and track student progress. Unlike independent home school, which is also very popular in the Valley, public home-school parents receive government funding at 80 percent of the cost it takes to educate a standard public school student.Public home-school kids are legally public school students and are required to take state-certified tests to demonstrate academic progress. Independent home-schooling, however, is largely religion-based, Lochner said, and parents are free to teach whatever they want, with no state regulations.
When it comes to testing, the devil’s in the details
August 17, 2007
By John R. Moses
snip:
Twindly-Bridge Charter School had another kind of statistical glitch – not enough students who are counted as “economically disadvantaged” showed up for testing. While the actual population of that subgroup is 28, information about which students are economically disadvantaged is confidential, McCauley said. Every subgroup must have 95 percent of its members present for the test scores to count. Twindly-Bridge’s principal was given some simple advice for next year – do whatever you have to do to get all students in school on testing days.
© Annette for National Charter School Watch Blog, 2008. |
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Orlando, FL (January 13, 2010) – During public emergencies such as hurricanes, blizzards, floods, fires, or even a flu outbreak, keeping students on track with learning is the primary focus for educators. The new Learning Continuity solution was unveiled today by Florida Virtual School, an established leader in developing and providing virtual K-12 education solutions, and Agilix Labs, a leader in individualized online learning. This groundbreaking solution gives schools, districts, and states quick, convenient and efficient access to fully accredited online courses. Through Learning Continuity, students are able to avoid interruptions to their education and maintain learning in a completely safe, virtual environment.
The Learning Continuity solution blends the award-winning online course content created by Florida Virtual School with the BrainHoney personalized learning platform from Agilix to provide educators with a new and better way to deliver just-in-time, individualized learning. Designed for use in the traditional classroom, an online environment, or a blended classroom, the focus of Learning Continuity is to keep students on track regardless of the circumstances.
Northern Indiana’s Crown Point High School (CPHS) has been using the combination of the BrainHoney platform and FLVS courses to do just that.
At CPHS, FLVS online courses are offered in three ways: virtual, “inside the walls”, and as supplemental instruction. They have allowed students to get ahead during the summer, enabled students to free up critical time blocks during the school year for extracurricular activities or jobs, and provided an alternative to traditional textbooks in difficult subject areas.
The transition to online learning was seamless for the participating CPHS instructors. “I’m one year from retirement, and wanted to try out online teaching before I called it quits”, said Jan Lowery, a math teacher at CPHS. “The transition from teaching face-to-face to online was really easy with BrainHoney and the embedded FLVS Geometry course. I was surprised that I actually got to know my students better teaching online classes through BrainHoney than I did in the classroom.”
“Virtual courses allow us to give schools, districts and state organizations options for delivering all the necessary content when schools have been closed due to a natural disaster or pandemic,” explained Andy Ross, Chief of Sales and Marketing for Florida Virtual School. “By combining FLVS’ award-winning courses with new technology, we will be able to handle many situations where a students’ learning would otherwise be interrupted.”
All lesson plans and course content are stored in BrainHoney, making it easy for substitute teachers to step into a classroom. Learning Continuity allows teachers to lead instruction remotely so students are not without their teachers for extended periods of time.
“We believe technology presents powerful solutions to solving many of the challenges today’s educators face, especially when it comes to students missing from the classroom. In this offering, we have balanced the needs of both students and educators to create a dynamic, easy-to-use offering,” explained Dr. Mark Luetzelschwab, Sr. Vice President of Agilix.
All of FLVS’ courses are available in the Learning Continuity program and teachers use BrainHoney to map lessons and course modules with specific state standards instantly. When implementing the program, FLVS will hold a training call for all key stakeholders and provide eTeacher’s Guides for all courses. Teachers and staff will be encouraged to participate in two online courses by Agilix, “Learning with BrainHoney” and “Teaching with BrainHoney” to understand how to use the learning systems. Teachers can also educate parents and community stakeholders using web-based tools.
Beyond providing support for emergency learning needs, the Learning Continuity solution can be used to keep students on-pace when they are on short or extended leaves due to illness, surgery, sports participation, or talent events. Enrollment in the program can be on an “as needed” basis and can support students who are absent from the traditional classroom for a few days, a semester, or an entire year.
About BrainHoney
Agilix Labs, Inc. is transforming education through BrainHoney, its personalized learning platform. It is the latest offering from the creative team that has delivered innovative educational solutions for nearly a decade, providing student-centered, objective-aligned learning that improves student achievement, increases teacher productivity, delivers administrative insight, and enables parental involvement. Based on an open technology architecture, BrainHoney is the only learning solution that works seamlessly across classroom, hybrid, and online environments. Agilix delivers its software applications to hundreds of thousands of users in countries worldwide. Founded in 2001 by the team that created Folio and MyFamily.com, Agilix is based in Orem, Utah, USA. For more information please visit http://www.agilix.com.
About Florida Virtual School
Florida Virtual School (www.flvs.net) is an established leader in developing and providing virtual K-12 education solutions to students in Florida, the U.S., and the world. A nationally-recognized e-Learning model and recipient of numerous awards, FLVS was founded in 1997 and was the country’s first, state-wide Internet-based public high school. Today, FLVS serves students in grades K-12 and provides a variety of custom solutions for schools and districts to meet student needs.
Over at Homeschool2.0, Lynn blogs about Frontier Academy’s own legal analysis of Alaska’s proposed regulations. This is worth reading if you have been following this situation of proposed regulations for the statewide and in-district correspondence schools (this includes charter schools or at least some of them). It will be interesting to see how this all pans out.
© Annette for National Charter School Watch Blog, 2008. |
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Lynn at Homeschool2.0 has a post up about a recent question and answer period the DEED (Alaska’s state education department) held concerning the proposed regulations that would affect in-district programs. The bottom line of the reasoning for the proposed regulations is the resemblance to the statewide programs and as a way to establish “equity”. That seems like shoddy reasoning to me.
And there are people who wonder why homeschool advocates want to make a distinction between public schooling at home and homeschooling? Yes, there are those in government who don’t want to complicate their minds with details. They reason like this, “Call them the same thing, regulate them the same way; and now it’s fair.”
Would it really be a stretch of imagination to think Alaska’s DEED could apply the same reasoning to its independent homeschoolers and those who call themselves “public homeschoolers”?
© Annette for National Charter School Watch Blog, 2008. |
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That’s right, we have telemarketers invading our homes and now virtual school recruiters are invading our churches on Sunday.
New online school targets Latinos
iSucceed Virtual High School also seeks to help at-risk kids get ahead
By Jessie Bonner
The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 05/18/2008 12:37:43 AM MDT
snip:
BOISE, Idaho – The state’s newest virtual charter school is expected to go online this fall, but only after a strategic campaign to recruit Hispanics and teenagers at risk of quitting or getting kicked out of public high schools.
The nonprofit online charter school is part of Insight Schools, a Portland-based company that operates one of the largest networks of virtual high schools in country. With schools in Oregon, California, Washington and Wisconsin, Insight plans to open more this fall in Idaho, Minnesota and Kansas.
snip:
Green wants to maintain a Latino student population of at least 20 percent. As part of their recruiting strategy, administrators bought ads on Spanish radio stations, advertised classes with bilingual brochures and drafted Latino community leaders to serve on its board of directors.
When Green learned a large portion of the St. Mary’s Catholic Church congregation in downtown Boise was Latino, he wrangled an appointment to speak after Sunday services.
”If there was any way to get me to go to mass,” said Green, who is not Catholic, ”this would be it.” (end of snips, see link above)
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At first glance, Crown Point High School (CPHS) might seem like a typical high school. But the 2,500 students and 120 faculty members that walk past the Bulldog mascot every day know differently. CPHS exceeds state and national education standards, blurs the lines between classroom instruction and online learning, and integrates college courses into the high school curriculum.
Welcome to hybrid high… and the future of education. Engage, Experience, Excel
Crown Point High School has three strategic initiatives: Engage, Experience and Excel. First year students are quickly engaged to ensure a smooth transi-tion into high school and to establish a plan for lifelong success. Students then participate in effective and relevant educational experiences that incorporate a number of learning technologies and authentic instruction. Finally, upper-level students are given the opportunity to excel and earn college credit through innovative academic partnerships with local universities.
“It would be impossible to meet our goals without academic technology,” explains Dr. Eric Ban, principal of CPHS since 2008. “The most critical technol-ogy for us at this point is BrainHoney because it allows us to enhance our tra-ditional classroom instruction in order to address the needs of the 21st century learner.” Today’s student needs a more flexible schedule to participate in ex-tracurricular activities, demands 24×7 access to class materials, and expects a modern learning experience. “Our teachers have found a number of ways to utilize BrainHoney’s capabilities to their advantage and we are all meeting our goals,” said Ban.
Grass Roots Implementation Aligned with School Initiatives
Jeremy Walker, Latin teacher, Latin Club Sponsor and Director of Learning Technology was given the task of training teachers on BrainHoney. “We didn’t force teachers to use BrainHoney or require them to use the system in any specific way. Everyone clearly understands the overall goals and each teacher who chose to work with BrainHoney found a way to make it work best for them. My job is to make sure that they have the support they need to succeed.”
Over the summer, teachers were introduced to BrainHoney by participating in online collaborations with their colleagues and with Dr. Ban. Once they were acclimated to BrainHoney, each teacher decided how BrainHoney would help them the most.
Adding Online Course Offerings
Dean of Students Chip Pettit spearheaded the initiative for adding online learn-ing to the school’s course offering. “It was a logical next step for us,” said Pettit. Students needed more flexible schedules and wanted a way of getting ahead as part of our Excel initiative.” BrainHoney, with its tight integration of Florida Virtual High School (FLVS) courses made it extremely easy. “And, of course, it really is 21st century learning,” Pettit added.
At CPHS, online courses are offered in three ways: virtual, “inside the walls”, and as supplemental instruction. They have allowed students to get ahead during the summer, enabled students to free up critical time blocks during the school year for extracurricular activities or jobs, and provided an alternative to traditional textbooks in difficult subject areas.
The transition to online learning was smooth for the participating CPHS instructors. “I’m one year from retirement, and wanted to try out online teaching before I called it quits”, said Jan Lowery, a math teacher at CPHS.
“The transition to online learning was smooth for the participating CPHS instructors. “I’m one year from retirement, and wanted to try out online teaching before I called it quits”, said Jan lowery, a math teacher at CPHS. “The transition from teaching face to face to online was really easy with BrainHoney and the embedded FLVS course. I was surprised that I actually got to know my students better teaching online classes through BrainHoney than I did in the classroom.
“I’ve only met one of my online students, even though all of them are here in the building right now”, said Dan Hartman, who is teaching an Economics course both online and in the classroom. “I keep track of the online students in BrainHoney and make sure that they continue to make progress. I’ve offered up face to face support but only one student has taken me up on it so far!”
The integrated Florida Virtual Computer Science course is used as supple-mental material to the existing textbooks because it provides an alternative, more student-friendly approach to the subject and lets the teacher focus more time on the students.
Supplementing Classroom Instruction
Science teachers Jerome Flewelling, Kelly Loving, and Bryan Trippeer are each using BrainHoney to supplement their classroom instruction in unique ways.
Flewelling has aligned his instructional activities to Indiana State Standards and uses frequent checks to track his students’ progress against those stan-dards. “Using BrainHoney to build quizzes for students and then monitoring their individual progress has allowed me to connect with my students like never before,” said Flewelling.
Meanwhile, Loving uses BrainHoney to post all of his class assignments On-line. “I love being able to tell my kids, ‘it’s all up there, go find it,’” said Loving. “And it’s great to have a central place to direct students who were absent and need to make up assignments or catch up on reading.”
For Trippeer, BrainHoney is a great way to reinforce lessons taught in the classroom. Making class notes, worksheets, and videos readily available to his students, Trippeer has seen dramatic improvements in quiz and test scores. “BrainHoney has allowed me to give my students a repeat of the information I’m teaching,” said Trippeer. “It’s the ideal backup.”
Transferring Responsibility: No More Excuses
With BrainHoney, teachers take on the role of facilitator and students are given a degree of control over their education — and that can be a powerful and motivating concept. Students can participate in online discussions with their peers, access course materials and submit assignments without the oversight of a teacher.
“I really enjoy the ability to give students class material on BrainHoney,” said Jeremy Walker. “Students can’t make excuses anymore about why they didn’t complete an assignment or why they didn’t do an assigned reading. Having those things readily available to students allows for more class time and more actual learning can take place during which students are more engaged.”
Dual Credit Courses
As part of the “Excel” initiative, Crown Point has integrated the ACT college readiness standards into its core curriculum and offers dual credit courses through an innovative partnership with Purdue University Calumet and Indiana University Northwest that allows students to earn college credit at a savings of up to 90%.
“BrainHoney allows sponsoring professors at each institution the oppor-tunity to engage with our teachers and enables them to empirically defend the hypothesis that a credit earned by a high school student in a high school classroom is equivalent to a credit earned at the college by a college student,” said Dr. Ban. “BrainHoney’s flexibility and the knowledge of the Agilix team has really helped us create an innovative and scalable model for dual credit in the high school.”
A Look Aheead
What is most exciting for faculty at CPHS is not only what BrainHoney is offer-ing, but how the school will continue to find new ways to utilize the tools.
“As we continue to use BrainHoney we will be able to establish new meth-odologies and processes based on what teachers learn from it,” said Principal Dr. Eric Ban. “And the more our teachers learn, the better our students will continue to learn and achieve their goals.”
CPHS is the new Hybrid High and BrainHoney is the education tool of the future. Together they are changing the landscape of education as we know it.
Met some of the teachers and administrators at CrownPoint High School who are bluring the lines between classroom and online learning to create Hybrid High:
For more information about Crown Point or how you can create your own “Hybrid High” please contact:
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© 2008 Agilix Labs, Inc.
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