Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Oregon Public School Breaks State Assessment Score Record with Carnegie Learning

Pittsburgh, PA – Carnegie Learning, a leader in artificial intelligence for K-12 education and formative assessment, announced today that students from the Howard Street Partnership School achieved record-breaking results on Oregon’s state assessment, SBAC, using Carnegie Learning’s core secondary math solution that comprises MATHbook, a consumable write-in text that fosters collaborative classroom learning, and MATHia, the one-on-one, adaptive math coaching software.

Howard Street Charter School in Salem, Oregon, is a project-based institution that pushes students to achieve excellence in all areas of study. Howard Street Charter School is no stranger to academic success and had already achieved  curricular excellence with passing rates above the state average. Carnegie Learning’s math solution helped them achieve even higher.

“Our highest passing rate ever in the history of the school was fifty-two percent before Covid. And now that’s the mid-range,” Principal Christina Tracy states. “Our SBAC data was the best we’ve had for math in 25 years! And we did not teach to the test. We just used Carnegie Learning Math.”…Read More

Carnegie Learning Recognized as Global Innovator on 2023 GSV 150 List

Pittsburgh, PA – Carnegie Learning, a leader in artificial intelligence for K-12 education and formative assessment, announced today it has been selected for the GSV (Global Silicon Valley) 150, a list of the world’s most transformative private companies in education.

Carnegie Learning was chosen from over 4,000 venture capital and private equity-backed private companies revolutionizing the world of education technology. GSV estimates that together, these 150 companies reach roughly 3 billion people—almost half of the global population—and generate approximately $25 billion in revenue.

“It’s an honor to be recognized among such a distinguished list of companies,” says Carnegie Learning CEO Barry Malkin. “Innovation is at the heart of everything we do—from our products to our culture to our people. Not only do we embrace change, we create it. Our commitment to research, more than any other edtech company, and to producing world-class content and technology puts us in a unique position to really make a meaningful impact on education.”…Read More

HMH to Acquire NWEA

Boston and Portland, Ore.—Learning technology company  HMH and  NWEA, a not-for-profit, research and educational services organization serving K-12 students, announced today they have signed an agreement for HMH to acquire NWEA. Upon closing, NWEA will operate as a division of HMH, with its current offerings, including its flagship assessment—MAP Growth—remaining under the NWEA brand. NWEA assessment solutions will be integrated with HMH curriculum on HMH’s platform to create a combined offering that links interim assessment to instruction. HMH is a portfolio company of Veritas Capital, a private investment firm that focuses on companies that provide technology and technology-enabled solutions to government and commercial customers worldwide.

By combining NWEA’s assessments with HMH’s curriculum, HMH is expected to deliver a holistic solution for educators that helps them understand how students are growing academically and what areas need the most focus to maximize that growth. Most importantly, this solution will turn insights from assessments into content recommendations that help teachers address student-specific skill gaps and advance student learning.

“We are thrilled at the potential this acquisition brings for K-12 educators, at a time when the connection between instruction and assessment is increasingly critical for student success,” said Jack Lynch, CEO of HMH. “HMH and NWEA have great alignment in mission and long-term vision and share the collective belief in the transformative power of education. Both teams are deeply focused on helping all children learn and serve millions of K-12 educators and students across the globe.”…Read More

New school year shows continued signs of academic rebounding

Post-pandemic academic achievement is showing encouraging signs of improvement, although not evenly across school years, according to NWEA, a nonprofit, research and educational services organization serving K-12 students.

The new research findings are based on fall 2022 assessment data from nearly 7 million US students in grades 3-8.

The new report is part of NWEA’s ongoing research effort to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted student achievement in reading and math. …Read More

State of Georgia Approves Continued Use of YouScience Discovery Statewide for K12 and Technical College System of Georgia Students

AMERICAN FORK, Utah /PRNewswire/ —  YouScience, the leading college and career readiness company, today announced the State of Georgia has approved the continued use of the company’s aptitude assessment,  YouScience Discovery, for more than 1 million K12 students, and students within the Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG), which includes 22 technical colleges across 88 campuses. Last year alone, roughly 240,000 7th and 10th grade students in Georgia took YouScience Discovery to identify their natural abilities and align them with potential careers.

In 2010, the General Assembly of Georgia enacted the Bridge Bill, which was passed to ensure that Georgia’s 6th – 12th grade students were made aware of available college and career options. YouScience seamlessly fits into the state’s initiative and Georgia’s curriculum to fulfill the bill’s requirements.

“This renewal is a testament to the success that students have achieved with using Discovery over the past eight years,” said Edson Barton, CEO at YouScience. “It’s critical we ensure that today’s graduates are aligned with what the workforce is looking for and have a sense of what careers they can thrive in. It’s also vital that career exploration starts at a young age so that we can get students on the right pathway – whether that be college or directly into a career – as early as possible. We’re thrilled to continue our work with the state of Georgia and aid its students’ in college and career exploration and ultimately success.”…Read More

Only out-of-the-box solutions will fix the real problems in schools

As members of the media have bemoaned the tragic results of students on the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—also known as the nation’s report card—many have been all too willing to jump into the game of who is responsible. Yet, few have sought innovative solutions to change the fundamental underlying reality: today’s schools were not built to maximize each and every student’s learning.

Just weeks earlier, a new report titled “Out of the Box,” along with an accompanying afternoon of virtual programming, sought to introduce a way to change that reality through the use of “innovative model providers” to shift us away from the current paradigm of schooling and “support school communities in actualizing the visions they set forth.”

The solutions generally offered in the media to the challenges students face have revolved around things like tutoring, summer school, longer school hours, and more days. Although there’s nothing wrong—and some things right—with those solutions, what none of them do is upend the fact that today’s schools were not designed to optimize learning. Their time-based nature means that they were, in fact, built to embed failure for the majority.…Read More

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Foundational literacy is key to reversing post-COVID reading declines

Our first look at long-term trends in reading and math assessments since the pandemic began affirm what many education professionals were anticipating. 

The National Association for Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as “The Nation’s Report Card,” recently issued its signature report, which revealed that students assessed during the COVID-19 pandemic experienced significant declines in both mathematics and reading. NAEP’s 2022 data shows that “average scores at both grades [eighth and fourth] were not significantly different in comparison to the first reading assessment [20 years prior] in 1992.”

And while reading score declines as measured by various student assessments during COVID-19 are alarming, they are not unexpected given the profound obstacles students have faced.…Read More

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Students are still behind in math–what needs to change?

As students return to class this fall, K–12 teachers and administrators face many challenges—and math instruction is high on the list.

Although state assessment data from the 2021–2022 school year suggest that students have begun to close pandemic-related learning gaps, the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results reveal that students’ math scores dropped seven points—the first-ever score drop for math in the assessment’s fifty-year history.

Educators now face the daunting task of making up for lost instructional time from the COVID-19 pandemic, while at the same time, addressing drops in math achievement and teaching grade-level content. Where do educators start?…Read More

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Learning Without Tears Showcases Assessments to Guide Instruction for Get Set for School®

Washington, DC – Showcasing as part of its new literacy solution at the NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) annual conference,   Learning Without Tears’ acclaimed Early Childhood curriculum, Get Set for School® (GSS), now includes Assessments to Guide Instruction (AGI), an addition to the complete program that provides greater value and more complete foundational learning. This new assessment tool allows educators to easily assess, track, and remediate student performance over the course of the school year.  With AGI, teachers can easily provide updates and suggestions to families, building strong school-to-home connections, an important element of young learners’ success. 

“Learning Without Tears has built a powerful literacy solution, based on the success we have had in early childhood education for more than 40 years,” said Terry Nealon, CEO of Learning Without Tears. “Get Set for School is a central component of that literacy expertise and is already being used by thousands of schools across the country for kindergarten-readiness. Expanding GSS to include Assessments to Guide Instruction increases the impact LWT’s literacy solution can have on very young learners. With a clear, individual assessment of what their students need at this early point in their education, teachers can create a lifelong learner and lover of reading, by understanding and then meeting students where they are.” 

The award-winning Get Set for School complete curriculum is divided into six learning areas that seamlessly create a better academic outcome for pre-K students. Students are taught developmentally, learning the easiest skills first, then building on that knowledge as learning progresses. Multi-sensory activities provide hands-on learning and play-based opportunities for students to learn.   …Read More

4 tips for using data to differentiate instruction

Finding ways to help all students grow academically – regardless of where they are starting from – can be challenging. From my experiences teaching special education, general education, and English Learners, I can tell you there is no one-size-fits-all approach that works.

In order to meet the unique and individual learning needs of each student, teachers have to find ways to differentiate instruction, and data is critical to doing so.

Teachers often have a lot of assessment data at their fingertips, but they have to know how to use it in order to be successful. An administrator once said in a meeting, “Data by itself is useless. Data is only useful if you apply it.”…Read More

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