CAE And Centerpoint Education Solutions Collaborate To Support Mutual College And Career Readiness Goals

Nonprofits will seek opportunities to ensure assessments and curricula measure and teach essential skills most important to secondary and higher education students and institutions

May 18, 2021, NEW YORK – The Council for Aid to Education, Inc. (CAE), a nonprofit developer of performance-based and custom assessments that authentically measure students’ essential college and career readiness skills, announced a collaboration with CenterPoint Education Solutions, a nonprofit organization that provides aligned curriculum, assessment, and professional learning solutions to empower educators to help students succeed. 

The like-minded nonprofit organizations will share ideas and key learnings, identifying ways to meet the needs of today’s states, districts, schools and students. Tying CenterPoint’s’ data literacy services to CAE’s assessment approaches offers mutual clients innovative solutions to address potential learning gaps.…Read More

5 ways to honor students’ time and advance equity in a post-pandemic world

If our goal is to accelerate learning for those most impacted by the pandemic, we must make the most of the time that we have. We’ve known since TNTP’s The Opportunity Myth study that, all too often, only a quarter of students’ time in their classes is spent on activities that are moving them sufficiently toward college and career readiness. Simply doing more of what we did before the pandemic will not get us where we need to be as we seek to recover from it. 

We actually know a lot about how to make the most of learning time: Create a climate in which students feel safe taking risks and offering up their ideas; make lessons meaningful, culturally relevant, and varied so students remain engaged; anticipate and prepare to address student confusions before teaching; give lots of opportunities for guided and independent practice; provide timely and precise feedback on their work; and reteach specific skills as soon as possible when they struggle and use this data to inform future lessons.  

And, most of all, make sure students are engaging in grade-level work—every day.   …Read More

Ferguson’s Career Guidance Center Named 2021 CODiE Award Finalist for Best College & Career Readiness Solution

Infobase, esteemed provider of the Infobase Media Cloud and the Infobase Learning Cloud, today announced that Ferguson’s Career Guidance Center was named a 2021 SIIA CODiE Award finalist in the “Best College & Career Readiness Solution” category. CODiE Award finalists represent applications, products, and services from developers of educational software, digital content, online learning services, and related technologies across the PreK–20 sector.

Ferguson’s Career Guidance Center is a vital college and career readiness resource with unparalleled range and depth of information. Users in middle school continuing all the way through adulthood will find valuable and actionable information for their professional lives. Whether users are looking to assess their career goals and interests, plan their education, explore professions, learn workplace skills, find apprenticeships and internships, or conduct a job search, Ferguson’s delivers the appropriate experience. 

The database’s wealth of proprietary content includes hundreds of video interviews with working professionals and directories of apprenticeships and internships that can’t be found anywhere else. Ferguson’s Career Guidance Center also features a fully responsive, mobile-friendly platform, with improved accessibility that includes a new VPAT to ensure a comfortable user experience for all users. It was built with 21st-century trends in careers, education, and employment top of mind. It is an excellent starting point and an excellent touch point to come back to over time, as users’ interests, goals, and personal needs change.…Read More

New Innovative SEL Tool from Aperture Education helps High School Students Build Skills for College and Career

The Aperture Student Portal includes gamified goal-setting and SEL self-assessments offering a research-backed approach to understanding students’ needs

Goal-setting and having a voice in their own learning are powerful motivators for students, especially those in high school. To help educators use these strategies to support social and emotional learning (SEL), Aperture Education has created the Aperture Student Portal for high school students, an online platform that gives students access to the DESSA-High School Edition Student Self-Report, goal-setting tools, and immediate feedback to help them grow in their social and emotional competencies. These competencies, which include self-management, personal responsibility, decision making and more, are vital for career and college readiness and imperative for any student navigating the dynamic challenges of distance or hybrid learning. The platform is gamified to optimize student engagement and motivation. Because the portal can be accessed online, teachers can use it to support SEL both in the classroom and during distance learning.

“SEL assessments help teachers understand students’ strengths and needs so they can plan individual and school-wide interventions and evaluate student progress. And we know giving students a voice in their learning is important, especially for high school students,” said Jessica Adamson, CEO of Aperture Education. “Our Aperture Student Portal provides an engaging way for high school students to take stock of their social and emotional strengths and needs – and helps them strengthen their skills. It is also a great way for teachers to support SEL when they can’t be with students in-person or don’t have a dedicated time to focus on SEL during the school day.”…Read More

New Innovative SEL Tool from Aperture Education helps High School Students Build Skills for College and Career

Goal-setting and having a voice in their own learning are powerful motivators for students, especially those in high school. To help educators use these strategies to support social and emotional learning (SEL), Aperture Education has created the Aperture Student Portal for high school students, an online platform that gives students access to the DESSA-High School Edition Student Self-Report, goal-setting tools, and immediate feedback to help them grow in their social and emotional competencies. These competencies, which include self-management, personal responsibility, decision making and more, are vital for career and college readiness and imperative for any student navigating the dynamic challenges of distance or hybrid learning. The platform is gamified to optimize student engagement and motivation. Because the portal can be accessed online, teachers can use it to support SEL both in the classroom and during distance learning.

“SEL assessments help teachers understand students’ strengths and needs so they can plan individual and school-wide interventions and evaluate student progress. And we know giving students a voice in their learning is important, especially for high school students,” said Jessica Adamson, CEO of Aperture Education. “Our Aperture Student Portal provides an engaging way for high school students to take stock of their social and emotional strengths and needs – and helps them strengthen their skills. It is also a great way for teachers to support SEL when they can’t be with students in-person or don’t have a dedicated time to focus on SEL during the school day.”

About the Aperture Student Portal…Read More

Udemy’s Upskilling and Educational Content is Now Available on LenovoEDU Community

Udemy, the world’s largest destination for learning and teaching online, today announced that the recently launched LenovoEDU community by Lenovo™ will offer Udemy content and pathways to course recommendations for specific careers. Designed to inspire people to take education into their own hands, LenovoEDU is an online community that offers support and resources for college and career students, parents and guardians of K-12 students, and educators around the globe to optimize learning opportunities with a “self-serve” and “build your own curriculum” mindset.

“2020 brought record challenges to how students and teachers across the world access, consume and share e-learning resources,” says Ajit Sivadasan, Vice President and General Manager of Lenovo.com at Lenovo. “At a time when education has undergone such historic shifts, it is now more important than ever that students can readily access the most in-demand skills to forge a long-lasting and successful career. That’s why we’re collaborating with Udemy to offer smarter online education for all through the LenovoEDU community.”

In a global economy that’s becoming increasingly difficult to navigate, the LenovoEDU community offers learners and educators a one-stop-shop to connect with peers. Members get access to curated educational video and expert blog content offering advice on teaching, learning and professional development to help teachers educate and students prepare for whatever comes next. To streamline access to the necessary skills to thrive in today’s competitive economy, the LenovoEDU community offers its members Udemy’s extensive library of over 155,000 courses taught by more than 70,000 real-world experts by topic and career path.

“Learning is more important than ever, and we want to make it as simple as possible for students and teachers to access, consume, and share educational resources around the globe,” said Llibert Argerich, SVP of Marketing at Udemy. “At the core of our business, we help people do whatever comes next in their professional journeys and improve lives through learning. As such, we’re thrilled to be a part of LenovoEDU to help more people more easily access necessary skills when they need it.”

To learn more about and discover Udemy resources on the new LenovoEDU community, visit: https://education.lenovo.com/

About Udemy
With a mission to improve lives through learning, Udemy is the world’s largest online learning destination that helps students, businesses, and governments gain the skills they need to compete in today’s economy. Thirty-five million students are mastering new skills from 70,000 expert instructors teaching over 155,000 online courses in topics from programming and data science to leadership and team building. For companies, Udemy for Business offers an employee training and development platform with subscription access to 8,000+ courses, learning analytics, as well as the ability to host and distribute their own content. Udemy for Government is designed to upskill workers and prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow. Eighty percent of Fortune 100 companies trust Udemy for employee upskilling. Udemy is privately held and headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Denver, Brazil, India, Ireland, and Turkey. Udemy investors include Insight Partners, Prosus (Naspers Ventures), Norwest Venture Partners, Stripes, and Benesse Holdings.

LENOVO is a trademark of Lenovo.

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How our coding platform helps us teach STEM

In a district where most of our students receive free or reduced lunches, we have next to no access to high-quality STEM programs, computer science classes, or coding courses. When I was Googling different ways to fill some of these gaps and incorporate more STEM into my Girls Excelling in Math and Science (GEMS) after-school club, I discovered an online coding platform and coding competitions that are both accessible and affordable.

This was a big find. I wanted my students to excel and compete effectively with important college and career and STEM skills, regardless of how rich or poor our school district was, but we just didn’t have the resources to make that happen. I was looking for a platform that taught basic computer coding, and one that would allow anyone at any skill level to jump in and participate.

I also wanted a program that included robotics, and that segued into our existing robotics program, which starts in seventh grade. CoderZ checked all of these boxes, so we started using it three years ago. It effectively replaced the Hour of Code general coding/computer programming platform that we were previously using.…Read More

Parents are critical to college and career readiness

On March 13, Keller, a second grader at Vermont’s Hinesburg Elementary, came home from school and didn’t return for six months. Like 20 million other students across the United States, Keller, with no preparation or warning, abruptly shifted to online learning.

Two hundred miles south of Hinesburg, Matt was a ninth grader when COVID-19 struck in Boston. Like Keller, he left school in mid-March and has not been back since. Thus began the most disruptive period in the history of American education.

Pick Boston, Hinesburg, or any other city or small town, and the story’s the same: Most students are learning less, and 10 percent of America’s K-12-aged students no longer attend class, either in-person or virtual.…Read More

National Study Shows Online Literacy Engagement Minimizes COVID Slide

A real-time national education study of more than one million students by two leading not-for-profit education groups has found that continued engagement with technology-enabled instruction during COVID-19 school closures has significantly reduced students’ loss of potential reading growth. The Successful Practices Network (SPN) and the Center for College and Career Readiness (CCCR) released these findings today, which are some of the very first published results using current data of students’ learning from Fall 2020. Recommendations to help educators accelerate learning are also included in the new study.

This unique analysis draws its finding from actual usage and performance data for students using Achieve3000 Literacy™ before and after schools closed on March 11 through September 30, 2020. Data for more than 1 million students using Achieve3000 Literacy, an online solution for differentiated and personalized literacy instruction in Grades 2-12, during the 2019 and 2020 school years, demonstrates:

Students Lost Only 12% of Potential Learning Gains…Read More

CAE Partners with Education Research and Development Institute

Council for Aid to Education, Inc. (CAE), a leading provider of performance-based, authentic assessments measuring essential college and career readiness skills, announced it joined the Education Research and Development Institute (ERDI). Partnering with the well-respected 35-year-old organization, CAE will contribute as a thought leader and work collaboratively to develop insights that will inform the evolution of its student-centric educational solutions and services.

“We are honored to partner with ERDI whose members comprise our country’s top education practice leaders committed to ensuring all students have access to the highest quality learning experiences,” said Bob Yayac, president and CEO of CAE. “Joining ERDI’s community allows CAE to leverage the latest in PK-12 research and on-the-ground experience to best meet the needs of students today and into the future.”

ERDI gathers top PK-12 education leaders and solutions providers from more than 250 school districts across the U.S. who are focused on the continuous improvement of public education, to analyze, discuss, and propose solutions for current problems of practice in education.…Read More

We Stand Together: Finding a Better Way to End Racial Inequity Starts Today

In the midst of protests across the country driven by the death of unarmed Black Americans George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others, K12 Inc.—the nation’s leading provider of online and blended education—is committing to a series of initiatives that support racial and socioeconomic equity and inclusion in and through education.

Since its inception twenty years ago, K12 has been committed to removing barriers that impact academic equity and to providing high-quality education for anyone—particularly those in underserved communities —as a means to foster economic empowerment and address societal inequities through college and career readiness.  The company’s new pledge and continued support of racial equality and justice are consistent with this commitment.

“At K12, we support eliminating racism, prejudice, and violence in all forms and against all groups,” said K12 CEO Nate Davis. “As a community of educators, we believe that Black Lives Matter, and that K12 teachers, administrators, and management must serve as a role model for children, parents, and families.  Only through sustained actions can we strive to create real change.  It’s my hope that our continued efforts to bridge the differences that divide our communities will help build a better, stronger, more inclusive nation.”…Read More

How can high schools better prepare students for college and career success?

Today, many parents in the United States are worried — worried about their children’s physical health if schools open, worried about their mental health in case they don’t, and worried about the quality of their education in either case. While the worry about health is driven by COVID-19, the concern about how well schools are preparing children to succeed predates the pandemic.

One of the main roles high school plays, aside from providing a general understanding of core subjects, is to create a thirst for learning to accompany young people into their early adulthood and beyond. For many, this means continuing on to higher education. However, the cost of attending college has increased eight times faster than average salaries, making many question whether pursuing a college degree is worth it.

Related content: Inspiring students through college and career–and beyond…Read More