Edcaliber.com, a teacher-designed software system, is poised to become part of the national movement integrating technology into schools to affordably improve performance and accelerate student results.
Five schools in Northern California with long histories of declining academic performance demonstrated swift and significant improvements in two touchstone measures of achievement - the Academic Performance Index (API) and their Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) - after incorporating Edcaliber over the past year. (see attached results)
"We had been at the bottom 5% of schools in the state for several years," said Esteban Hernandez, 3rd year principal at Bardin Elementary in Salinas, California. "Once we began working with Edcaliber, we saw amazing results . . . Edcaliber continues to focus our school on what to improve and how to accelerate that improvement."
Available, this month, in a "freemium" version for teachers, Edcaliber is an on-line suite of tools for teachers and administrators. The system ensures personnel have the data at their fingertips to drive daily decision-making and help students quickly reach 100% mastery of grade-level standards.
"Edcaliber's ability to track weekly the progress against standards of each individual student and identify quickly where "re-teaching" is necessary is simply unmatched," said Manny Barbara, Vice President, Advocacy and Thought Leadership of Silicon Valley Education Foundation and former Superintendent of Oak Grove School District. "The weekly improvement cycles Edcaliber supports help schools and districts achieve rapid academic gains."
The free version takes a teacher just 15 minutes to sign-up and begin using in the classroom. A premium version is available for school and district-wide implementation and includes supplemental Edcaliber standards-based lesson plans, resources, collaboration tools and professional development. The Portland, Oregon-based company has aligned the product with best practices espoused by the "Race to the Top" program and leading education experts. It presents the tools in a simple format designed by teachers, for teachers.
"Our teachers click on an academic content standard, add what was taught today, then track and share their standards-based results as soon as they have them using Edcaliber," said Laura Hernandez, literacy and instructional coach at Christopher Elementary in San Jose, California. "We were truly failing to sufficiently re-teach our students who were not learning the first time around. Now, not only do we easily know whom to re-teach, but we have more time in our team meetings to share the best ways to do so."
Edcaliber is prepared to partner with schools awarded federal funding through programs including "Race to the Top," as well as those funding change on their own. "Race to the Top," an initiative signed by President Obama in 2009, encourages innovation in schools. While Edcaliber improves performance in any school aiming for distinguished school status, it is particularly effective in districts with high populations of minority, low-income and English Language Learner students.
"Too often education reform conversations are at such a high level - few experts get specific on how schools can implement and sustain change," said Kevin Stone, Edcaliber's CEO. "We get very specific; our solution works within any existing system and - most importantly - within tight budget constraints."
Source: prweb
