For thousands of high school students every year the math test on the mandated High School Proficiency Exam is a mountain of an obstacle. A way to help climb that mountain is offered by Interactive Technologies of Nevada. Succeed in: Math!®, an integrated Internet-based math tutorial program in English and Spanish has been shown to help first time test takers to increase their grade on the proficiency test by 12 percentage points.
“The school district has already registered all of the approximately 64,000 high school students, grades 10 through 12. Now it’s a matter of making the community: teachers, parents, and students, aware of this software program that drastically increases a student’s chance at passing the required Nevada High School Proficiency Exam,” said Michael Rector, president and CTO of Interactive Technologies of Nevada.
Of the four parts to the required exam, it is usually math that trips up most students. Not passing means students don’t get their high school diplomas, but rather a certificate of attendance - and the stigma of not graduating. “How sad when you think of the human potential left behind,” said Rector.
The program allows students to study in private, without the ridicule of classmates, and pinpoint weak areas requiring further work. Parents can log onto the program free of charge and see how their son or daughter is doing. Succeed in Math!® generates detailed progress reports for parents that spell out the child’s weaknesses, reasons why a concept is missed, and how to correct the situation.
The software allows the teachers to sign in and provides them with information not only about an individual student but a class as a whole. With the admin modules, teachers can identify where a child got derailed. The information can be used to develop additional learning materials or to tailor classroom lesson plans that are data driven to meet the targeted needs of the individual student as well as all the students in a class.
There are many ways the community benefits from students conquering math. With the classroom size growing and the number of teachers being reduced due to current economic challenges, Succeed in Math!® offers a realistic backup. The computer program, which is already in the schools, gives teachers knowledge, which is power that helps them teach more effectively. In turn, the dropout rate will be affected. If kids pass the test, more kids will graduate and fewer will drop out, which in turn benefits our society both financially and socially. It costs money to do the tests so there is a savings if kids pass after one or two times. In addition, school districts must meet NCLB (No Child Left Behind) yearly progress requirements and this helps.
“No software replaces teachers and parents who care,” said Rector, “but it does afford a student a realistic opportunity to succeed.”
