Western and central Ohio elementary schools are using Pearson’s AIMSweb solution, an assessment and web-based data management system, to identify student performance levels and address individualized learning needs.
Many of Ohio’s principals, teachers, guidance counselors and other school staff are using the solution to make data-driven instructional decisions and have already found success. A few years ago, Ohio established an improvement initiative with the goal of using data to assess educational needs and to find solutions.
In response, Julie Bertling, an early childhood consultant with Ohio’s State Support Team, offered AIMSweb to provide benchmark and progress monitoring assessment to districts in her region. In the fall of 2008, Bertling expanded to add 11 districts and help educators effectively implement the AIMSweb system. She showed educators how to use real-time data to gauge interventions and enhance student performance.
Ohio AIMSweb users met seven times throughout the year to conduct training and share strategies—the flexibility of the solution’s progress monitoring allows each district to implement it to need individual needs. In sharing feedback, one AIMSweb user reported that teachers now use AIMSweb data to help them divide students into reading groups, reassessing after each benchmark assessment—a big improvement from the former whole-class instruction methods.
Educators also appreciated AIMSweb’s presentation of comprehensive data in an easily readable report that was simple for students and parents to interpret. The solution includes graphs to show parents where their children are compared to the benchmark, and what they plan to do to help students reach proficiency. One educator also used AIMSweb to make a graph to show students’ progress throughout the year—overall, educators found it to be a helpful intervention tool.
