Kingman USD provides supplemental math content
Challenge: The Kingman (AZ) Unified School District #20 wanted to provide students with a supplemental education program to improve student outcomes and to better align with the Common Core state standards.
Solution: After testing several math programs last year, district leaders chose TenMarks Math from TenMarks Education. “[W]e found that the adaptive program empowers students and teachers to take more control of the learning process and makes classrooms more energetic and productive,” says Jeri Wolsey, executive director of academic services. “[By] using TenMarks, students can move at their own pace to get at conceptual understanding of mathematics and improve their procedural skills. But, equally important, teachers are able to quickly identify students’ learning needs and intervene at the most optimal time.”
District-wide BYOD comes to this Kansas district
Challenge: Goddard (KS) Public Schools was seeking an affordable way to allow staff, faculty, and students use a combination of district-issued and personal mobile devices to offer technology-centered learning.
Solution: The district deployed a unified wireless access network based on Aruba Networks’ Mobile Virtual Enterprise (MOVE) architecture, as well as Aruba’s ClearPass Access Management System. Now staff and students can BYOD, and the network supports 3,000 school-issued devices and 1,500 personal devices. The new network also allows Goddard’s maintenance, building administration, and district police department to monitor and secure the schools.
A Texas district migrates to the cloud
Challenge: Tornillo (TX) Independent School District decided to replace standalone systems with cloud solutions to remove the burden of in-house system maintenance.
Solution: District leaders selected Prologic Technology Systems, Inc., to upgrade its four district campuses to TEAMS cloud-based finance and payroll and human resources technology. Now, a single vendor covers everything from infrastructure and software support to daily backups and software updates. “Upgrading to TEAMS gives us real-time global access and more automated workflows that could potentially eliminate many of the paper-trail processes and redundant data entries that are currently taking place, particularly in HR and accounts payable,” says Carlos Garcia, IT manager at Tornillo ISD.
A district in Iowa goes digital
Challenge: Marshalltown (IA) Community School District decided to undergo a digital conversion initiative to shift the way teachers teach and students learn and to help students develop 21st-century skills.
Solution: The district is implementing curriculum and assessment tools from Learning. com and will use four products: EasyTech, 21st Century Skills Assessment, WayFind, and Custom Curriculum Publishing. “The digital conversion will enhance core instruction and provide more opportunities to increase digital literacy in the classroom,” says Dr. Susan Pecinovsky, associate superintendent for student achievement at Marshalltown CSD.
It’s time for an improved teacher evaluation package
Challenge: Providence (RI) Public Schools’ goal was to dramatically improve student achievement by focusing on improving the quality of its teachers.
Solution: The district is using Teachscape Focus, Teachscape Reflect, and Teachscape Learn to advance its teacher evaluation and professional development processes. Providence will also use Teachscape to deliver individualized online professional learning for each of its teachers. “We want to ensure that we are doing everything we can to support educator effectiveness so that we can continue to attract and retain the most effective educators possible,” says Nkolika Onye, executive director of performance management at Providence Public Schools.
