Mastering the ACT with Study Island

Study Island ACT, is a web-based review program that provides both students and schools with a flexible, affordable and effective option for ACT exam preparation.

Most colleges and universities today require an ACT (American College Testing) or SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) score as an eligibility factor. With more and more students applying to colleges, however, a higher ACT score could mean the difference between being accepted or not. The problem is, not every student has access to – or can afford – traditional review programs on the market today.

Not so, with Study Island ACT. Study Island ACT's web-based platform makes the program accessible anytime, anywhere an Internet connection is available, and unlike typical online practice and test-prep programs, it teaches both the content and strategies to achieve the best possible results on the ACT exam. It also allows students to build a study regimen that is completely flexible to their particular needs, and at a fraction of the cost.

Ensure Your Students Have The Best College Options

• In the highly competitive college admissions process, a higher ACT score can be a significant differentiating factor. Study Island ACT will help ensure that your students perform at their best on the exam by reinforcing key exam content and providing proven, effective test taking strategies. With cutting-edge interactive lessons in math, science, critical reading, and writing, Study Island ACT offers the same high-quality learning experience as a one-on-one tutor at a fraction of the cost.

What do you get?

• Expert ACT Knowledge - Students learn key ACT test taking strategies & content
• Interactive Lessons - In-depth, interactive lessons with animation & audio
• Flexible Practice - Teachers can assign areas of practice or students can work at their own pace
• Multiple Quiz Modes – Test mode, game mode, or printable worksheets
• Completely Web-Based - Access anywhere with an Internet connection, 24/7
• Personalized Feedback - Real-time progress reports show students strengths and areas that need more practice
• Free Tech Support - Weekday tech support by phone, email, or online chat
• Full-Length Practice Tests - Reinforce students skills & develop their confidence
• BONUS EXTRAS - Printable math vocabulary cards, an in-depth guide to writing ACT essays, and multiple essay writing prompts

How can Study Island be used to prepare for the ACT?

• Since the ACT tends to fall outside of a traditional curriculum, Study Island allows students to set their own learning pace inside or outside the classroom.

How does Study Island help students prepare for the ACT?

• Content- The Study Island ACT content was created by our partner Tutor Associates, experts in knowing how to develop ACT-like questions, which allows students to practice for both the Quantitative and Verbal sections of the ACT, including the optional writing section.
• Strategy- Using animated strategy lessons, “cheat sheets”, and other techniques, Study Island ACT helps students learn how to take the ACT test.
• Practice-The three full-length diagnostic tests allow students to experience taking the ACT, including the optional writing section, before the big day.
• Reports- Both the students and teachers have access to numerous reports that will allow them to monitor progress.

How do I use the ACT program?

ACT Diagnostic Tests:

1. It is recommended that the students take a diagnostic test first, to help gauge which topics might need more work than others.
2. Like an actual ACT test, each practice test includes four sections and one writing section.
3. A manual scoring guide is available at the bottom of the page to help convert Study Island scores to the ACT scaled scores.
4. Students, Parents, Teachers and Administrators can access a student’s ACT diagnostic results in an easily accessible report.

ACT Quantitative:

1. From the ACT Main Page, click on ACT Quantitative; students can open a voiced-over animated strategy lesson. The focus of these tutorial lessons is to help students understand how to take the ACT test as well as to provide content. These animated strategy lessons contain interactive tools that allow students to work within the module.
2. Students are free to work on any section they choose, allowing them to focus on areas of concern. A caution symbol identifies areas of concern while the blue ribbon identifies the topics that have been passed.
3. Students are able to work on topics in either Test Mode, Game Mode, or with Printable Work Sheets. Administrators can adjust game settings.
4. Students, Parents, Teachers and Administrators can access a student’s ACT Quantitative progress in an easily accessible report. The student has the option to compare his or her performance against the school or other Study Island users.

ACT Verbal:

1. From the ACT Main Page, click on ACT Verbal; students can open a voiced-over animated strategy lesson. The focus of these tutorial lessons is to help students understand how to take the ACT test as well as to provide content. These animated strategy lessons contain interactive tools that allow students to work within the module.
2. Students are free to work on any section they choose, allowing them to focus on areas of concern. A caution symbol identifies areas of concern while the blue ribbon identifies the topics that have been passed.
3. Students are able to work on topics in either Test Mode, Game Mode, or with Printable Work Sheets. Administrators can adjust game settings.
4. Students, Parents, Teachers and Administrators can access a student’s ACT Verbal progress in an easily accessible report. The student has the option to compare his or her performance against the school or other Study Island users.
5. The ACT Verbal section on Study Island also includes a Guide to Writing ACT Essays, which includes information on how to structure an ACT essay. Students and teachers can also find information on how the ACT essays are scored. There are also a number of Practice Prompts to help the student better prepare for the writing section of the ACT.

Start your students down the right path to a successful college admissions process!

Learn more at www.studyisland.com/ACT. ACT@studyisland.com 800.419.3191

ACT hints at scale of Common Core challenge

Posted on The Prichard Blog: 07 Dec 2010

When we start assessing students against the Common Core Standards, what kind of results will we see? ACT, Inc., has just offered a set of blunt estimates. Using results from the states where all students participate in the ACT (including Kentucky), the report projects that in first literacy testing of 11th graders:

• 38 percent will meet the new standards in reading.
• 51 percent will meet the new standards in writing.
• 53 percent will meet the new standards for language.

Since the Common Core calls for added focus on informational text and on literacy skills that work for specific fields of study, the report also offered estimated results for 11th grade results in those subjects, estimating that:

• 24 percent will meet the standards for literacy in science
• 41 percent will meet the standards for literacy in social studies.
• 38 percent will meet the standards for informational text.
• 37 percent will meet the standards for literature.

Mathematics is exactly as grim, with 11th grade projections that:

• 34 percent will meet the mathematics standards for number and quantity.*
• 42 percent will meet the mathematics standards for functions.
• 37 percent will meet the mathematics standards for statistics and probability.

The rationale for the Common Core has always been that American schools need to aim higher and American students need to achieve at higher levels. This preliminary study provides a first glimpse of how much work we have ahead.

* The ACT mathematics categories come with short explanations of what's in each subdomain. Number and quantity includes the real number system, quantities, the complex number system, and vector and matrix quantities. Functions includes interpreting functions; linear, quadratic, and exponential models; and trigonometric functions. Statistics and Probability includes interpreting categorical and quantitative data; making inferences and justifying conclusions; conditional probability and the rules of probability; and using probability to make decisions.

Study Island v3.0 Honored as One of Best Product Upgrades in Education Technology Category

DALLAS, Nov. 30, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Archipelago Learning, one of the fastest growing subscription-based online education companies in the country, has been recognized by Tech & Learning magazine as an Award of Excellence winner for its Study Island Version 3.0.

For nearly three decades, the Tech & Learning Award of Excellence program has honored innovative education technology applications that break new ground in some important way, and also best-of-breed examples that demonstrate clear superiority over similar products in the market. This year, more than 30 educator-judges from the New York City Department of Education, the University of Michigan and other top Tech & Learning advisors test-drove over 140 entries and selected the winners. Evaluation criteria for this year's program included the following: quality and effectiveness, ease of use, creative use of technology, and suitability for use in an educational environment.

Used by more than 22,000 schools across the country, Study Island Version 3.0 was released in January 2010 and provides cost-effective, web-based instruction, practice, assessment and productivity tools that improve the performance of K-12 students and teachers. Built directly from state standards, including the new Common Core State Standards, Study Island combines rigorous academic content for students in math, reading, writing, science, and social studies with interactive and engaging features. New and improved Study Island functionalities that lead to its selection as an Award of Excellence winner include:
• Increased functionality for Tier I and Tier II instruction in Response to Intervention (RtI) programs, including text‐to‐speech. When the function is turned on, a student can highlight text and click the speaker icon to have text read aloud.
• Professional Development Toolbox (PD Toolbox): A collection of standards‐based lesson plans, lessons, instructional videos, and supplemental resources to provide educators with "just-in-time" classroom best practices.
• Interactive Toolkit: A set of tools available to the student, such as on‐screen ruler, protractor, calculators (classic and scientific), scratch pad, and text highlighters. Calculators, scratch pad and highlighters can be turned off/on by teachers or administrators, and protractor and ruler are attached to questions where applicable.
• Enhanced Reporting: A new report that helps measure progress in RtI programs. This feature shows a specific student's progress in a specific subject and topic by graphing sessions and scores for both on-grade level material and building block topics.

"We are pleased that Study Island Version 3.0 has been recognized as a Tech & Learning Award of Excellence winner," said Tim McEwen, chief executive officer of Archipelago Learning. "The enhanced content, features and functionality in Version 3.0 were implemented in response to suggestions from educators and students, so this award reaffirms our commitment to providing the highest impact and lowest cost comprehensive educational system, designed to improve teacher performance and result in significant academic gains by all students."

About Archipelago Learning:
Archipelago Learning is a leading subscription-based online education company that provides standards-based instruction, practice, assessments, productivity and reporting tools that improve the performance of educators and students. Study Island, its flagship product line, helps students in kindergarten through 12th grade master grade-level academic standards in a fun and engaging manner and is utilized by over 10 million students in approximately 23,400 schools in the United States and Canada. Reading Eggs, an online early literacy program for students ages three to eight, offers skills, strategies and leveled eBooks essential for sustained reading success. EducationCity provides online K-6 instructional content and assessments for reading, mathematics and science and is used by 8,600 schools in the United Kingdom and 5,200 schools in the United States. For the post-secondary market, Northstar Learning offers online instructional content and exam preparation products across a variety of core college curriculum and career licensure areas. Archipelago Learning is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. For more information, please visit www.archipelagolearning.com.

At NAEYC Annual Conference, Archipelago Learning Will Share New Resource and Insights Into How Best to Help Young Readers

Reading proficiency scores from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) indicate that much remains to be done to ensure mastery of literacy during students’ early academic careers. According to the assessments’ results, a third of the nation’s fourth graders are reading below basic proficiency levels, a rate that has remained unchanged since 2007.Early literacy and various resources for efficacy or improvement will be among the topics covered at the National Association for the Education of Young Children’s (NAEYC) 2010 Annual Conference & Expo Nov. 3-6 in Anaheim, Calif. Archipelago Learning, a leading subscription-based online education company, will join early childhood educators and educational organizations as they convene to examine and share best practices and resources.

“Fourth-grade NAEP scores had shown improvements from 1992 to 2005, but that progress is currently stalled,” said Tim McEwen, chief executive officer for Archipelago Learning. “Research shows that an early delay in literacy proficiency adversely affects performance throughout a student’s academic career, so this is a significant cause for concern. We need to apply all the tools and resources available to regain national momentum and help those young readers master literacy right from the start.”

To that end, Archipelago Learning recently became the exclusive U.S. distributor of Reading Eggs, a wildly popular online early literacy program designed by Blake Publishing in Australia. Reading Eggs supports the core literacy teachings that drive early reading successes and helps students aged three to eight to become proficient readers.

“Blake Publishing has a distinguished history of publishing award-winning and internationally renowned K-12 reading materials for several major U.S. publishers,” said McEwen. “In fact, Reading Eggs contains specific instructional concepts that will be promoted at this year’s conference.”

For example, at least two conference presentations will mention using puppets to engage young learners in literacy lessons. While Reading Eggs consists of online activities, each student creates an avatar or online character to navigate through instructional tutorials, activities, and games. “In other words, students manipulate online ‘puppets’ and so are drawn deeper into the learning experience,” explained McEwen.

As further motivation, upon the completion of each of the program’s 100 research-based lessons, children are rewarded with a critter that hatches and becomes part of their online “zoo.” In addition to the cool graphics and animation, appealing songs, rewards, and the work-at-your-own-pace nature of the program hold young readers’ interest. Older students engage in both reading and writing via the program’s Story Factory, which provides motivation for honing those skills through a weekly story writing competition sponsored by Reading Eggs.

Designed by a team of teachers, education writers, and multimedia developers, the Reading Eggs program begins at an emergent reading level, focusing on letter sounds, first sight words and reading simple sentences. With each lesson, students gain practice in the five pillars of reading skills the National Reading Panel has declared essential for reading proficiency: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency. After 10 lessons, students complete a mastery quiz that provides teachers with a report summarizing what each child has learned thus far along with diagnostics to inform instruction.

Diagnostic tests and student management tools help educators place students in the appropriate reading level within the program. Teachers are able to review the results of all activities, tests and lessons, along with a complete scope and sequence of content covered, at any time.

“For a long time, the early grades were neglected in terms of computer-based literacy instruction because such technology was not considered relevant for young children,” said McEwen. “Now younger students regularly use computers, and software developers have become adept at creating programs with audio-visual features that appeal to that age group. However, strong educational rigor and research-based content must be combined with engaging features, and this is where Reading Eggs shines.”

About Archipelago Learning Archipelago Learning is a leading subscription-based online education company that provides standards-based instruction, practice, assessments, productivity and reporting tools that improve the performance of educators and students. Study Island, its flagship product line, helps students in kindergarten through 12th grade master grade-level academic standards in a fun and engaging manner and is utilized by over 10 million students in approximately 22,800 schools in the United States and Canada. Reading Eggs, an online early literacy program for students ages three to eight, offers skills, strategies and leveled eBooks essential for sustained reading success. EducationCity provides online K-6 instructional content and assessments for reading, mathematics and science and is used by 8,500 schools in the United Kingdom and 4,500 schools in the United States. For the post-secondary market, Northstar Learning offers online instructional content and exam preparation products across a variety of core college curriculum and career licensure areas. Archipelago Learning is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. For more information, please visit http://www.archipelagolearning.com.

About Blake Publishing Blake Publishing is a highly experienced team that specializes in creating high quality literacy products for schools and educators throughout the world. Its educational books are successful in all major English-speaking markets. The company is a recognized leader in creating innovative, exciting programs that both teachers and children enjoy using. A highly experienced team of teachers, educational writers, animators and web developers has developed the Reading Eggs program for the Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC). The ABC Reading Eggs program focuses on a core-reading curriculum of skills and strategies essential for sustained reading success. It completely supports what children learn at school and will help to improve your child’s school results.

Setting students on the path to high school graduation

By Eric Seymour
Eric Seymour is principal of Vero Beach High School, Vero Beach, Fla
Published in eSchool News Sep 30th, 2010

A software program helped ninth graders stay on track.

On the road to graduation, ninth grade is the place where many students lose their way. To help all students cross the finish line with a diploma in hand, it is vital that we make sure incoming freshmen get off to a successful start in high school.

After graduating from Vero Beach High School and beginning my teaching career there, I worked in a neighboring county for 10 years before returning to my alma mater as principal in 2009. Although the suburban school was high performing, I noticed a growing achievement gap: While students were proficient as eighth graders, their achievement levels dropped as they progressed through high school.

We knew we couldn’t wait for results from district benchmarks or quarterly assessments to help pinpoint the problems. That first semester we implemented an online educational program that is built directly from state standards and, with real-time reporting, gives teachers the ability to monitor student mastery daily and quickly identify learning gaps as they relate to the state standards. Called Study Island, the program combines self-paced instruction with games and rewards to reinforce student accomplishments as they master grade-level content and help students take control of their learning.

Monitoring student progress

Nearly all ninth graders work on the software in math, reading, writing, and science. In addition, targeted tenth graders work on the program to address achievement gaps. With the reporting data, teachers are able to differentiate instruction and provide targeted interventions to narrow achievement gaps in the classroom and help students prepare for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). Teachers also use the data to affirm students’ successes, which boosts their confidence.

To ensure all students make the most of their high school education, I also regularly monitor student progress and disaggregate data by student subgroups. Plus, I created a subgroup for student athletes to track their mastery of state standards and evaluate their performance as a whole.

On our campus of 2,700 students, we have nearly 700 athletes. Almost all the athletes who used Study Island improved their performance on our benchmark exams. The football players, who had the lowest averages in class and the lowest success rate on our exams, made substantial increases. We also saw significant gains among other athletes, including members of our baseball, tennis, and swim teams.

To strengthen the school-to-home connection, we also use the online program’s parent notification system to automatically eMail reports to parents about their child’s performance. With the reports, parents can chart their child’s progress and see how their child is likely to perform on the FCAT.

Strengthening writing skills

To help students stay on track throughout high school, I also believe it is critical to focus on writing as early as possible. If students are not involved in writing every day, they do not perform as well on their state tests.

So, in addition to working on math, reading, and science in the online educational program, students and teachers also use a Writing Assignment module, which provides a paperless way to develop writing skills across the curriculum. Using this module, teachers choose from grade-specific writing prompts or create their own writing assignments for students. Students use online graphic organizers to plan their written responses, and create and submit their compositions online. Teachers then electronically send grades and comments back to students, or ask for revisions.

We also use a separate, paper-based program for FCAT practice writing tests. When students complete the writing assessments, we send their papers off to a company that hand-scores the essays and sends us feedback. That one writing program, however, costs us as much as our entire Study Island program, which provides so much more.

Preparing for exams

In addition to FCAT preparation, we use the online program to help students prepare for Advanced Placement (AP), SAT, and ACT exams. It saves time by showing students which strands they are weak in, so they can focus on the skills they need to pass the exam with flying colors. With one or two clicks, students can find the content they need to build their skills. They think it’s a “short-cut” because they no longer have to go out and find materials, and then jump from chapter to chapter or book to book to fill in their gaps. They also like that they can measure their progress as they go.

We have found that the exam preparation, which takes place during the regular school day, is making a difference. In 2009-10, our school had eight National Merit Scholarship finalists, which doubled the school record. Ninety-nine percent of our AP students took an AP test, compared to only 75 percent the year before. Our school also saved more than $54,000 in printed test-prep books and materials by using the online program.

Learning outside the school day

To accelerate learning, we encourage students to use the online program outside the school day as well. After school, it is offered as part of a program for students scoring below the proficient level on the FCAT. Outside school, students can access it using their own computers or computers in local media centers.

Students average roughly 3,000 questions per week outside of school. They like having the ability to use the program on their own time because they believe it helps them in the classroom. Plus, when students initiate a program on their own, we know they are interested and engaged.

Enhancing audio in classrooms

Another technology we use to more deeply engage students is an audio enhancer. We recently retrofitted all our classrooms with Audio Enhancement classroom systems to improve students’ ability to hear the teacher in the classroom. The system includes a teardrop microphone for the teacher, a hand-held microphone for students, four speakers evenly distributed across the ceiling, an amplifier, and an infrared sensor that provides 360-degree coverage so the teacher can facilitate instruction from anywhere in the room.

Improving the sound in our classrooms has helped students better focus on learning, since they no longer have to waste energy struggling to hear the teacher or filling in gaps of missing information.

Achieving gains

From 2009 to 2010, Vero Beach High School saw measurable gains in the percentage of students achieving proficiency on the FCAT, and our ninth graders demonstrated significant increases over last year’s ninth graders.

In reading, the percentage of ninth graders scoring at the proficient level or above on the FCAT rose from 53 to 58 percent. Tenth grade students also improved their performance in reading, and dramatically increased their FCAT achievement levels in writing, which is measured with a point system from 1 to 6, with 6 being the highest score. From 2009 to 2010, the percentage of tenth graders scoring 4.0 or above in Persuasive Writing jumped from 58 to 76 percent.

In 2010, our school was also named again to Newsweek magazine’s annual list of the nation’s best high schools.

Best of all, students know our programs are making a difference in their performance and they feel like they are on the right track–the track to graduation.

Archipelago Learning Enhances Study Island High School Product For Increased Career And College Readiness

Archipelago Learning Inc., a leading subscription-based online education company, today announced the release of the latest version of The Island, part of Archipelago Learning's leading subscription-based Study Island product offering for high school students and teachers.

Completely revamped with relevant, online collaborative learning environments, The Island will offer high school students more complex and age-appropriate games; self-paced digital writing assignment portfolios; a comprehensive college readiness section rich with test taking strategies for ACT, SAT and AP exams; and extensive career planning guidance. Teachers will find The Island full of robust lessons aligned to current Kentucky Core Content (4.1) Standards and the new Common Core State Standards. Also new are custom assessment builders for ad hoc diagnostic and formative assessments, easy online and real-time reporting functions, and an improved school-to-home communications component.

"Our instructional design team has worked tirelessly to make a good product great," said Allison Duquette, chief marketing officer for Archipelago Learning. "Developed solely with today's tech-savvy teachers and students in mind, this economical and engaging learning tool will serve as the perfect online destination for today's digital natives. It taps their enthusiasm for technology, their need for collaborative learning situations, and a hip format that will help them succeed in the classroom while preparing for life after high school."

Today's Tech-Savvy Students

To begin working in The Island, students choose their own unique avatar or profile image from an internal library of images. Once online, students travel through self-paced, standards-aligned math, reading, writing, science, and social studies content, gaining "passport stamps" for successful mastery and completion in each activity. The 24/7 anytime, anywhere learning gives students access to high quality lessons and questions with instant feedback and built-in remediation for the ultimate individualized learning experience. Because of The Island's collaborative design, students can easily work on group assignments from home, create study groups to prepare for upcoming tests and discuss classroom lectures, and exchange ideas and tips for excelling in the classroom.

"Study Island students don't memorize the answers, they learn the topics," added Duquette. "That's made easier by giving students choices based on how they best learn. We offer our standard test mode or a more challenging high school game format. With either option, students are motivated to answer the questions correctly and the best part, they are practicing and mastering key concepts learned earlier in the classroom."

For upper high school students, the college readiness and career planning activities are some of the most progressive in the education market today. College-bound students will appreciate the online, interactive test preparation programs with pointed test-taking strategies as well as content necessary to succeed on ACT, SAT and AP exams. For students who want to get a jump-start on their careers, The Island gives the opportunity to create professional resumes, write business letters, or build recommendations with the Resume Builder function. Using embedded flash video, students will see first-hand examples — good and bad — of real job interviews. Additionally, students will learn how to make follow-up calls and inquire about jobs with the Interview Tips section.

Teacher Benefits

Students aren't the only ones who will benefit from incorporating The Island into their day-to-day activities. For example, the new Custom Assessment Builder enables teachers to easily build both ad hoc diagnostic and formative assessments in core subjects giving them the real-time data they need to make informed instructional decisions.

The new Digital Writing Assignment Portfolio fuses content and technology to deliver a paperless assignment tool that not only helps develop student writing and vocabulary skills, but also allows teachers to provide immediate, electronic feedback. Tracking students' individual progress from the first day of school until the last will now be much easier with Online Reporting. The Island records every student session in a real-time report card. This allows teachers to easily view student strengths and weaknesses so prompt intervention and remediation can be delivered.

Duquette added, "We've tried to incorporate most everything educators need to maximize their efforts to effectively engage learners and increase student achievement."

Common Core’s Curriculum Maps in English Language Arts

This announcement contains a link to tools to support implementation of the English language arts portion of our new standards (known locally as Kentucky Core Academic standards [KCAS] and nationally as Common Core State Standards [CCSS]):

Common Core’s Curriculum Maps in English Language Arts were written by public school teachers for public school teachers. The maps translate the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for Kindergarten through 12th grade into unit maps that teachers can use to plan their year, craft their own more detailed curriculum, and create lesson plans. The maps are flexible and adaptable, yet they address every standard in the CCSS. Any teacher, school, or district that chooses to follow the Common Core maps can be confident that they are adhering to the standards. Even the topics the maps introduce grow out of and expand upon the "exemplar" texts recommended in the CCSS. And because they are free, the maps will save school districts millions in curriculum development costs. The draft maps are available for public comment until September 17.

Archipelago Learning to Give Free Study Island Licenses to Teach For America Corps Members

Archipelago Learning, a leading subscription-based online education company and developer of the highly-respected Study Island, has entered into a partnership with Teach For America. Under the terms of the affiliation, new Teach For America corps teachers will receive a free, two-year license to Study Island that can be used with their students upon completion of the program's online training modules.

"Helping to eliminate educational inequity in the United States is the cornerstone of what Teach For America was created to do," said Tim McEwen, CEO for Archipelago Learning. "And that's why we developed Study Island -- to make sure that every child has the tools to help him learn and master core academic content. We are truly excited to help these amazing new educators make a difference in classrooms around the country."

Teach For America is a national corps of teachers that go above and beyond traditional expectations to improve the educational outcomes of children growing up in low-income communities. The organization seeks top graduates from all academic majors and backgrounds who have demonstrated outstanding achievement, perseverance, and leadership. Teach For America received a record-breaking 46,000 applications this year, and admission was more selective than ever before, with an acceptance rate of 12 percent. This fall, more than 8,200 corps members will be teaching in 39 regions across the country. Beyond their impact as corps members, two-thirds of the 20,000 Teach For America alumni across the country remain in education. More than 450 Teach For America alumni serve as school principals or superintendents, more than 500 work in government or policy, and nearly 30 serve in elected office.

The web-based Study Island system incorporates standards-based instruction, interactive games, and rewards to help improve student performance. By providing engaging, self-paced instruction and positive reinforcement, Study Island helps students take control of their learning and build their confidence, while creating a culture of academic success. The comprehensive, web-based program combines rigorous content in math, reading, writing, science and social studies, and its online instruction, practice, assessment, and productivity tools are built directly from state standards and the new common core standards. For teachers, Study Island includes lesson plans, video and supplemental and digital resources and tools for monitoring student progress that enable differentiated instruction for on-level, struggling and advanced learners.

Study Island is available for purchase by schools, districts and learning centers, as well as parents and students. For more information please visit the Study Island website at: www.studyisland.com.

About Archipelago Learning

Archipelago Learning is a leading subscription-based online education company that provides standards-based instruction, practice, assessments and productivity tools that improve the performance of educators and students via proprietary web-based platforms.

Study Island, the core product line, helps students in kindergarten through 12th grade master grade-level academic standards in a fun and engaging manner and is utilized by over 10 million students in approximately 21,800 schools in the United States and Canada.

EducationCity, used by 8,200 schools in the United Kingdom and 4,800 schools in the United States, provides online K-6 instructional content and assessments for reading, mathematics and science.

Northstar Learning, for the post-secondary market, offers online instructional content and exam preparation products across a variety of core curriculum and vocational topics.

For more information, please visit www.archipelagolearning.com. Archipelago Learning is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.

About Teach For America

Teach For America is the national corps of outstanding recent college graduates who commit to teach for two years in urban and rural public schools and become lifelong leaders in expanding educational opportunity. This fall, more than 8,200 corps members will be teaching in 39 regions across the country, while more than 20,000 Teach For America alumni continue working from inside and outside the field of education for the fundamental changes necessary to ensure educational excellence and equity. For more information, visit www.teachforamerica.org.

This news release was distributed by GlobeNewswire, www.globenewswire.com

Q & A about EduJob Money

While this article is specific to PA, it contains good general information regarding the flow of $10 billion EduJobs funding to states and school districts.


The Morning Call (Lehigh Valley, PA)

August 13, 2010

Breaking down education jobs money
It can be used for hiring, rehiring, or paying expenses related to current employees.

With $878.8 million of federal cash soon on its way to Pennsylvania to help stave off education job losses, many Lehigh Valley school districts are wondering how they can put the money to work without increasing spending in the long-term.

The U.S. Department of Education on Friday clarified how districts can use the money not only for hiring or rehiring, but also for maintaining its current work force, such as paying for benefits, professional development and pension costs.
The Morning Call compiled the following questions and answers to explain the new program:

Q: What is the purpose of the money?

A: Congress passed $10 billion in education job money Tuesday for districts to use for compensation, benefits and other expenses associated with hiring, rehiring or keeping current employees on the payrolls. Allowed uses of the money include salaries, performance bonuses, health insurance, retirement benefits, incentives for early retirement and pension fund contributions.

Q: Which employees can be supported with the money?

A: Teachers, principals, assistant principals, academic coaches, teacher trainers, classroom aides, counselors, librarians, secretaries, social workers, psychologists, interpreters, physical therapists, speech therapists, occupational therapists, technology personnel, nurses, athletic coaches, security officers, custodians, maintenance workers, bus drivers and cafeteria workers.

Q: When will the money be available?

A. States must first apply to the U.S. Department of Education, which expects to issue money to approved state within two weeks. States may use 2 percent of the money for program administration, but must make the remaining 98 percent of money available to local school districts. The Education Department expects the money to be available locally by September.

Q: How will districts get the money, and how long does it last?

A: The money will be distributed through either the basic education funding formula or the federal Title I formula, depending on what the state decides. Individual district amounts have not yet been released by the state. Districts are encouraged to use the money this school year, but have until September 2012 to spend it.

Q: Can the state tell local districts how to use the money?

A: No. Local districts can use the money how they see fit so long as they meet all other requirements and guidelines both in the law and issued by the Education Department.

Q: Does the money mean districts will definitely be hiring?

A: No. Districts should be careful not to hire new people using one-time money unless they know they can afford the increased costs in the long run, after the federal money is gone. In many cases, districts will probably report saving jobs and use the money for expenses such as professional development.

Q: How will the impact be tracked?

A: States and local school districts will be required to report how they use the money and how it supported personnel in quarterly reports similar to those required for stimulus money. The first report will be due in October.

christopher.baxter@mcall.com
610-778-2283
MORE INFORMATION
See the U.S. Department of Education's website for the Education Jobs Fund at http://www2.ed.gov/programs/educationjobsfund/index.html. Specific questions can be e-mailed to EducationJobsFund@ed.gov

States: Come Get Your Edujobs Money

Posted: 13 Aug 2010 11:36 AM PDT
This article comes from the “Education Week” blog: Politics K-12 [webeditors@epe.org]

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wasn't kidding when he promised school districts and states that the applications for the new Education Jobs Fund (created under the $10 billion edujobs bill) would be very quick and "streamlined."

Less than a week after President Obama signed the edujobs bill, the application has been posted, and it is super straightforward. There is basically only one question: States have to specify whether they plan to distribute the funds through Title I or through their state education funding formula. (Except for Texas, which is special, and gets no choice in the matter. Texas has to distribute the funds via Title I. And, it has stricter maintenance-of-effort provisions.)

The money can be used for restoring cuts in salaries and benefits and boosting teacher pay in the 2010-2011 school year. Districts can also eliminate furlough days that had been scheduled for the 2010-2011 school year.

But they can't use the funds to pay salaries and benefits for outside contractors, except in cases where districts contract with other districts for specific services. And the money can't be used for central office staff.

Districts can use the funds to pay the salaries of teachers and other employees, including principals, assistant principals, academic coaches, in-service teacher trainers, classroom aides, counselors, librarians, secretaries, social workers, psychologists, interpreters, physical therapists, speech therapists, occupational therapists, information technology personnel, nurses, athletic coaches, security officers, custodians, maintenance workers, bus drivers, and cafeteria workers.

QUOTES ABOUT EDUCATION

I found these quotes in a blog posted by Nate German, a Study Island user,
[ http://nathangerman.blogspot.com/2010/08/week-7-lesson-7-blog-vii-educational.html ] who appears to have found them at www.QuoteGarden.com

No man who worships education has got the best out of education.... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete. ~G.K. Chesterton


The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men. ~Bill Beattie


The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. ~Sydney J. Harris


Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school. ~Albert Einstein


The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt


It'll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers. ~Author unknown, quoted in You Said a Mouthful, Ronald D. Fuchs, ed.


An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life. ~Author Unknown


If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. ~Attributed to both Andy McIntyre and Derek Bok


It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense. ~Robert G. Ingersoll


Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. ~G.M. Trevelyan


To the uneducated, an A is just three sticks. ~A.A. Milne


Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both. ~Abraham Flexner


Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. ~Edward Everett


Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding. ~Ezra Pound


Education should be exercise; it has become massage. ~Martin H. Fischer


The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives. ~Robert Maynard Hutchins


He who opens a school door, closes a prison. ~Victor Hugo


Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog. ~Mark Twain


My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects. ~Robert Maynard Hutchins


Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. ~Will Durant


Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age? ~Erich Fromm


Education aims to give you a boost up the ladder of knowledge. Too often, it just gives you a cramp on one of its rungs. ~Martin H. Fischer


Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it. ~William Haley


I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That's what I call a liberal education. ~Tallulah Bankhead


A child educated only at school is an uneducated child. ~George Santayana


Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. ~Malcolm S. Forbes


An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious - just dead wrong. ~R. Baker


What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook. ~Henry David Thoreau


Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught. ~Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist," 1890


Did you know America ranks the lowest in education but the highest in drug use? It's nice to be number one, but we can fix that. All we need to do is start the war on education. If it's anywhere near as successful as our war on drugs, in no time we'll all be hooked on phonics. ~Leighann Lord


What if man were required to educate his children without the help of talking animals. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education. I call it intrusion. ~Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie


If I had learned education I would not have had time to learn anything else. ~Cornelius Vanderbilt


Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity. ~Aristotle


Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. ~G.K. Chesterton


In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection; otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books. ~Michel de Montaigne


Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. ~Robert Frost


Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves. ~Abbé Dimnet, Art of Thinking, 1928


Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


The modern world belongs to the half-educated, a rather difficult class, because they do not realize how little they know. ~William R. Inge


It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. ~Aristotle


I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. ~Mark Twain


When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course. ~Peter Drucker


If a man is a fool, you don't train him out of being a fool by sending him to university. You merely turn him into a trained fool, ten times more dangerous. ~Desmond Bagley


Education is the movement from darkness to light. ~Allan Bloom


Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants. ~John W. Gardner


There is nothing so stupid as the educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in. ~Will Rogers


Education is not filling a pail but the lighting of a fire. ~William Butler Yeats


Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


A good teacher must know the rules; a good pupil, the exceptions. ~Martin H. Fischer


With just enough learning to misquote. ~George Gordon, Lord Byron, "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers"


There is only one Education, and it has only one goal: the freedom of the mind. Anything that needs an adjective, be it civics education, or socialist education, or Christian education, or whatever-you-like education, is not education, and it has some different goal. The very existence of modified "educations" is testimony to the fact that their proponents cannot bring about what they want in a mind that is free. An "education" that cannot do its work in a free mind, and so must "teach" by homily and precept in the service of these feelings and attitudes and beliefs rather than those, is pure and unmistakable tyranny. ~Richard Mitchell,The Underground Grammarian, September 1982


The regular course was Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with; and then the different branches of Arithmetic - Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. ~Lewis Carroll


Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. ~Roger Lewin


They say that we are better educated than our parents' generation. What they mean is that we go to school longer. It is not the same thing. ~Richard Yates


I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as a cabdriver. Then they would really be educated. ~Al McGuire


The tragedy of education is played in two scenes - incompetent pupils facing competent teachers and incompetent teachers facing competent pupils. ~Martin H. Fischer


A gentleman need not know Latin, but he should at least have forgotten it. ~Brander Matthews


If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world. ~Heinrich Heine


You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys who educate him. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


One attraction of Latin is that you can immerse yourself in the poems of Horace and Catullus without fretting over how to say, "Have a nice day." ~Peter Brodie


The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have given his life. ~Ernest Renan, Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse, 1883


Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. ~John Dewey


Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent. ~John Maynard Keynes


Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know. ~Daniel J. Boorstin, Democracy and Its Discontents


I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly. ~Michel Eyquem de Montaigne


Education is the process of driving a set of prejudices down your throats. ~Martin H. Fischer


It doesn't make much difference what you study, as long as you don't like it. ~Finley Peter Dunne


Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't. ~Pete Seeger


We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Intelligence appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without education. Education enables a man to get along without the use of his intelligence. ~Albert Edward Wiggam


The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas. ~George Santayana


The founding fathers... provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called education. School is where you go between when your parents can't take you and industry can't take you. ~John Updike, The Centaur, 1963


You can get all A's and still flunk life. ~Walker Percy


The more that learn to read the less learn how to make a living. That's one thing about a little education. It spoils you for actual work. The more you know the more you think somebody owes you a living. ~Will Rogers


My parents told me, "Finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving." I tell my daughters, "Finish your homework. People in India and China are starving for your job." ~Thomas L. Friedman


All the learnin' my father paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and an alphabet at the other. ~George Eliot


Education is the transmission of civilization. ~Ariel and Will Durant


The one real object of education is to have a man in the condition of continually asking questions. ~Bishop Mandell Creighton


If you sincerely desire a truly well-rounded education, you must study the extremists, the obscure and "nutty." You need the balance! Your poor brain is already being impregnated with middle-of-the-road crap, twenty-four hours a day, no matter what. Network TV, newspapers, radio, magazines at the supermarket... even if you never watch, read, listen, or leave your house, even if you are deaf and blind, the telepathic pressure alone of the uncountable normals surrounding you will insure that you are automatically well-grounded in consensus reality. ~Ivan Stang, High Weirdness By Mail

Reading Eggs 'Hatch' in U.S. Market: Archipelago Learning Becomes Exclusive Distributor of Popular Australian Literacy Product for Early Learners

Reading Eggs is Perfect Complement to Study Island, a Favorite of U.S. Teachers, in Archipelago's Line-Up of Online Instructional Programs

DALLAS, Aug. 9, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- To help young students 'crack' the reading code, Archipelago Learning, a leading subscription-based online education company, announced today that it has become the exclusive U.S. distributor of the school version of Blake Publishing's Reading Eggs. The playful, online early literacy program hails from Australia and is creatively designed to support core literacy teaching that will drive early reading successes and help students, ages three to eight, become proficient readers.

Developed by a highly experienced team of teachers, education writers, and developers, Reading Eggs comprises 100 research-based lessons within a highly motivational framework. The program is rich with an assortment of instructional tutorials, review activities, and games. Blake Publishing has a long history in publishing award-winning and internationally renowned K-12 reading materials for several major U.S. publishers. Its high-quality educational resources provide a vast array of literacy resources and programs for teachers and students, alike.

"We are thrilled to add this very clever and exceptional balanced literacy reading program to our Study Island family, and to offer it to our growing customer base," said Tim McEwen, chief executive officer for Archipelago Learning. "We understand the role that early literacy development plays in student achievement in elementary school and beyond. With this engaging product, we are giving preschool and early elementary teachers an important tool that will have their students experiencing tremendous success early in their literacy acquisition process, thus ensuring that reading for meaning is achieved."

Each of the simple-to-navigate lessons that make up the Reading Eggs program offer between six and eleven sections that focus on core reading skills and strategies essential for sustained reading success. The animated program begins at an emergent reading level, focusing on letter sounds, first sight words and reading simple sentences. Using their very own avatar or online character, students navigate their way through a host of fun and interactive activities as many times as they want. With each lesson, students gain valuable repetition and practice of the five pillars of reading skills the National Reading Panel determined essential for reading proficiency: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency. As lessons are successfully completed, students are provided a corresponding online-leveled reader as well as earn the opportunity to add a Reading Eggs' fun "critter" to their collection. After ten lessons, students complete a mastery quiz that provides teachers with a report summarizing what each child has learned thus far along with diagnostics to inform instruction.

For older students, the program's Story Factory opens up a world of story writing and reading where young scholars can write their own stories and enter them in a weekly story writing competition sponsored by Reading Eggs.

Teachers will find the diagnostic tests and student management tools useful in placing students in the appropriate reading level within the program. All student activities and progress are recorded, showing teachers a list of test results and lessons finished with a complete scope and sequence of content covered. In addition, the teacher toolkit provides access to a wide range of interactive whiteboard resources, 96 spelling tests, and interactive lesson ideas.

"The cool graphics, appealing songs, rewards, and work-at-your-own-pace program really grabs the attention of young readers, including struggling and reluctant readers," added McEwen. "The playfulness of the Reading Eggs program, combined with its strong instructional focus, creates a solution that is educationally rigorous but still suits the learning style of young children who learn best through play."

The complete Study Island product offering is available for purchase by schools, districts and learning centers, as well as parents and students. Purchase prices specifically for the Reading Eggs program begin at $199 for an annual, single class subscription. For more information please visit the Reading Eggs section of the Study Island website at: http://www.studyisland.com/readingeggs.

Contact your Kentucky Sales Rep, Pat Ryan [pat.ryan@studyisland.com] to register for a FREE Trial or, go to: secure.studyisland.com/readingeggs/schools_freetrial.cfm

Common Core Standards for Kentucky Now Available on Study Island

Study Island From Archipelago Learning Announces Common Core State Standards Product Update

Professional Development, Instructional and Assessment Materials Will Help Teachers Adjust Classroom Practices, Prepare Students for Transition to New Standards

June 30, 2010 2:45 PM EDT

DALLAS, June 30, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- When the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers released the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for K-12 education earlier this month, they set in motion a seismic shift in what students are expected to learn and how teachers are supposed to teach. Kentucky became the first state to officially commit to adopt the CCSS, and since that time, additional states, including Maryland, Michigan, Hawaii, Missouri, New Mexico, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio and Utah have also announced their intent to move to the new standards.

To help educators ensure their students are gaining the critical knowledge and skills specified by the new standards, Archipelago Learning, (Nasdaq: ARCL), a leading subscription-based online education company and developer of the highly-acclaimed Study Island, announced today the availability of the first of their products built directly from the CCSS. The Study Island Kentucky edition includes on-line instructional content, supplemental resources, video lessons, a digital writing portfolio, on-line assessment development, and engaging animated games. In addition, the new Study Island Kentucky edition includes an extensive on-line integrated professional development module, with teacher videos, lesson plans, activities, and supporting materials to enable a smooth and effective transition to the new standards. Kentucky customers will be able to concurrently access both the prior Kentucky standards as well as the new updated Common Core State Standards from within the Study Island product, to provide districts and schools with complete flexibility. Updates to other Study Island state editions will be made available based on each state's specific time frame for implementing the CCSS.

"Change can be complex, challenging and expensive for schools and districts, but not with Study Island," said Tim McEwen, chief executive officer for Archipelago Learning. "Because we are 100 percent digital we have always been uniquely positioned to help schools and districts transition curriculum and assessments to new standards, simply and cost-effectively. It's no different with the Common Core State Standards and no doubt why we are one of the fastest growing providers of online education solutions to the K-12 market. Study Island is the most economical resource available to schools to support the transition to the new standards, providing an online resource built from current standards, a roadmap for helping educators transition to the new standards, and the most comprehensive coverage of the new Common Core State Standards and all included at no additional charge to our regular very affordable subscription price. In most cases, the annual subscription price of Study Island for a student is less than the cost of a hamburger and fries in a fast food restaurant!"

Through its large and experienced product development team, proprietary content management systems and authoring tools, Study Island's online instruction, practice, assessment, and productivity tools are built directly from state standards and the new Common Core State Standards, and are constantly updated. The comprehensive, web-based program combines rigorous content in math, reading, writing, science and social studies with interactive games and rewards that engage students, reinforce accomplishments and create a culture of academic success. In addition, Study Island's eLearning professional development workshops are available to help educators effectively transition to the new common core standards and optimally use Study Island's curriculum, assessment and reporting features and functionality. The goal is to speed student acquisition of fundamental academic skills and conceptual understandings, and to do so via a unique methodology that ensures learning mastery is sustainable and achieved in a fun and engaging manner that motivates continued student learning throughout their academic careers.

"Study Island has an inherent ability to anticipate and be ready 24/7 with the digital resources required to succeed in this ever-changing K-12 landscape," said McEwen. "Kentucky was the first state to adopt the standards and I know there is some concern among educators across the state about how they will be ready to teach and assess to the new standards in a consistent manner, and do so in a time of budgetary constraints. Study Island has always been committed to ensuring that our product is developed from the most current standards available for each state, and our customers can rest assured that we are completely prepared to integrate the new standards into our product for each state that adopts them."

Study Island is available for purchase by schools, districts and learning centers, as well as parents and students. More information along with pricing for individuals and quantity discounts for educational institutions is available at the Study Island website: www.studyisland.com; or, better still, contact Study Island's Kentucky Sales Rep, Pat Ryan [800.419.3191 x7617 or pat.ryan@studyisland.com]

Study Island Summer Camp

DALLAS, June 3, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Seasonal brain drain. It sounds serious, but in fact it's a pretty common occurrence among children when they return to school after the summer break. Experts agree that on average, students lose the equivalent of one to nearly three months of previous learning – in effect erasing this amount of learning from their mind.

The good news for parents and students is that this "academic atrophy" can be reduced and even eliminated. To help diminish summer learning loss, Archipelago Learning (Nasdaq:ARCL), a leading provider of online education programs to K-12 schools across the country, has launched Study Island Summer Camp, an engaging and educational supplemental program complete with summer themed, multi-curricular online games for students in grades three - eight.

"Many parents are looking to fill the 70+ days of summer vacation with fun and engaging activities to keep their children involved. At the same time they worry about their children retaining what they learned from the prior year, and staying sharp and prepared for the upcoming school year ahead," said Karla Kennard, Study Island's consumer marketing manager. "Study Island Summer Camp provides the best of both worlds; offering fun and engaging games that reinforce and advance learning. Since it can be used anytime and anywhere there is an Internet connection, children have the flexibility to log on and 'play' anytime they want."

Study Island Summer Camp offers an Elementary School course of study for grades three-five and a Middle School version for grades 6-8. Each program offers age-appropriate curriculum materials for math, science, English and social studies, many of them taken from the successful Study Island program used by millions of students in schools across the country. Working independently in quiz mode, game mode or with a printable worksheet, students can review information from the previous school year and even get ahead on the next grade level.

"We are continually looking for ways to enhance and support our vision," said Allison Duquette, chief marketing officer at Archipelago Learning. "We believe that given the right tools, all students can, and will indeed, flourish beyond our expectations. Combating summer learning loss doesn't have to be complicated or boring, it just takes a focused, fun program. We are very excited about Study Island Summer Camp and its ability to weave learning into summer activities that children already enjoy."

The product is available online until August 31, 2010 at a cost of $19.00/program.

To obtain additional information or to purchase the program, visit www.studyisland.com/summercamp or call 800-419-3191.

Group pushes for nationwide educational standards

Posted: Jun 02, 2010 2:37 PM EDT
From: http://www.fox41.com/Global/story.asp?S=12582802

By third grade, students should know how to write a complex sentence and add fractions, no matter if they live in Georgia or California. Eighth-graders should understand the Pythagorean theorem. And by high school graduation, all U.S. students should be ready for college or a career.

That's the goal of sweeping new education benchmarks released Wednesday called the Common Core State Standards. Kentucky is one of the states that has signed onto the project that aims to replace a hodgepodge of educational goals varying wildly from state to state with a uniform set of expectations for students. It's the first time states have joined together to establish what students should know by the time they graduate high school.

"With these standards, we can provide all of the country's children with the education they deserve," said West Virginia schools superintendent Steve Paine, who gathered with other educators and officials from across the country at Peachtree Ridge High School in Suwanee just outside Atlanta to release the final draft of the standards. "Having consistent standards across the states means all of our children are going to be prepared for college and career, regardless of zip code."

States are expected to use the standards to revise their curriculum and tests to make learning more uniform across the country, eliminating inequities in education not only between states but also among districts. The standards also will ensure students transferring to a school district in a different state won't be far behind their classmates or have to repeat classes because they are more advanced.

Under Common Core, third-graders should understand subject-verb agreement, fifth-graders need to know about metaphors and similes and seventh-graders must understand how to calculate surface area.

States that sign up are supposed to use the standards as a base on which to build their curricula and testing, but they can make their benchmarks tougher than Common Core.

All but two states -- Alaska and Texas -- signed on to the original concept of Common Core more than a year ago.

Critics worry that the standards will basically nationalize public schools rather than letting states decide what is best for their students. Texas' commissioner of education, Robert Scott, has said that the state didn't sign on to Common Core because it wants to preserve its "sovereign authority to determine what is appropriate for Texas children to learn in its public schools."

So far, the standards have been adopted by Kentucky, Hawaii, Maryland, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Another 40 states and Washington, D.C., have agreed to adopt the standards in coming months, said Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, which joined with the National Governors Association in leading the Common Core project. Wilhoit was once a social studies teacher in Indiana, and has served as Kentucky's Education Commissioner. "We don't think it's acceptable that because a student lives down in Atlanta and not up here, they should have different outcomes," said Wilhoit before Wednesday's event in the northern Atlanta suburbs.

The federal government was not involved, but has encouraged the project, including adoption of the standards as part of the scoring in the U.S. Department of Education's "Race to the Top" grant competition. President Barack Obama has said he wants to make money from Title I -- the federal government's biggest school aid program -- contingent on adoption of college- and career-ready reading and math standards.

"As the nation seeks to maintain our international competitiveness, ensure all students regardless of background have access to a high quality education and prepare all students for college, work and citizenship, these standards are an important foundation for our collective work," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Wednesday in a prepared statement.

Common Core was structured over a year of meetings with teachers, parents, school administrators, civil rights leaders, education policymakers, business leaders, and others from across the country. The group produced multiple drafts and collected comments from more than 10,000 people online.

"The world is small now, and we're not just competing with students in our county or across the state. We are competing with the world," said Robert Kosicki, who graduated from a Georgia high school this year after transferring from Connecticut and having to repeat classes because the curriculum was so different. "This is a move away from the time when a student can be punished for the location of his home or the depth of his father's pockets."

Common Standards Initiative: http://www.corestandards.org/

ESEA Reauthorization Update

In March, the Obama Administration released its blueprint for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The blueprint offers broad concepts regarding changes to the current version of the law, commonly known as the No Child Left Behind Act.

While details of the plan have yet to be fully released or vented in Congress, the key elements of the administration’s Blueprint for Reform are summarized below.

What Stays:
 A Strong Focus on Standards – The new proposal continues to focus on the “common core standards initiative” to establish more uniform academic standards in reading and math to prepare students for college or a career.
 Annual Testing – The new proposal keeps the requirement for annual testing in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school.
 Reporting Requirements – The new proposal keeps the requirement for disaggregating and reporting on student data for populations such as racial minorities, English-language learners, and students in special education.

What Changes:
 The Title I program would receive a new name and be called “College and Career Ready Students”.
 The proposal eliminates the NCLB’s 2014 deadline for bringing all students to academic proficiency and replaces it with a goal of ensuring that all students are ready for college or a career by 2020.
 It replaces the focus on teacher quality with teacher and principal effectiveness. States and districts would be required to publish, at least every two years, a performance level report card on teacher and principal effectiveness.
 Under the new plan, all or nearly all of the new federal money will go to innovation and be competitive money.
 The new proposal eliminates many of the NCLB sanctions, including the provision of offering Supplemental Educational Services (SES), when schools have not made AYP for three consecutive years.
 The ESEA reauthorization plan replaces AYP with a more comprehensive review of student performance that looks at student growth and school progress.
 The new proposal places a focus on the nation’s lowest 5% of schools by requiring them to take drastic steps to improve.

Both the House and the Senate are scheduled to release draft reauthorization bills in June2010.

Guiding Principles:
1. Promote College and Career Readiness for All Students.
2. Maintain Focus on Equity and Core Investments.
3. Ensure Meaningful Accountability.
4. Encourage Innovation in State Policy.
5. Ensure Coherence and Reduce Burden in and across Federal Law.
6. Build Capacity to Support Comprehensive State Policy Reforms.
7. Increase and Improve Investments in Research and Dissemination of
Knowledge.

The Administration's ESEA Blueprint presents core themes regarding the Administration's proposal in numerous areas of education reform:

• College-and career-readiness: New focus of Title I
• Flexibility: Move toward "tight on ends, loose on means.”
• Incentives: Focus on carrots, not just sticks
• Competition: Formula funding remains, but new increases for competitive grants
• Consolidation: Broader, fewer funding streams
• Equity: Scope unclear, but new focus on resource equity
• Capacity: Recognition of need to support state systems

In the weeks since the Obama administration released its blueprint for revising ESEA on March 13, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee and the House Education and Labor Committee have held multiple hearings on ESEA reauthorization.

During the last week of April, Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) said that he intends to mark up legislation in May that would reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Harkin has set a goal of having the legislation reach the Senate floor in late June or July, but acknowledged that finding a replacement for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who announced that he will retire this summer, could cause the timeline to slip. In addition, others have suggested that immigration reform could cause reauthorization to take a back-burner. And, with the mid-term elections slated for November, many observers believe reauthorization this year is not likely.

2011 Federal Education Budget update

The 2011 Federal Education Budget reflects the Obama administration’s dizzying array of policy and funding changes, and we expect more may be on the horizon.

On February 1, 2010, President Obama released the FY 2011 budget proposal. The budget proposal is built around the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization. In fact, the proposal would require the passage of a reauthorized bill before the funds could be appropriated because much of the requested funding is for the new programs. Many question whether it is realistic to think that the ESEA could be reauthorized so quickly. Listed below are some highlights of the potential changes in the budget proposal.

 The proposal consolidates 38 programs into 11 funding streams and eliminates many programs.
 With regard to early childhood programs, the President’s budget proposal creates record-setting increases for childcare.
 The budget proposal focuses all new money on competitive grants rather than formula grants.
 The proposed budget would also include a substantial boost for the Title I School Improvement Grants, a program that helps districts target interventions to schools struggling to meet the goals of the ESEA law.
 The proposal includes funds for Effective Teachers and Leaders Grants, which would provide formula grants aimed at helping districts recruit, prepare, reward, support, and retain highly effective teachers.

Federal dollars devoted to education for the 2009 and 2010 budget years remained flat at $45.4 billion and $46.2 billion, respectively, with the exception of stimulus funding. The 2011 budget request made by the Obama Administration shows an increase of $3.5 billion. Most of that increase is allocated to a few select programs, namely an increase of $355 million in School Turnaround (formerly School Improvement) grants, plus new funding for Race to the Top (RTTT), $1.35 billion, and Investing in Innovation (i3) programs. (The complete 2011 budget request is at: http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget11/index.html.)

Congress will be working on the proposed 2011 budget throughout the summer to have it ready before the new federal fiscal year, which begins on October 1 (though in recent years, final resolution generally has come after that date). This year’s proposal warrants special attention because it lays out the Administration’s priorities for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA); see section that follows.

Noticeably absent from the 2011 proposal is the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program. This shift indicates it’s time to stop thinking of technology as a stand-alone goal and budget item within the education process and to start treating it as an integrated component within learning solutions. This is a fundamental change in how states, districts, and schools will consider technology purchases, and we view this as a positive trend since it means technology is being looked at as “must have” as opposed to “nice to have.”

Title I (that is, the ESEA Basic Grant Program) was allocated the same dollars in the 2011 proposal as in 2010; however, the Administration has renamed the program as College- and Career-Ready Students to better reflect the significant change in direction of the $14.5 billion program. Under the proposed new program, states will be required to adopt new college- and career-ready standards with aligned assessments and also to commit to working toward a system that links student achievement with the effectiveness of their teachers. New as well would be the replacement of “adequate yearly progress” with a broader measurement of school performance that accounts for improvements in other areas like school climate and high school graduation rates.

The 2011FY budget also includes many other important programs that offer lucrative opportunities for education companies. There are predominant themes throughout all of the programs within the proposed reauthorization of ESEA—student outcomes, competition, innovation, and a focus on the schools and students of the greatest need. New programs being proposed that we are tracking closely include:

Effective Teaching and Learning: Literacy – $450 million to improve K-12 literacy instruction

Effective Teaching and Learning: STEM – $300 million to improve teaching and learning in science, technology, engineering, and math

Effective Teaching and Learning: Well-Rounded Education – $265 million to develop and expand innovative teaching and learning in the arts, foreign languages, civics and government, history, geography, economics, financial literacy, as well as other subjects

College Pathways and Accelerated Learning – $100 million for college-level and accelerated courses, gifted and talented programs

Expanding Educational Options – $490 million to support charter schools and public school choice

Promise Neighborhoods – $210 million for neighborhood services

In addition, the National Education Technology Plan 2010 was released in the middle of March. Entitled “Learning Powered by Technology,” the plan for using technology to improve education is based on the themes of learning, assessment, teachers, infrastructure, productivity, along with research and development. All stakeholders are encouraged to review the document and provide feedback on the Plan. The complete 2010 Plan is at http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010.

Speaking Their Language

From: Tech & Learning Digital Edition
April 22, 2010

What do you do when 56 percent of your students are English-language learners, 80 percent come from low income families, your students speak 14 different languages at home, and 215 new students arrive in the first three months of the school year? Bring in the tech. “Technology has helped us create individualized learning portfolios,” says Erick Naumann, principal of Parlin Elementary in Everett, Massachusetts. “From the gifted and talented to ELL, we can educate the entire spectrum.”


In the past year, Parlin Elementary has gone from being the lowest-scoring school in the district for English language acquisition and mathematics to the highest and was recognized as one of the five fastest-growing schools in the state. “We use Diigo, a Web based technology that enables effective collaborative research,” says Naumann. “An ELL-based project team, class, or club can create a group on Diigo to pool relevant resources, findings, and thoughts. The students post book reviews, share ideas about class work, and help each other with homework when absent.

“We use video to record and play student projects and podcasts to share with fellow classmates,” he continues. “Skype and Google Earth enhance the teaching of English-language acquisition, and Fast ForWord has helped our ELL population learn to speak English in a nonthreatening environment where the students are encouraged to make mistakes and learn, without being penalized or embarrassed in front of their peers.”

“So often, student feedback on performance requires a paper to be graded or report card to be filed,” says Gerhard Grotke, principal of James Madison Elementary in San Leandro, California. “The format of assessment may not match the format of learning. Study Island is a great platform for the kids to show what they know.” The internal email system allows ESL students to exercise their written-language skills in a supervised and safe environment (negative- and abusive-language filters tip teachers off to intervene to prevent bullying). Grotke holds school-wide contests that utilize the technology’s capability to remotely monitor usage and achievement, whether at school or at home.

After using Classworks, ELL students at George Y. Komure Elementary in Stockton, California, posted double digit gains in language arts, their proficiency increasing from 19 to 32 percent, says second-grade teacher Karen Brickell. “As our teachers became more focused on specific standards,” principal Jo Ella Allen says, “we saw the benefits in student engagement and in test scores.”

New ACT Prep program from Study Island

Archipelago Learning (Nasdaq:ARCL), a leading subscription-based online education company, announced the introduction of Study Island ACT, a web-based review program that provides both students and schools with a flexible, affordable and effective option for ACT exam preparation.

Most colleges and universities today require an ACT (American College Testing) or SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) score as an eligibility factor. With more and more students applying to colleges, however, a higher ACT score could mean the difference between being accepted or not. The problem is, not every student has access to – or can afford – traditional review programs on the market today.

Not so, with Study Island ACT. Study Island ACT's web-based platform makes the program accessible anytime, anywhere an Internet connection is available, and unlike typical online practice and test-prep programs, it teaches both the content and strategies to achieve the best possible results on the ACT exam. It also allows students to build a study regimen that is completely flexible to their particular needs, and at a fraction of the cost.

"Today's high school students lead busy lives. Some are active in a number of sports and extra-curricular activities; others have home or work obligations that take up a great deal of time. It offers maximum flexibility so students can study exactly what they need, whenever and wherever it's convenient," said Tim McEwen, CEO for Archipelago Learning.

McEwen added that economics also play a part in whether or not students participate in traditional review programs. "The high price of a classroom or one-on-one tutor sessions can result in an unfair advantage for those students from higher income homes where parents can afford to spend hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars on a program," he said. "Study Island ACT is a small fraction of the price of traditional programs. It's like having a one-on-one tutor that works at the student's pace, from anywhere with an Internet connection. In addition, since many students take the ACT more than once, the program can be repeated as many times as needed during the one-year subscription term, making it even more cost-effective."

Archipelago Learning partnered with Tutor Associates, a New York City-based leader in one-on-one tutoring, to create Study Island ACT. The program combines Tutor Associates' proprietary Learning Tools and curriculum, which have been developed based on years of successful face-to-face tutoring, with Study Island's online learning platform, which is used in over 21,500 schools in the United States and Canada, to deliver expert ACT knowledge with engaging graphical content.

David Oblath, president and co-founder of Tutor Associates commented, "We are excited for this second collaboration with Study Island to bring our ACT curriculum online. Study Island continues to provide accessible, effective instruction and we have had fantastic feedback on the SAT preparation program we released a few months ago. We are confident that the online ACT preparation product will also become a dynamic learning tool, enabling any student to improve his or her performance on the test."

A core aspect of Study Island ACT is the use of animated, interactive instructional videos that train students on key test-taking strategies and help them avoid common pitfalls. This approach is designed to be as effective as having a live coach or taking a class. Study Island ACT includes in-depth, interactive lessons in math, critical reading and writing, and real-time progress reports to show students' strengths and areas that need more practice. The program also provides hundreds of printable flashcards so students can practice common ACT vocabulary, as well as full-length practice tests to reinforce students' skills and develop their confidence.

Study Island SAT is available for purchase by schools, districts and learning centers, as well as parents and students. More information along with pricing for individuals and quantity discounts for educational institutions is available at the Study Island website: www.studyisland.com/ACT.