Five Education Issues That Matter in 2021

Whether you are a chief, superintendent, principal, counselor, or department head, you know that building efficiency and providing more effective management will ensure better outcomes for students. The solutions from Education Advanced will provide you with the data you need to make informed decisions, create efficiencies for staff, and provide better opportunities for students.

#1 Mastery of Standards

OTL – Opportunity to Learn – it’s one of the most frequent topics in education today. BuildYourOwnCurriculum (BYOC) provides your teachers with a classroom tool that will:

• align their class curriculum with your state standards
• monitor planning and delivery of instruction to ensure student progress toward mastery
• make certain ALL students experience the same path, regardless of the teacher or their learning location
• easily make incremental changes at any time, providing continuous improvement opportunities
• enable teachers to share best practices, activities, and resources seamlessly, and,
• connect learning objectives to a perpetual cycle of development, delivery, assessment, and refinement across teachers, classrooms, and grade-levels.

#2 Student Accommodations

As a director of state testing, one of the worst phone calls I ever had to handle was with the parent of a student who did not get the appropriate accommodations on a state assessment. It is brutally painful to tell a crying mother that while you are sorry, her child did not get the read-aloud version they should have received, there is nothing you can do, and they cannot retake the test. TestHound, our test enablement software, provides the ‘backstage’ organizational logistics to help your school and district testing coordinators keep testing season under control. We have worked with districts in administering over 10 Million tests and I consider TestHound an essential tool for the tool belt for anyone involved in the logistics of testing; it will:

• automatically generate accommodations reports through a nightly download from your accommodations software - reducing reports of irregularity for wrong accommodations by 99%
• provide classroom rosters that include accommodation information on the morning of the test
• access the most current information from your student information system, including special education and English learner programs, to ensure that ALL students are included in testing schedules and receive the appropriate materials
• track student testing history making sure that students have met assessment requirements for graduation or other milestones, including ACT/SAT
• generate room rosters, seating charts, student info labels for test books, inventory sheets for books or laptops, attendance forms, and other documentation needed to track the myriad pieces of testing details, and,
• give time back to assistant principals, guidance counselors, teachers, and other staff who deal with test administration issues and allow them to focus on helping students.

#3 Master Schedule Optimization

As a high school teacher, I spent hours after school, weekends, and over the summer in the principal’s office “playing” with the magnatag board to create class schedules for the next school year. Cardonex, our patented student-driven master scheduling software, will work with your student management platform to provide:

• optimized master schedules based on student requests resulting in over 90% of students receiving their first-choice classes
• guaranteed required course assignments
• work-life balance for principals and teachers – no more weekends building schedules in 75% less time
• quick turn-around for schedule changes – virtual, on-site, hybrid managed quickly and efficiently
• balanced classes on the first day of school, and,
• stable back-to-school experience for students and faculty.

#4 Data-Driven Staffing

As an educator, parent, and state director, I have walked through the halls of many schools, and invariably there is a classroom with ten students and four doors down, one stuffed to the gills with 30 students. Another component of our patented Cardonex product is its ability to help leadership make accurate staffing decisions before the end of the spring semester. The staffing processes include:

• immediate identification of staffing patterns
• discovery of courses that are either under or overstaffed
• maximized use of staff capacity
• data-driven staffing decisions
• efficient use of facilities, and,
• time and money savings.

#5 Return on Investment

Benjamin Franklin first wrote, “Remember that time is money.” As educators, our time is valuable and best spent on serving our students. Tasks like curriculum development, test management, and scheduling all take time, and that time is hard to assign a specific dollar amount.

Roger Riddle of K-12 Dive published an article in mid-January 2021 addressing over $600 Billion in budget cuts in the years leading up to 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Lost tax revenue in states is leading to even larger budget cuts. However, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, signed into law on December 27, 2020, provides for the use of funds received through this Act to provide technical assistance in data collection related to IDEA. Both TestHound and Cardonex can assist with this data collection process based on the percentage of students with IEP plans within your district. Similarly, these funds are accessible through Title III for English Learners. On January 5, 2021, the Department of Education sent letters to state Commissioners indicating the allocation of the additional $54.3 billion in ESSER II funds provided to your state. The team at Education Advanced will work with you to find creative funding solutions and identify ways to show the return on investment through:

• efficiencies from reduced duplication of effort
• reduction of human errors
• ensuring students get the right accommodations
• time savings for school and district leadership
• automated processes, and,
• comprehensive staffing plans.  

Read our client testimonials, review the products, and set-up a demo. As a fellow educator, I can guarantee you will be glad you spent the time!

"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." – Benjamin Franklin