Challenge

When the opportunity to expand the partnership at Thomas Intermediate School in Holdenville, Oklahoma, arose in the summer of 2020 with a focus on providing deeper intervention, Principal Danny Sipes and Assistant Principal Pam Davenport got to work putting a strong implementation plan in place. The Holdenville Public School District had been using Study Island for several years as a standards mastery and formative assessment tool, and introduced Exact Path as a data-driven personalized learning and intervention program to help students get just what they need to accelerate academic growth.

Solution

The administrative team started by establishing an intervention block with intentional data-driven grouping to align student needs with focused support. The administrative team divides students into P.R.I.D.E. groups—which stands for perform, respect, innovate, dedicate, and excel—based upon performance on the Renaissance® Star Reading® assessment they take every six weeks. Within each of those groups, there is a set of standards that the administrative team wants the teachers and students to focus on mastering. Teachers do not do any of the planning for P.R.I.D.E. time; administrators put together standards-mastery plans so that the teachers can focus on teaching each of the students within their assigned P.R.I.D.E. group.

“We try to not add any extra planning on our teachers because we know that they are doing an extreme amount of planning anyway,” Mr. Sipes commented.

For the 2023–24 school year, grade levels are divided into eight groups, and at least two of those groups per grade are for enrichment. The enrichment groups begin each six weeks by working on a set of standards that are on grade level, and when those standards are mastered, the group moves into a novel study so that students can expand their knowledge set. The P.R.I.D.E. groups that are focused on intervention are broken down into red and yellow levels, with red levels being about two grade levels below where they need to be and yellow levels being about one grade level below.

In combination with the P.R.I.D.E. intervention time each day, students rotate to a computer lab to work within their personalized learning paths in Exact Path each day. Teachers also use Exact Path within their regular classrooms to assign content outside of the learning paths. Additionally, Study Island is woven throughout the lesson cycle, both in computer labs and classrooms. Teachers use lessons to reinforce first-time instruction at the beginning of the week. Midweek, Study Island is used as a quick formative assessment or posttest to assess student knowledge and retention of what has been taught. By the end of the week, Study Island is used in Group Session mode, and teachers run challenges or races as a fun way to reinforce what was covered during the week.

“The verbiage on Study Island is more like what is on the state test,” commented Ms. Davenport. “I use it in my computer lab when we aren’t doing Exact Path. We will do the races as a game day, but it’s a learning game day, and the kids just love it.”

The school’s use of Edmentum’s programs and dedicated intervention extends beyond the traditional school year. For the last three years, the school has used Exact Path as its program during summer school. Summer learning is used to help students catch up and is targeted toward developing specific standards or skills where students may be struggling, regardless of grade level. Learning paths help to automatically target areas most in need, and if student continue to struggle, then they immediately move to work directly with a teacher who reteaches the skill. Summer school is only four weeks long, so the sole focus is increasing each student’s skill levels.

Result

In the 2022–23 school year, students at Thomas Intermediate School mastered almost 5,400 skills in Exact Path while working on their learning paths for intervention. Students saw even more success while working within Study Island to show standards mastery and earned almost 6,400 Blue Ribbons.

Edmentum programs combined with expert teaching have led to improved student success. In the 2022-23 school year, Thomas Intermediate School scored higher than the state average in Oklahoma’s Academic Achievement indicator by 11.1 percent.

“Our intervention times are working, and the steps that we are taking are causing our students to improve,” said Mr. Sipes. “The ultimate goal is for all of them to graduate and to become productive citizens.”