Merit Software Dispatch

Failing in Mathematics, is the first article we’ve seen in a long time advocating educational software as a way to cost effectively improve student achievement. Most of the recent talk about education reforms has centered on other options — all of which are extremely expensive.

History has shown that in tough economic times, people’s resistance to change decreases. They are more willing to try new things if they appear to be cost effective and easy to use.

The article shows that randomized computer-aided instruction in mathematics increases student achievement and that the effect is larger for students in large, heterogeneous classes.

Also, the cost of maintaining a computer learning lab is equivalent to that associated with reducing class sizes.

Based on a randomized trial of Merit reading and language arts software, we believe this article understates the potential economic impact of educational software in schools.

The authors write that students benefited from receiving personalized instruction while using the math software. The schools did not have to hire additional teachers to make gains in high school math test scores.

In the research conducted on Merit, more randomly assigned students passed the state standardized test for Reading Language Arts than students who did not use the software.

It was also observed that the software not only provides individualized instruction, but that it frees up teachers’ time to work individually with pupils, thereby making the teacher more productive.

The authors focus their analysis on the value of helping more students to get ready for math in college. There is no doubt that it is important to have more students succeed in college.

However, schools and local governments are now facing a much greater cost challenge — keeping students in school. Research by the Alliance for Excellence in Education has documented the high costs associated with high school dropouts.

Many dropouts come from the lower quartile in a class and do not feel they can read adequately to keep up in school.

As a result, it is important to discover which educational software tools are effective in helping students in a diverse school setting.

What is your opinion? Feel free to share it here.

The Center for Educational Policy (CEP) just announced a new report about the impact of the NCLB on the classroom.

The study found that in schools in need of improvement teachers are more likely than those in higher-achieving schools to ask students questions with one or a few right answers.

Conversely, teachers in high-achieving schools are more likely to take an almost 180-degree, opposite, approach.

They use more open-ended teaching strategies such as leading class discussions, hands-on activities, reading aloud and learning centers.

Is it just us, or is this strange? Sadly, it appears that when faced with the reality of harsh penalties, administrators had their teachers “teach to the test.”

Before switching away from time-tested, open-ended teaching strategies to try to boost test scores, we believe struggling schools should give their teachers the tools they need to make their classrooms more effective and engaging.

Teachers in low-achieving schools need tools to help provide personalized instruction, promote a deeper understanding of the curriculum, and help manage classroom behavior.

These tools should also be intuitive and easy to learn to use. Tools like Merit Software.

Merit helps teachers scaffold instruction while implementing open-ended, in-class, teaching strategies. It also frees up teachers’ time to provide extra individual instruction or work in small groups.

These benefits happen to align to another finding in the study — that teachers in low-achieving schools want to spend class time modeling instruction and working in small groups.

In particular, Merit’s Punch writing programs, including Paragraph Punch and Book Punch, provide step-by-step instruction to help students learn how to answer open-ended questions.

Because the Punch writing programs support a wide range of skills and expressions, more students can participate in class.

Randomized control group research conducted on Merit shows that this approach improves student achievement and test scores — without teaching to the test.

The sample size in the CEP study was very small. It was not possible to try to determine statistical differences between high and low achieving schools.

However, the findings do suggest that instructional practices do vary among schools with different levels of achievement.

Should low-achieving schools continue teaching to the test? What’s your opinion?