Unlike West Virginia’s Promise Scholarship, the achievement gap among students in the state was anything but promising. Children were falling behind in their studies because there was no adequate way to help them understand the content without re-teaching the class as a whole. This “falling behind” was not unique to West Virginia but a problem that existed all across the United States. Students were failing; teachers were frustrated. A reliable accountability structure pertaining to educators did not exist and schools were only required to test students once in the elementary, middle and high school levels. It was a time for change—a time to patch the potholes on the long road to success to ensure a promising tomorrow for the children of today.
No Child Left Behind
As an update to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was signed into federal law on January 8, 2002 by President George W. Bush. Sitting at an old desk in a school gymnasium in Ohio, he affixed his signature to a law that would soon affect schools in the United States in four ways: creating new state standards and implementing new tests to measure the meeting of those standards; ensuring that all teachers are highly qualified; introducing a new national reading program called “Reading First” and handing out government-issued report cards for the schools. The hopes of this upgrade to the pre-existing education-focused law were to hold teachers to a higher accountability standard for the success of their students by ensuring that they are qualified as instructors and by integrating content standard testing to ensure that students understand the necessary curriculum in each grade, thereby closing the achievement gap among students.
Tools For Educational Success
Michael Perik, the current CEO of SOARS Education Group and an entrepreneur with a 20 year history in what he terms the “edutainment” industry, saw the opportunity in 2002 to use educational software to improve student learning across the nation. As the former CEO of The Learning Company, which produced many “edutainment” programs like “The Oregon Trail,” “Reader Rabbit” and “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” it seemed that Perik had found the perfect opportunity to improve the country’s education with federal backing as support. The result was Following the Leaders, recently renamed SkillsWV, a comprehensive assessment and tutorial package that combines products from The Princeton Review and Houghton-Mifflin’s Great Source division and assists schools in complying with some of the academic demands of the modernized education law. While Following the Leaders and No Child Left Behind are not related in any way, the software program relates its results to the law because it is the current accountability system.
WV Climbs On Board
In 2002, word of federal funding for Following the Leaders’ pilot was spreading and the West Virginia Department of Education moved immediately to express interest in hopes of getting involved. After filing an application for approval, Kanawha County Superintendent Dr. Ron Duerring traveled with others to Washington, D.C., to lobby their case for receiving funding for the program, and as a result West Virginia was picked as one of the six states in Following the Leaders’ first year.
Phil Autrey, the Director of Project Management for SOARS Education Group, explains how the software works in the classrooms. “We provide teachers and administrators with Web-based tools, software and professional development to help increase student achievement. Teachers are trained so that they can use the (W.Va. content standards-aligned) software to gauge what the students’ strengths and weaknesses are according to the curriculum. Teachers can basically build tests online and get the data back…to see what the students need help in so that the they don’t have to go back and teach the same lesson over and over again.”
Improving Test Scores, Implementing Technology
The initial success of the program led to the implementation of the software in all of Kanawha County’s schools. Duerring says of the success, “I think for those of us in the Kanawha County schools, it’s giving us a program where we can look at students to enrich as well as remediate, which helps students increase their achievement. It’s a very versatile program; teachers think it’s user-friendly and it integrates technology into the classrooms. It’s certainly a program that has worked for us.”
Lynda Gilkeson, the principal of Dunbar Middle School that lobbied to be one of the first schools chosen for the program, was very happy when Kanawha County decided to implement it into all of its schools. “The software gave our teachers the courage to update their technology skills and it encouraged us to get some of our equipment updated as well, but most importantly, it gave our teachers the tools they needed to really reshape their thinking on bringing in diverse resources into the classroom and it has definitely improved their teaching skills.”
Gilkeson adds that the benefit of the software is that it can be used in a number of ways for varying types of students. “We can and do use it for kids who are working at home and kids who are coming in early or staying late for various different reasons. It also gives us a way of helping that non-traditional learner who has difficulty staying focused in a more traditional instructional setting. Receiving one-on-one feedback and being in a setting that helps students tune out the distractions that very often occur in middle school is a great benefit because it gives the kids a better chance of staying focused.”
Riverside High School’s principal, Paula Potter, believes the ultimate benefits of Following the Leaders/SkillsWV are the grading programs and the ability to check the skill levels for each student, allowing students to progress at their own speed. “This isn’t something you have to do as a group. Let’s say I understand percentages but the person beside me doesn’t. It’s going to move me to the next lesson where the person having a difficult time with percentages is going to have to stay there until they learn that skill. I think it’s great that it allows people to move at their own pace.”
Helping Students Succeed
The real proof isn’t just in the praise teachers and principals offer. The numbers speak for themselves. Between 2002 and 2006, Kanawha County’s rate of schools meeting the state’s goals for Annual Yearly Progress (AYP), NCLB’s measuring stick for progress, has increased from 33 percent to 97 percent.
With the push for 21st century skills in West Virginia schools, Julie Longsworth, the librarian at Mary Ingles Elementary, says the software usage has been key in helping students achieve those technology goals. “The students are more confident at the computer and students are eager to use the software. The students’ attention spans have increased. They are more focused on the lesson in front of them. The brain of today’s child is not the same as it was years ago. Students are used to high levels of visual stimulation, and according to research that is how we need to present new concepts to the students in order for a high skills retention rate. This software is interactive where the students learn by doing, receive immediate feedback and refine their understanding while building new knowledge.”
Jeff Loftis, the technology coordinator at Dunbar Middle School, has seen a change in the students in the computer lab since the onset of the software in their school. “I can see the light come on at times during the school year…and I see improvement on test scores from elementary school to middle school. Since the elementary schools are now using the program, we have seen students come in more prepared.”
Following the Leaders in WV
Roane and Clay counties have followed Kanawha’s example of software usage in the hope of comparable success. Kenneth Tanner, the Assistant Superintendent for Clay County Schools, has found a direct correlation between Following the Leaders/SkillsWV and his own schools’ test scores. “We are 54th economically among the 55 counties in West Virginia. I can tell you that most counties in the bottom 10 economically are in the bottom 10 in student performance. Last year on the state test, however, Clay County was 4th out of 55 counties in reading, 7th in writing and 16th in math. We beat the odds and its things like Following the Leaders/SkillsWV that has been a big component in helping us do that.”
Overcoming the Obstacles of Funding
The disadvantage to Following the Leaders/SkillsWV is the lack of funding to ensure the continuation of the program in West Virginia. Initially, federal earmarks were appointed to support the program, but two years ago, as part of the Health and Human Services (HHS) and Labor bill, the House and Senate made the decision to do away with earmarks due to a lack of regulations to deter misuse of funds. While SOARS Education Group and Senator Robert C. Byrd is fighting to have the funding returned to West Virginia, the program was not funded by the government this year but rather by Perik, who, encouraged by the unexpected success of the students, has guaranteed the program in schools through next year. Currently there is a new bill in Congress that will back earmarks with specific regulations to avoid misuse of funds, but there is no guarantee that the funding for Following the Leaders/SkillsWV will return. Many teachers and administrators agree that if the funding is not returned and the program is pulled, West Virginia’s schools will suffer.
Duerring says of the possibility of losing the software, “I think it would have a profound effect on many of our schools because they use that as a tool to work with students who need additional help in some skill areas. It allows them to really develop an individual plan for each child that may be having learning difficulties in a certain area. It’s a valuable tool for them and it would be a loss for them to not have that tool readily available for their students.” He adds that it would be a bigger burden on the school system because in the program’s absence they will look for ways to keep the program, meaning cuts in the school system’s budget in other areas.
Gilkeson says that the absence would leave a void. “It would mean that there are kids that we are not going to have the resources to reach. It would mean that a lot of kids that are non-traditional learners—those kids that need added reinforcement, need remediation, need extended time—that we’re not going to have adequate resource to meet their needs. There would be a lot of negatives to ending the program.”
Autrey is optimistic about the funding’s return, however, SOARS is presenting the software to other counties in West Virginia. “So far, the response has been great,” he says of communication with potential counties. “When you are provided with proven products and on-site training/support and the money doesn’t have to come out of your own budget (which is a huge deal, especially for smaller rural counties), it's a very attractive proposition.”