Standards Plus has staunchly advocated that schools should provide equal opportunities to ensure that all students learn their current grade-level standards. Students who have fallen behind should receive appropriate intervention while still learning pertinent grade-level material. However, most adaptive learning software uses the erroneous premises that students should not be exposed to current grade-level standards unless they demonstrate an indeterminant competence level through the computer.
According to Bailey Cato Czupryk from The New Teacher Project, denying students access to current grade level work and merely assigning lower-level content is not sufficient. This strategy “practically guarantees” that the most vulnerable learners “will lose more academic ground and get even less access to grade-level work in the future.”
All students should have multiple opportunities to learn their relevant grade-level standards, even if some have not yet mastered previous grade standards. This approach is especially crucial as schools try to help students get back on track from any learning losses created by the COVID 19 pandemic.
Ensuring that no student misses out on grade-level material has been the primary focus of the Standards Plus product development and implementation philosophy. Monitoring achievement while applying intervention strategies is the best way to help students progress with their grade-level appropriate work. Standards Plus’s developers applied extensive research and knowledge from their vast experience working with at-risk students to create materials that implement these strategies.
Standards Plus implementation strategies and instructional materials meet the challenges created by the COVID 19 pandemic. Standards Plus products are well suited to allow students to catch up while moving forward to master grade-level standards. Standards Plus experts developed remediation strategies and instructional timelines that combine assessments, previous grade-level lessons, a schedule to teach current grade-level standards, and intervention materials to ensure that no student is left behind.
Numerous schools have successfully implemented Standards Plus with students who face extensive challenges. The COVID 19 learning crisis is another situation in which Standard Plus provides a solution to the challenging impediments that often exist outside of our control. To learn more about the Standards Plus response to COVID 19, go to standardsplus.org.