News | December 14, 2006

Curriculum Advantage Announces New Classworks State Editions For Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania

Duluth, GA - Curriculum Advantage, Inc., publishers of Classworks — computer-based student instruction in K-12 for English/Language Arts, Reading and Mathematics — continues to meet the needs of educators across the country with new state editions for Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Curriculum Advantage knows that because every state has a different set of education standards and assessments, a comprehensive curriculum solution must include special editions for each state. Classworks specializes in providing the right instruction for every student – whether that instruction is on-grade-level or remediation – all based on state standards.

While a state's high-stakes achievement test delivers useful reports and data to teachers, it is difficult finding the time to individualize learning for even one student, let alone a whole classroom. Classworks' customized state editions read the student scores from the state reports and automatically prescribe individual learning paths for each student. Classworks then quickly and efficiently addresses the learning needs of each student by presenting only the instruction in the student's areas of need, skipping concepts that students have already mastered.

"These new editions are a significant benefit to educators in these three states because they simplify the process for teachers to turn raw test data into relevant learning plans for each child," said Lindsey Cook, president of Curriculum Advantage. "Now any standards-based exam data has immediate relevance to the classroom teacher and that data can be converted into an individualized path for better student achievement."

And because Classworks is aligned to individual state standards and monitors students' progress toward meeting state-developed standards and test objectives, educators know that Classworks is helping their students meet their state's educational requirements.

The three state editions and their import utilities for Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania – Ohio is brand new, while Indiana and Pennsylvania are updated versions – are designed to work with the Ohio Achievement Test (OAT), the Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress-Plus (ISTEP+) and the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA), respectively.

"The Indiana state edition of Classworks will expand how my teachers can use Classworks to help their students improve in class and on the state test," said Beth Raker, instructional technology coordinator for Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation in Mishawaka, IN.

Penn-Harris Madison has been using Classworks since 1999, and Raker said that she sees the new state edition helping not only to raise students' performance, but the schools Adequate Yearly Performance scores as well. "Students will be working on areas they haven't yet mastered, and at the same time, they will be preparing themselves for next year's ISTEP+ test. It's teaching to the test without actually teaching to the test."

SOURCE: Curriculum Advantage