Innovation: Unique Solutions for Real Schools
The Digital Youth Network | 6to16 | STEP Literacy Assessment | More Tools
A crucial aspect of the Urban Education Institute’s work is sharing what we learn in our schools and in our research. This work has been underway since 1988 and continues today with more focus and new partners. Our researchers do not work in isolation but rather collaborate with practitioners working in schools to develop tools, best practices, and ideas that improve teaching and learning. Two recent examples of this successful collaboration are the Digital Youth Network for middle and high school students and 6to16, a unique college readiness program. A sample follows of more Urban Education Institute tools that use technology creatively to support students and the professionals who work with them every day.
The Digital Youth Network
Visit www.iremix.org to view or hear student work and learn more. The Digital Youth Network teaches students in grades six to twelve to become discerning consumers of technology and new media as well as innovative creators and teachers in their schools, families, and communities. Our students creatively apply technology to become filmmakers, composers, record producers, video game designers and robotics engineers. Staff from the Urban Education Institute and artists from the Chicago area coordinate DYN and teach students at two University of Chicago charter schools and other South Side Chicago schools in the Urban School Improvement Network at the Urban Education Institute.
“I am doing better school work because of the Digital Youth Network. It gave me other ways to express myself than just writing everything down.”
- Shani Edmond, 10th grader at Woodlawn High School
Our approach, both an afterschool program and a mandatory media arts class, allows participating schools to decrease the class time spent on developing youth’s technical expertise, freeing classroom teachers to concentrate on content. Since our students arrive in class with digital skills, teachers truly can integrate technology across the curriculum and students can use their skills to support ambitious teaching and learning. We also host a social networking space for students, Remix World, that provides young people with online mentoring and opportunities to share work and ideas beyond the school and program day.
Closing the Technical Fluency Gap: Comparison of Chicago to Silicon Valley Youth
Stanford University and the University of Illinois-Chicago continue to collaborate with us on an evaluation of our program, but preliminary findings are encouraging. For example, researchers found that North Kenwood/Oakland charter school students are participating in a wider range of experiences that build technology fluency than a comparison group of students in Silicon Valley in California, the nation’s high-tech hub.
View the chart comparing Chicago and Silicon Valley Youth.
Contact: DYN founder or , program director
6to16: College Success for More Urban Students
The Urban Education Institute is developing 6to16, a college readiness curriculum and social network that it plans to pilot in Chicago public schools in 2009. Its goal is to increase the number of urban students who are accepted to college and persist to graduation, providing a national model on how to overcome college enrollment and preparation barriers among urban youth, along with disappointing graduation rates. It starts with students early, in grade six, and supports them through college graduation, grade 16.
The 6to16 project will include a classroom and online college readiness curriculum for grades six through twelve. Another key component is a web-based social network that allows mentors, families, advisors, and peers to support and advise students as they build skills and complete key milestones. It will also include a rich repository of data about high school and college options, such as which colleges graduate the highest percentage of African American or Latino students.
View screen shots from the web-based social network, curriculum delivery, and reporting capabilities of 6to16.
Contact at the Urban Education Institute for information on 6to16.
Interested in becoming a 6to16 mentor?
Read more about the relationship among high school preparation, support, college choice and postsecondary outcomes at the Consortium on Chicago School Research.
Assessment Tools
STEPTM Strategic Teaching and Evaluation of Progress
Read more information about most of these tools at iisrd.org
STEPTM is a developmental literacy assessment for grades K-3. It includes a set of tools, tightly aligned with scientifically established milestones in reading development, to follow student progress. The Urban Education Institute’s predecessor, the Center for Urban School Improvement, has developed STEP over the last nine years and has worked with the Chicago Public Schools and others to study its impact. STEP is most appropriate for districts and schools that are practicing balanced literacy and are interested in the use of formative assessment data to inform instructional improvement.
Using STEP has the following benefits:
- Accessible formative assessment data on all K-3 students that provides teachers with information about students’ reading strengths and needs so teachers can target instruction and accelerate progress
- Accelerated reading achievement in grades K-3 by identifying students early who need additional support. This makes teachers proactive about intervention rather than reflecting on deficits. It also creates an information base that supports collective and publicly held responsibility for student progress at the school level.
- Capacity building for teachers in understanding the developmental reading process of students, interpreting data, and making evidence-based decisions about instruction
- Deepened expertise of coaches, principals and district leaders to closely follow learning trends in their schools, to plan and tailor professional development for teachers that responds to student learning needs, and to sustain and deeply embed the initiative in classroom and schools over time
- Formative assessment data correlated to accountability data. STEP provides strong evidence on how students will perform on summative standardized tests. However, the power of formative assessment data differs from the summative data yielded by high-stakes state assessments. STEP enables the diagnosis of individual learner’s needs as well as the examination of school and district wide patterns that can lead to the improvement of teaching and the acceleration of student progress during the course of the school year.
For more information regarding the use of STEP in your school or district, contact .
Strategic Teaching and Evaluation of Progress Integrated Package
STEPTM Assessment Materials per classroom:
- 30 original STEP Leveled Books (Yellow and Purple Series)
- STEP Assessment Forms (CD-ROM)
- STEP Assessment Manual
- Introduction Guide to the Assessment (DVD)
STEP data management
STEP data management system provides reporting and analysis at the district, school, grade, and individual student level. It contains both current performance data as well as historical data for each assessment administration to assess the rate of student progress.
Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment Suite
The Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment Suite is a trio of tools that helps teachers connect learning standards, curriculum maps, and formative assessment results. Each module provides data-displays that focus on one element while including key information from the other two. Together, these tools help teachers, coaches, and school leaders make evidence-based instructional decisions and promote alignment across classrooms.
More Tools for Teaching, Learning and Leadership
Professional Development Support System (PDS2)
PDS2 is a professional development tool developed in partnership with other universities for literacy instructors. It is a web-based system of video cases, related sources, and communication tools. It extends the capacity of professional development providers to engage teachers in sustained, evidenced-based learning, and collaboration.
Contact:
Clinical Case Management System (CCMS)
Bringing together wide-ranging data on students, CCMS allows school leaders to have a more complex picture when evaluating student performance. It helps intervention teams in schools identify student needs and design appropriate social and academic supports. CCMS is designed to be used in connection with the Urban Education Institute’s Academic and Social Support System (AS3), in which a team of academic and social support teachers and staff identify and work with struggling students.
Contact , director of innovation, and , director of national engagement, for more information about the Urban Education Institute’s unique solutions for schools.
