Digital Initiative Aims to Rescue Michigan's Lowest Performing Schools

Compass Learning, Inc., Agilix Labs, Inc. and School Improvement Network announced today a joint effort to help improve the five percent of historically lowest-performing public schools in the state of Michigan. The three companies are integrating digital content from Compass Learning’s Odyssey and Renzulli Learning™, and School Improvement Network’s Educator Effectiveness System with Buzz, a personalized learning platform from Agilix, as well as district-generated content. The integrated solution serves as the core of a comprehensive, personalized learning system that allows educators to mix, match and extend components to deliver an individualized learning plan for every participating student. The initiative supports Michigan’s Education Achievement Authority (EAA) in efforts to provide new, stable and financially responsible public schools designed to help underperforming students make significant academic gains.

“With Buzz, CompassLearning Odyssey® and Renzulli Learning™, we have a powerful combination of best-in-class curriculum, content and instruction that puts students at the center of learning for all subjects, schools and mastery levels,” said Dr. John Covington, Chancellor of the EAA. “This combination can empower our students to work in partnership with teachers to personalize learning based on readiness, learning pace, interests, learning and expression styles, effort and understanding.”

Buzz leverages an age-centric user interface driven by performance data, teacher and peer feedback, and student preferences to provide every student a tailored learning experience. CompassLearning Odyssey uses assessment data to prescribe a personalized learning path with a rigorous and engaging curriculum. Renzulli Learning provides students with lessons and projects curated from more than 45,000 Web-based activities that are personalized to their interests, learning styles and expression styles. Students can access meaningful tasks that build skills in goal-setting, teamwork, perseverance, critical thinking, communication, creativity and problem solving. The digital instructional content is aligned with Common Core State Standards and teachers and administrators can track student progress and use data to inform instructional adjustments.

School Improvement Network’s Educator Effectiveness System includes an on-demand library of more than 2,000 professional development videos, a responsive observation platform that gives teachers immediate feedback, with prescriptive and personalized professional development resources, real-classroom examples of teaching best practices, and implementation of the Common Core State Standards, and a professional learning community of more than 900,000 educators.