How to Battle Learning Loss

According to Dr. Shawn Mahoney, Chief Product Officer and Chief Learning Officer at Illuminate Education, there doesn’t need to be “learning loss” during this crisis. In fact, discussion should focus on learning acceleration. In this episode, she talks about the adjustments her company has made to support schools during this traumatic process and what innovations may take hold going forward.

To accelerate growth for each and every student during remote, hybrid and in-person instruction, Illuminate Education today announces enhancements to DnA, eduCLIMBER, FastBridge, Inspect and SchoolCity. Updates will be rolled out to customers with their summer release.“According to our research, students will need extra support this year to remedy learning losses caused by the pandemic – these product updates will support educators in meeting their academic and social-emotional behavioral needs,” said Dr. Shawn Mahoney, Chief Product Officer and Chief Learning Officer at Illuminate. “We’ll continue to make enhancements to meet educators’ needs, especially in this current environment when ease-of-use and efficiency is critical.”

Illuminate Education’s suite of data analytics and assessment products assist educators in monitoring student learning, identifying social-emotional behavioral (SEB) needs and aligning targeted supports. Enhancement highlights are as follows:

• Inspect: Added content and resources to help educators address unfinished learning from the spring, including the all new “Coming Back with Inspect” assessment series and state-specific assessment suite.
• DnA: An enhanced online testing and administration experience, including a redesigned item bank, flexible assessment improvement and a new participation reporting feature
• eduCLIMBER: A refreshed user interface and enhanced experience, including redesigned Launchpad and Student Profiles pages and a new side navigation bar that includes pertinent information, such as interventions, incidents and thresholds.
• FastBridge: Additional tools to interpret student data, identify learning gaps and determine appropriate instruction and interventions, including the new FASTtrack Math, Screening to Intervention report, research-based instruction plans and built-in math intervention recommendations.
• SchoolCity: Usability enhancements and SIS interoperability features, including redesigned performance based assessment scoring, an enhanced scoring event page and primary language designation for text-to-speech at the item level.

“Our teachers and interventionists find significant value in the reporting features FastBridge provides, as it enhances our data-informed processes and assists with more strategic alignment between student need and targeted intervention,” said Patti Wilson, MTSS Coordinator at Clarksville-Montgomery County School System. “The newly released feature of a Screening to Intervention (S2i) report for math performance, coupled with the information we have also procured from the aMath measure could not come at a better time as we seek to pinpoint unfinished learning and embed this into grade-level instruction for class-wide intervention. These new features are well-timed and are sure to assist educators with appropriate MTSS supports for students’ academic, social-emotional and behavioral needs this school year.”

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