"Race to the Top"
American Rediscovery and Reinvestment Act
"In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity - it is a prerequisite. The countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow." - President Barack Obama, 24/2/09
Impact on K-12 Market
The 111th United States Congress has announced the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) which provides $90.9bi stimulus package to grow quality of education in US Schools.
Education funds provided through ARRA provide a unique opportunity to jump start school reform and improvement efforts while also saving and creating jobs and stimulating the economy.
ARRA identifies four core reforms that will help the nation meet that goal: (1) adopting rigorous college- and career-ready standards and high-quality assessments; (2) establishing data systems and using data for improvement; (3) increasing teacher effectiveness and equitable distribution of effective teachers; and (4) turning around the lowest-performing schools.
Several education and publishing companies have replied to the stimulus spending by effectively aligned their innovative products related to intervention, technology and assessment to the various fund categories. Most of the publishers have launched online resources to help State, Districts and Schools in accessing latest information about the Act.
Priorities for ARRA
HCL’s Initiatives on ARRA
HCL understands a large portion of ARRA funding is linked to state and teacher accountability, data driven decision making and adequate student's progress. Our Digital Media & Publishing Lab is incubating investments in several solution frameworks to accelerate the response to ARRA initiative.
1. D3M - D3M provides State/ School District/School level dashboards & performance analysis tools for Students, Teachers and Schools. D3M enables data driven decision at State/ School District/ School level to for administrators, teachers and parents resulting in a holistic view of education improvement and better compliance for federal funding.
D3M would utilize Teacher, Student and School data as well as relevant background information, to make informed decisions related to planning and implementing improvement strategies at the state, district, county, school, classroom and individual student levels.
- Helps make informed decisions related to planning and implementing improvement strategies at the state, district, county, school, classroom and individual student levels
- Enables data driven decision at State/ School District/ School level for administrators, teachers and parents resulting in holistic view of education improvement and better compliance for federal funding
- Identify “Schools in Need”, impact of investment in Teacher Proficiency development and School infrastructure on Student performance, enrollment and attendance
- Integration framework for reporting from multiple sources, whether or not SIF complaint
- SOA based architecture, extendable, futuristic/ can leverage existing IT investment and application platforms
- Custom Reports/ Dashboards based on User preferences; Drill down feature for detailed analysis
2. Individualize - Individualized Learning Framework aims to offer a response-oriented, personalized learning and teaching experience through curriculum planning, diagnostic and contextual content delivery. “Individualize” taps the power of granular/ marked up supplemental content, aptitude/ learning needs of an individual and rich learning platform to provide self-paced curriculum plan, individualized learning content to student to ensure adequate yearly progress, consolidating to high state standards and performance.
Business Benefits- Improve Students stickiness, and attention span
- Students get personalized content that can be pre-timed for future streaming
- Learning Objects and Assessment are “pushed” to Student desktop as widgets, linked to their learning needs and pace of learning
- Rich User experience and interactivity leading to stickiness and greater response from students
- Increased adoption by states and students
- Content atomization, individualized teaching and assessments
- Widgets/ push technology, all pervasive, no need of browsers, no compatibility challenges
- Rich User experience and interactivity leading to stickiness and greater response from students
3. Progress - Progress is a Teacher Evaluation Solution proposed to evaluate teachers and assist them in online and class room assessments. PROGRESS aims at supporting Professional Development plans specific to individual teachers and to track and report the growth/ learning of Teachers. The solution also provides an interface to help teachers in entering the peer reviews and class observer’s review. It has rich content linked to teacher performance to improve the learning outcome.
Business Benefits- Focused professional development of teachers for higher performance
- Objective evaluation of teachers based on Key performance areas for targeted growth
- Effective teacher compensation and performance analysis
- Diagnostic Assessment and Learning Need Analysis for Teacher requirement analysis
- Learning Planning and tracking for allowing self paced proficiency development roadmap to teachers
- Improved student performance at the school & state level
- Open system, integrate with existing platform in the publishing organization
- Several assessment types - single/ multi choices, open ended and audio/ video interventions
- Granular learning content for custom content delivery linked to teacher’s performance and progress
- Dynamic Score Card, Reporting Capabilities for teacher evaluation
4. TAPS 2.0 - TAPS 2.0 is the Teacher/Administrator /Parent and Student Collaboration framework to enhance teacher performance through a common interface for teachers and students, publishers and authors, access to resources from across the Education Industry. It provides functionalities where a teacher can collaborate with peers from different schools/ communities publish their own content/ blogs/ Discussions/ Ratings. Other features include register online, evaluate and download products and alerts on areas of interest like trainings, certifications and products.
Business Benefits- Help publishers offer Education & Assessment products for beta evaluation & in turn improve their products
- Collaboration between Teacher/ Administrator/Parent/ Student in turn improves overall academic performance
- Better opportunities for educators through enhanced professional development and online tuitions/ virtual classes
- Allows build communities and network, help product placement and global/ collaborative product research
- Open Source architecture, future proof and low total cost of ownership
- Enhanced collaboration between stakeholders using enabling technologies like blogs, wikis, bulletins, communities, chat, widgets, RSS
- Rights and permission to allow authorized access for the platform
- Content atomization, individualized teaching and assessments
- Widgets/ push technology, all pervasive, no need of browsers, no compatibility challenges
Future Direction on ARRA
HCL’s proactive investment, coupled with industry knowledge and strong focus on Educational publishing can help you to achieve the following objectives:
- Leverage new market opportunities and up sell/ cross sell to School districts
- Enhance your existing products, competitive differentiation and higher adoptions
- Reduce time to market via solution accelerators and existing HCL investment
- Innovate, Co-create and leverage unique risk/ reward models
HCL is eager to further discuss and work out a mutually beneficial proposition on ARRA initiative.
