A suburban Washington school district has joined forces with a company that provides hand-held computer-based systems that teachers can use to assess their students鈥� reading skills. Both contributed to a new K-3 reading-assessment product that will be marketed to schools nationwide.
If the product lives up to the company鈥檚 sales projections, the district could reap royalties from the enterprise in the 鈥渟even figures鈥� within three years, school officials said.
The 140,000-student Montgomery County, Md., district has contributed its own paper-and-pencil reading-assessment tool for the business venture. The district鈥檚 elementary teachers have used that assessment for about four years, according to John Q. Porter, the district鈥檚 deputy superintendent for strategic technology and accountability.
鈥淲e鈥檇 found it was truly reliable and valid in terms of diagnosing [reading problems] of students, and predicting how they would do on the state test,鈥� Mr. Porter said.
But the paper assessment was time-consuming to administer and produce results, he said.
To address those problems, the district approached Wireless Generation Inc., a New York City-based company that provides assessments on Palm hand-held computers. The company already offered a hand-held-computer version of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, or DIBELS, a tool for teachers鈥� observational assessment of reading developed by reading researchers Roland Good and Ruth Kaminski. The new tool, called mCLASS: Reading 3D software, combines DIBELS and portions of the Montgomery County district鈥檚 reading assessment.
Mr. Porter said the two approaches are complementary, with DIBELS 鈥渕ore prescriptive鈥� and focused on decoding text, and the district鈥檚 鈥渕ore of a 鈥榖alanced literacy鈥� method鈥� that judges each student鈥檚 understanding of meaning through context.
Naomi Hupert, a senior research associate for the Center for Children & Technology, a New York City-based research and policy group, said the combined assessments may appeal to many teachers who have a blended approach toward reading instruction. 鈥淚t鈥檚 important to address both issues: If you want teachers to use it, it has to be useful to them,鈥� she said.
Ms. Hupert, who lives in Sebastopol, Calif., has studied Wireless Generation assessments used in schools in New Mexico and taken informal surveys in several other states. 鈥淭eachers talked about having sense of ownership of their own data when they administered assessments on the Palm [hand-held computer],鈥� in contrast to their lack of enthusiasm about paper assessments, she said.
Teachers also seem more willing to try the hand-held tools than other kinds of assessment technologies, she said.
In Montgomery County, teachers at 19 elementary schools have used the hand-held tool since January; teachers at the district鈥檚 other 107 elementary schools will be trained to use the product this summer.
Larry Berger, the chief executive officer of Wireless Generation, said the hand-held-computer technology allows teachers to use both assessments as quick snapshots of students鈥� abilities or to track their progress over time. The technology transfers the assessment data to a central database.
Another partner is Harcourt Achieve, based in Austin, Texas, which the publisher of the reading materials used in the Montgomery County assessment. The division of Orlando, Fla.-based Harcourt Inc. will help market the assessment product, Mr. Porter said.
In addition to the royalties, the district will receive discounts on its own subscription to the Wireless Generation software, which has an undiscounted price of $21 per student annually.
Educators鈥� Group Promotes Computer Science Classes
A new educator association aims to rehabilitate the teaching of computer science in high schools.
Officials of the Computer Science Teachers Association, an online organization launched in April, said they hope to counter what they say is a worrisome decline in the number of students in the United States who study computer science at the high school and college levels.
Interest in computer science has suffered for two primary reasons, said CSTA Executive Director Christine G. Stephenson.
To begin with, computer science, invariably an elective course in high school, has been crowded from the curriculum and students鈥� schedules by required courses, said Ms. Stephenson, who lives in Eugene, Ore.
Second, she said, 鈥渕ore and more, we鈥檙e hearing that students and their parents have been profoundly affected by media coverage of the dot-bombs [of failed high-tech companies] and of outsourcing鈥� of technical jobs to other countries.
鈥淪tudents unfortunately have the impression that there are no opportunities in computer science,鈥� Ms. Stephenson said.
About 2,000 high school teachers have become members of the new organization, many of them out of concern that the computer-science specialty is in danger, said Virginia Gold, a spokeswoman for the Association for Computing Machinery, which helped the educator association get started.
The new group is based at the headquarters of the ACM, a nonprofit organization in New York City that represents technology professionals in academia and industry. But the new association has its own board of directors.
The teacher group鈥攚hich has a nine-member advisory committee that includes representatives from high-tech corporations such as Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp. as well as prominent universities and organizations such as Princeton University and the College Board鈥攁ims to convince federal and state policy makers that computer science is an important, core subject that offers 鈥渁 really broad range of opportunities鈥� for students once they graduate, Ms. Stephenson said.
