By: Luci Willits, VP, Government National Policy

Virginia is making an unprecedented commitment to student learning, with Governor Youngkin unveiling a groundbreaking $418 million plan aimed at elevating education standards across the state. This initiative, aptly named “ALL IN,” marks a pivotal moment in Virginia’s dedication to its students, demanding the attention of school administrators and educators alike.

The plan zeroes in on three critical focus areas: attendance, literacy, and learning. But what truly stands out is the funding mechanism embedded within Virginia’s FY24 budget. Each school division will receive funding on a per-pupil basis, with a guaranteed minimum allocation of $150,000, ensuring equitable distribution.

While the Department of Education requires divisions to submit plans, the budget provides flexibility, with just three core requirements: the funding must be directed toward the implementation of the Virginia Literacy Act, learning loss recovery, additional operational support, or infrastructure improvements.

This infusion of state funding, combined with a laser focus on critical areas, empowers school divisions to harness resources for maximum impact on student learning. The ALL IN initiative stems from concerns over statewide scores on the Standards of Learning assessments, which primarily target grades 3–8. However, educators understand that laying the foundation for successful learning begins well before 3rd grade.

Virginia’s recent acquisition of two tutoring platforms for grades 3–8 presents divisions with an invaluable resource at no cost. This strategic move allows districts to allocate state-provided funds where they can make the most significant difference: early education, from pre-K to 2nd grade. As we explore the intricacies of this transformative plan, it becomes evident that Virginia is fully invested in fostering a brighter future for its students, starting with its youngest learners.

Age of Learning’s best-in-class solutions, My Reading Academy and My Math Academy, support Virginia’s priorities by helping ensure students master foundational literacy and numeracy skills before 3rd grade. More than 10 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Level 1 and Level 2 efficacy studies prove that small chunks of time throughout the week on My Reading Academy and My Math Academy have big impacts.

My Reading Academy and My Math Academy can help meet the Commonwealth’s priorities by

• Personalizing sessions grounded in grade-level instruction, based on recommendations from the digital (truly adaptive) platform. 
• Providing additional support for the students who need it the most in targeted areas, in alignment with state standards. 
• Supporting students who are working on grade-level content by offering just-in-time instruction.                      
• Reinforcing communication with families through frequent student reports and activities through My Reading Academy and My Math Academy’s Caregiver Center. 
• Producing extraordinary results in 10–15 minutes a day or 45 to 60 minutes a week, versus the three to five hours a week the state recommends with the provided digital tool.  

We know that the path to greater learning begins with early education, and Virginia’s ALL IN resources enable school divisions to support both students who need a boost and those who are just starting their educational journey. With these tools at their disposal, Virginia’s educators and administrators have a powerful means to drive positive change and set their students on a trajectory toward lifelong success.

The post ALL IN on Early Learning in Virginia first appeared on Age of Learning.

In an interview with the OET, Sunil shared how Age of Learning is partnering with schools to engage in evidence-building across the different levels of ESSA-aligned evidence. Focusing on our adaptive, personalized math program My Math Academy, the case study dives into the steps Age of Learning took to validate and refine its curriculum, ensuring that every lesson aligns with rigorous academic standards. By continuously gathering and analyzing data, we’ve been able to tailor this program to better fit the needs of individual learners, from identifying gaps in understanding to pinpointing the most effective teaching techniques. Our dedication to these processes is a testament to our belief in the importance of ongoing assessment and iteration.

But it’s not just about the data; it’s about the impact on the lives of students. Time and again, we have seen the transformation that occurs when children are equipped with the right tools and resources. They not only achieve academically but also grow in confidence and self-belief. This is the true essence of what Age of Learning strives for—empowering young minds to believe in themselves, embrace challenges, and realize their full potential. Our partnerships with schools, combined with our unwavering commitment to quality and innovation, are the driving forces behind these transformations.

Looking ahead, we are more inspired than ever to continue our work, expand our reach, and positively impact even more students around the globe. We know a student’s learning journey is constantly evolving, and we are committed to being there every step of the way, ensuring children everywhere have access to the best educational tools and resources.

For an in-depth look into our evidence-building practices and the collaboration between Age of Learning and the OET, check out the full case study here. Join us in celebrating the transformative power of education and the potential it unlocks in every child!

The post Age of Learning’s Commitment to Evidence-Based Education: A Case Study Collaboration with the Department of Education Office of Educational Technology first appeared on Age of Learning.

The post An Educator’s Perspective: Carmen Alvarez, Early Childhood Director, Harlingen Consolidated Independent School District (HCISD) first appeared on Age of Learning.

In early June, we announced our new Schools Solutions, which we developed to provide schools and districts with standards-based early education programs proven to help teachers differentiate instruction and accelerate learning while helping students achieve mastery. We also announced the launch of our innovative My Math Academy, the School Division’s first product, which our curriculum and production teams spent six years of development, iteration, and testing. My Math Academy is a research-proven, personalized, adaptive math program for pre-k through second grade. Multiple randomized control trials have shown that students using My Math Academy for as little as 45 minutes a week over a twelve-week period experience significant learning gains, and the children have increased engagement, interest, and confidence in learning math.

In mid-July, we shared that two Age of Learning teams behind the successful launch and ongoing development of My Math Academy published chapters in the academic journal Adaptive Instructional Systems. Design and Evaluation and were to present their work at the HCI International 2021 Conference.

In late July, the head of our Schools Division and a senior researcher on our Learning Science team were featured presenters at the #NYCSchoolsTech Summit 2021, where they shared the truly amazing results we had already seen while rolling out My Math Academy in school district pilot programs nationwide prior to its public launch. Their presentation: Results Count, My Math Academy Delivers! A PreK-2 Game-based Approach that Tripled Math Gains for Early Learners, focused primarily on the truly amazing results achieved in our pilot program in the Harlingen Consolidated Independent School District (HCISD) in Texas.

This pilot program was also the focus of a Government Technology magazine website article: My Math Academy Improving Early Childhood Math Skills. The article reported that after offering our My Math Academy: Classroom Edition product to more than 900 largely economically disadvantaged pre-K students in the district, math skills more than doubled for 4-year-old pre-K students and tripled for 3-year-olds. The average pre-K student aged 4 is now at mid-kindergarten level, while the average pre-K student aged 3 is approaching kindergarten-level math skills. You can watch a HCISD school district board meeting discussing the unprecedented impact of My Math Academy on children’s skills and achievement (start at 8:50 for a quicker watch).

This past week, My Math Academy received another honor, winning the Awards of Excellence from Tech & Learning, which named our adaptive early math program one of 2021’s Best Tools for Back to School. Tech & Learning’s Awards of Excellence have long recognized innovation in the edtech industry, and its latest iteration, The Best Tools for Back to School, celebrates the most impressive products and solutions that support the work of teachers, students, and parents as they prepare for the new 2021-22 school year. Tech & Learning’s panel of advisors evaluated My Math Academy on ease of use, value, versatility, and (most importantly) the product’s ability to solve a problem.

Tech & Learning Group Publisher Christine Weiser framed it this way: “As we head into another uncertain year in education, technology will continue to be one of the key drivers for innovation. Our judges chose the winning products recognized here for their versatility, compatibility, value, and ability to help schools solve challenges and support continuous instruction. Congratulations to all of our winners.”

In addition to this latest award, My Math Academy has already achieved an impressive list of certifications: Stemworks Design Principles and Rubrics for Effective STEM Programs, Digital Promise Certification for Research-Based Design, Digital Promise Certification for Research-Based Design and Learner Variability, and the kidSAFE Seal Program’s COPPA Certified seal of approval.

Click here to learn more about My Math Academy, or schedule a product demo.

The post My Math Academy: Classroom Edition Wins Tech & Learning Award of Excellence, Named One of 2021’s Best Tools for Back to School first appeared on Age of Learning.

We developed Adventure Academy to address the alarmingly low levels of academic proficiency among elementary and middle school students, prioritizing the areas the National Assessment of Educational Progress has consistently shown a majority of American students are not proficient in, including reading, math, and science. Adventure Academy offers learners opportunities to explore hundreds of topics within these subjects and learn in ways that are highly engaging and effective.

“Our sole focus at Age of Learning is to help children build a strong foundation for academic success,” said Doug Dohring, founder and CEO of Age of Learning. “Our outstanding team has executed on this mission for many years, developing highly engaging and effective educational programs that early learners enjoy, and families and teachers trust. Adventure Academy allows us to now meet parents’ demands to bring learning to life for older students during the critical elementary and middle school years.”

We have brought the same curriculum-first approach to Adventure Academy that we used in creating ABCmouse, which has helped educate nearly 20 million children to date. In developing Adventure Academy, our curriculum leadership conducted an in-depth review of state, national, and international educational standards, and collaborated with practicing teachers across the U.S. to identify the highest priority curriculum topics that students have the most difficulty with in school. As a result, the Adventure Academy curriculum emphasizes key topics such as reading comprehension, vocabulary development, mathematical operations, fractions, world geography, American history, physical science, life science, earth science, and scientific inquiry.

Over the past three years, our world-class team of game designers, artists, animators, and engineers developed Adventure Academywith the quality and engaging features of a AAA game. This development process is led by creators of some of the most successful titles in the history of online gaming, including Kevin Beardslee, one of the original creators of World of Warcraft^®; and Alex Galvagni, former General Manager of leading game studio Turbine^®, creators of The Lord of the Rings Online^®, Batman: Arkham Underworld^®, Dungeons and Dragons Online^®, and Game of Thrones Conquest^®.

Adventure Academy includes these key features:

• Thousands of learning activities across hundreds of topics, including curriculum-based games, books, a wide range of other types of reading materials, educational videos, and additional interactive experiences addressing all major academic domains.
• Builds critical knowledge and skills in language arts, math, science, social studies, and more.
• Hundreds of hours of educational interaction and gameplay, with hundreds of additional hours to be added in the near future.
• Learners create avatars to explore an ever-expanding world, complete learning quests to unlock new zones, and interact with other learners.
• The same engaging experience across all platforms—smartphones, tablets, and computers—with the ability for up to three children in the same household to play simultaneously within the same parent account with individual profiles.
• Subscription-based service, fully COPPA compliant with no advertising or in-app purchases.
• Safe social elements that enable players to interact with other learners in-game, including filtered chat functionality. Parents control the level of interaction their children have with other learners through this filtered chat and can block all in-game communication, if desired.

The Adventure Academy app will be available through the Apple App Store or Google Play and can also be accessed at www.adventureacademy.com. Families can purchase an annual subscription for less than $5 per month, or a month-to-month subscription for $9.99, both including up to three separate student profiles per household.

The post Introducing Adventure Academy™, the World’s First Educational Massively Multiplayer Online Game first appeared on Age of Learning.

ReadingIQ

Building on the success of ABCmouse.com® Early Learning Academy, we are bringing the same research-based, educator-led approach to the ReadingIQ digital library. ReadingIQ provides the best of children’s literature, including Caldecott and Newbery award winners, National Geographic and National Geographic Kids books, the complete Boxcar Children series, Curious George, more than 1,000 exclusive titles, and thousands of additional high-quality fiction and nonfiction books from leading publishers.

The entire ReadingIQ library is easily searchable by topic and leveled with both the Guided Reading and Lexile® systems so that children can find titles that match their interests and reading ability. ReadingIQ also includes more than 1,000 professionally voiced titles to support engagement and comprehension for pre-readers and developing readers.

As with ABCmouse, ReadingIQ is available at no cost to teachers for use in their classrooms, with the ability to assign an entire reading level of books to each student to read at home, completely free. Families who would like full home access to all of the ReadingIQ library can subscribe for less than $5 a month or $30 a year. ReadingIQ is available at www.ReadingIQ.com, or can be downloaded to smartphones and tablets through the Apple App Store or Google Play.

According to recent nationwide surveys of more than 1,000 preschool and elementary teachers and 1,000 parents of children 12 and under, sponsored by Age of Learning, lack of access to books is a major challenge for children’s reading development. More than 8,000 elementary schools in the U.S. – 10% of schools – do not have a school library. Yet teachers report that students with access to both physical and digital libraries are significantly more likely to be reading above grade level than peers without such access.

Seven out of 10 teachers report that students would benefit greatly from more parental involvement in reading outside of school, but only one third of parents know their child’s reading level. Moreover, 85% of teachers expect students to read between 15 minutes and one hour per day outside of school, but most students are reading less than the 15-minute daily minimum, and millions are not reading at all. To view our Reading Study, visit www.AgeofLearning.com/readingstudy.

ReadingIQ was created to address these challenges by expanding access to high-quality, high-interest books; strengthening the school-home connection around reading; and encouraging consistent at-home reading. In addition to making entire reading levels of books available for students to read at home for free, ReadingIQ enables teachers to set daily reading challenges, parents to create profiles for up to three children, and parents and teachers to track students’ reading progress.

“When kids master reading in elementary school, it sets them on a path to success for the rest of their lives, but only one third of fourth graders are proficient readers,” said Dr. Rebecca Palacios, member of Age of Learning’s Curriculum Board and the National Teachers Hall of Fame. “ReadingIQ is a game-changer for parents and teachers, giving all children a greater opportunity to become fluent and engaged readers.”

The post Introducing ReadingIQ, an Expert-Curated Digital Library  first appeared on Age of Learning.

The discussion, moderated by our SVP of Strategy Sunil Gunderia, provided a fascinating look at how machine learning and big data are impacting millions of students around the world and creating new professional opportunities. Speakers included Age of Learning’s Director of Data Science and Learning Elizabeth Owen PhD, alongside Armen Toorian, Professor of Robotics and Engineering at Glendale Community College and Mechanical Engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The speakers focused on three key themes: How digital learning resources expand access to education, how machine learning can help improve educational outcomes for K–12 students, and how understanding coding can improve students’ job prospects. Here are some highlights from the discussion:

Access

We are living through an exciting time when more and more people have digital access to educational content through relatively low-cost devices. This is the case both for our youngest learners and for aspiring professionals. At Age of Learning, we expect to serve more than six million children on ABCmouse this year alone! Some of these children will be reached through our partnerships with public libraries, schools, and community centers—we provide ABCmouse at no cost to these institutions. And Massive Open Online Course platforms such as Coursera are making it possible for higher education to transcend time and place. One million students signed up for Andrew Ng’s course on machine learning, allowing students from around the globe to learn from this influential thinker.

Outcomes

In the U.S., we are systematically failing most of our young learners when it comes to foundational skills. By the time children reach fourth grade, only 40% of them are proficient in math and 36% in reading (Source: The Nation’s Report Card). “In this age of big data, we have the opportunity to leverage the computational power that’s available to us to understand and drive educational outcomes,” said Sunil. Through products such as ABCmouse Mastering Math, we can support students’ individualized needs at a large scale. “When done well, it’s like having your own personal tutor,” said Liz.

Employability

As the largest education technology employer in the greater Los Angeles area, with nearly 600 employees, we understand the high demand for trained professionals across several technical disciplines, including software engineering. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that by 2020 there will be 1.4 million computer science jobs available but only 400,000 qualified graduates to fill them. We can do more as a society to prepare students for careers in coding and machine learning. It begins with understanding data, engaging in project-based learning, and using tools to bring ideas to life. Liz noted that “computational literacy is a basic literacy of our time,” and Armen added that “every single person in this room should know how to program.”

Glendale Tech Week 2017 offered a fun and inspiring environment through panels, site tours, and networking events. We look forward to participating in future events as we continue to partner with Glendale schools, libraries, and community centers to help make a difference in early learning.

The post Age of Learning Talks Machine Learning and Education at Glendale Tech Week 2017 first appeared on Age of Learning.

Our 2^nd grade curriculum, includes more than 1,500 new learning activities on two new levels in the Step–by–Step Learning Path, providing lessons in five key academic subjects: English language arts, math, social studies, science, and health. Children using ABCmouse at home, in classrooms, in libraries, and in other community institutions will all have access to the 2^nd grade curriculum.

We’ve expanded ABCmouse’s engaging content to address 2^nd grade learning objectives with additional stepped readers spanning the range of 2^nd grade reading skills, including 60 new fiction and non–fiction books. Children can continue to learn from characters they have come to know and love as well as interact with a new cast of inspiring characters, including a superhero quintet called the Write Team and Dr. Deb, a young future doctor who loves to explain how the body works.

Age of Learning Curriculum Board member and National Teacher of the Year awardee Kimberly Oliver Burnim shared her thoughts on the expansion of ABCmouse: “The release of these 2^nd grade learning activities on ABCmouse will help children build the strong foundation needed to succeed in 3^rd grade and beyond.”

Families can visit www.ABCmouse.com, the Apple iTunes Store, Google Play Store, or Amazon Appstore to subscribe to ABCmouse on all compatible devices: desktop and laptop computers, iPad and Android tablets, and smartphones. School decision makers can visit www.ABCmouseforSchools.com for more information about implementing ABCmouse across multiple classrooms or an entire district.

The post ABCmouse.com Adds 2nd Grade Curriculum, Expanding the Leading Educational Resource for 3rd–Grade Readiness first appeared on Age of Learning.

Academic areas covered in the assessment include Language, Literacy, and Math—domains in which 100 percent of the 50 states have established specific Kindergarten Readiness standards.

ABCmouse Assessment Center features include:

• A comprehensive preschool academic skills assessment, composed of 11 Language, Literacy, and Math skills that can be taken as one assessment, or as 11 individual assessments
• A comprehensive kindergarten academic skills assessment, composed of 12 Language, Literacy, and Math skills that can be taken as one assessment or as 12 individual assessments
• Customized lessons targeted to help a child improve in specific skill areas identified by the assessments for further practice
• Unlimited access to the assessments for up to three children, including tracking for each child on comprehensive academic skills assessments, as well as on individual reading, oral language, and math skills
• A user-friendly interface with clear, color-coded tables, charts, and graphs that present and illustrate assessment results

The post Age of Learning Launches ABCmouse Assessment Center to Help Families Evaluate School Readiness first appeared on Age of Learning.

Read the case study…

The post ABCmouse.com Case Study: Using Early Learning Technology to Prepare Head Start Families for Kindergarten first appeared on Age of Learning.