BROOKLYN, N.Y., Aug. 17, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- For years, Wireless Generation has forged partnerships with schools that help educators to improve instruction and sustain a culture of optimism and academic progress. Now the company is providing these proven services in a comprehensive instructional turnaround model for the nation's lowest-performing schools. Already, Wireless Generation is approved as an external turnaround service provider in states including West Virginia, Ohio, and Tennessee, both as an independent contractor and in partnership with other organizations that provide complementary turnaround services such as school operations and financial management.
Through the School Improvement Grants (SIG) program, the U.S. Department of Education is helping states to turn around the lowest-performing 5% of Title I schools that have failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for the last 4 years. USDOE will award a total of approximately $3.5 billion over the next three years to fund turnaround efforts that use federally approved models.
Wireless Generation is known for helping schools achieve effective instructional reform, emphasizing data and high fidelity as the engines of continuous instructional improvement. High fidelity refers to using curricula and assessments as they were designed. Wireless Generation works collaboratively with schools, districts, and states to assess needs, develop an improvement plan, analyze data, provide content- and role-specific professional development, enhance family and community engagement, and manage change. The company's on-site and remote consultants differentiate the support and professional development they provide for each teacher, utilizing actual student and teacher data to determine their individual needs.
Wireless Generation's partnerships with school systems produce results, helping the nation's teachers to enhance their skills and children to increase the odds of achieving their full potential. After the lowest-performing schools in a large urban district received Wireless Generation's intensive coaching and professional development with tools to support differentiated instruction, their students saw significantly more improvement in reading than students in other schools. In addition, Wireless Generation worked with one state to help a cohort of low performing schools to narrow the gap with their higher performing peers by 35%, with a nearly 20% gain in students reaching reading proficiency.
"Using 'turnaround' terminology is new, but we've been at this for a long time. Both research and our own experience show that using data to guide decision-making and implementing strategies and programs with high fidelity are powerful levers of positive change," said Leslie Kerner, Wireless Generation Vice President of Professional Services. "It's our privilege to partner with educators, students, parents, and communities committed to creating a culture of continuous improvement in their schools."
For more information about Wireless Generation's school turnaround services, visit http://wirelessgeneration.com/solutions/school-improvement-services.html.
About Wireless Generation
Wireless Generation creates innovative tools, systems, and services that help educators teach smarter. With its mobile assessment software, the company invented a better way to give classroom assessments and make data-based instructional decisions. Wireless Generation has broken new ground with technology that analyzes student data and provides curriculum customized to individual learning needs. Wireless Generation also builds large-scale data systems that centralize student data and give educators and parents unprecedented visibility into learning. A Web 2.0 collaboration and knowledge network for educators propagates proven approaches across schools. Wireless Generation currently serves more than 200,000 educators and 3 million students. More information is available at www.WirelessGeneration.com.