Hale Kula Elementary believes - and achieves highest Lexile® gains in state

Hale Kula Elementary believes each student deserves an opportunity to reach higher.

Hale Kula Elementary achieves dramatic increases in state assessment scores.

Situation

Hale Kula Elementary School is located on Schofield Barracks, an Army base in Wahiawa, Hawaii. Most of its more than 500 students are children of military personnel assigned to Hawaii, making transition and deployment issues unique challenges for the staff.

When the requirements for the Hawaii State Assessment (HSA) test shifted in one year from a minimum 44% language arts proficiency to a much-higher 55% benchmark, Hale Kula needed to quickly increase its high-stakes test scores while keeping curriculum, instruction and assessments aligned to Hawaii Content and Performance Standards.

Solution

Principal Jan Iwase had full confidence in her students' abilities and believed that Achieve3000®'s KidBiz3000® would be the perfect fit for Hale Kula's needs. Among the many solution features that convinced Iwase that KidBiz® was the best choice were its:

  • Truly differentiated instruction — Articles were designed to allow each student to read about the same content at his or her own level, but still be able to fully participate in a class discussion about the topic
  • Nonfiction content — Current, interesting nonfiction content that she knew would engage Hale Kula students, many of whom had traveled all over the world with the U.S. military
  • E-mail — Students not only would be able to e-mail their classmates and practice critical technology and writing skills, but teachers could use the closed e-mail system to provide additional enrichment and assignments customized for individual students
Implementation

KidBiz was implemented for the school's 280 2nd to 5th graders, who were required to use the solution twice weekly in the computer lab. To ensure that the program would be successful, Hale Kula decided to take advantage of classroom modeling training by an Achieve3000 trainer, which included both students and teachers. This gave kids an enthusiastic introduction to the program and teachers a close-up view of the KidBiz process, as well as an understanding of how to integrate it into their teaching. Teachers also had access to regular refresher training sessions designed to broaden their use of Hale Kula's computer lab.

Achievements

The achievements by Hale Kula students — including Special Education and ELL students — were dramatic. HSA scores increased 8% — jumping from 65% to 73% proficiency — and exceeded the state's required AYP of 44%. In fact, the school made the highest Lexile gains in all of Hawaii.

In comparing summative assessment scores, students demonstrated
a mean gain of 205.1 Lexile points. Expected gains were 111.8; students
exceeded this expectation by 93.3 points.

* This data does not include scores which indicate a possible invalid
administration



>Download Study

Print