Pinnacle and GlobalScholar: A Platform For Global Learning

The challenge today is not a lack of information, nor powerful technology tools. Neither is there a shortage of curriculum or research about how learning should happen. The problem today is that we have excellent pieces that don't necessarily fit together, because they've not been designed from the ground up to support teachers in being more effective to meet the individual needs of learners.

We know that technology's role in improving student achievement can touch the core of the learning process, by focusing directly on increasing teacher effectiveness. Our research partner, Dr. Robert Marzano [1] reports that "...virtually every study that has examined the role of the classroom teacher in the process of educating students has come to the same straightforward conclusion: an effective teacher enhances student learning more than any other aspect of schooling that can be controlled."

The combination of Pinnacle tools built and implemented by Excelsior Software for more than 20 years with others developed by GlobalScholar makes a significant stride in meeting this challenge. Bringing intuition and experience together with data analysis allows educators to arrive at true "data-informed" decision-making which supports the crucial goal: aligning practice with research in order to improve student achievement.

Data-Informed Instruction and the Holy Grail

For data-driven help geared specifically to student learning, many districts are turning to technology-based tools commonly known as "Learning Management" or "Curriculum Management" systems. These systems vary greatly in their approach, their targeted audience, and the terminology they use to describe their offerings. But what they have in common is that they gather data about student progress while offering direct instruction, assessment and remediation, which allows for comparisons and trend analysis as well as tracking of individual students' progress.

Effective learning management systems allow teachers to pose and receive answers to a variety of significant questions:

• Did students learn the targeted standards?
• Who did this lesson reach? Do I need to rethink it?
• Do students remember what they studied last semester?
• Are some students ready to move on to the next lesson?
• Do some students meet their learning goals more consistently when they share their progress with the rest of the class?
• Over time, which lessons seem the most effective for the largest number of students and what can I learn from that?

The holy grail of information management is to put in place systems and procedures that gather pertinent data regarding performance of all parts of the system, and provide analysis that informs decision-makers about how they can do more with less. The decision-maker with the greatest ability to increase student achievement is the teacher. The system must be designed to provide the teacher with a clear picture of progress toward learning goals and how to improve, by using technology that provides frequent and encouraging feedback.

Finally, the best learning management systems offer tools for communicating with parents, administrators and other stakeholders. The foundational concept is making the right data available, to the people who need it, by their preferred method, at the right time.