HUNTSVILLE, Ala., Oct. 15, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Glimpse K12, the only education technology company that analyzes school spending in the context of student outcomes, has launched a new tool to help educators identify and eliminate grade inflation, grade deflation, and systemic bias. ACE (Assessment Correlation Engine) is the only educational tool to help administrators pinpoint and eliminate issues around the discrepancy of course grades and mastery of learning standards to ensure parents, students, and educators all understand student progress. ACE helps educators increase their eROI by ensuring the efficacy of their assessment process.
Course grades are the primary method schools communicate educational progress to students and parents. Unfortunately, course grades rarely reflect mastery of student standards. “As our customers analyzed hundreds of thousands of student grades, it became obvious that most school districts have a systemic problem between how they assess student progress in the classroom and standards mastery,” said Adam Pearson, Glimpse’s Co-Founder and President.
Currently, students receive grades for various activities and assessments throughout the course of a grading period. Each of these components carry different weights and may be marked positively or negatively for things such as compliance.
“Our customers discovered that the way they were assessing student performance in the classroom was not in line with standards mastery on achievement tests,” said Pearson. “When students receive A’s, B’s, and C’s in the classroom, both students and parents assume that students are mastering core concepts. Grade inflation happens when these same students test non proficient on achievement tests.”
This issue causes a tremendous ripple effect each year as students move from course to course without mastering the content. When no alarm bell is triggered to alert parents and students, they think everything is fine even though these students cannot demonstrate mastery. Grade deflation is the opposite problem where students with C’s, Ds, Fs score in the top 10% of mastery. This is a massive issue for parents and students because they start to believe things like ‘I’m not good at Math’. Schools are impacted as well because students suffering from grade deflation statistically become likely drop out candidates.
By correlating student classroom assessments with any form of standards master assessment data, ACE automatically illuminates grade inflation, deflation, and bias so administrators can help educators refine their assessment practices to better reflect mastery. This tool transforms the way parents, students, and educators communicate about standards mastery, ensuring everyone is on the same page as it relates to student progress.
How it Works
ACE correlates student roster data with any formative, summative, or classroom-based assessment for educators. Administrators and their faculty log into the system to review the correlations and identify opportunities for improvement. The platform pinpoints where grade inflation, grade deflation, and bias may be impacting student performance. Educators access ACE though Glimpse’s eROI platform.
Tallapoosa County Schools is an example of a district that has already begun using the new ACE tool and seen important results. “The data we got from the ACE solution proved our concerns were real about grade inflation. We had students getting As and Bs but their testing proved that they had not mastered certain basic concepts in their academics,” said Superintendent Joe Windle. “We could take the data from Glimpse K12’s platform and drill down to specific teachers and classrooms and see where the grades did not reflect the skills the students had actually mastered.”
Tallapoosa used these insights from ACE and the Glimpse platform to centralize their grading system, bringing teachers and principals together across the six schools. The district determined for each school what constituted a major grade and what constituted a minor grade, so they now have grading consistency across grades K-8.
To learn more about ACE, visit https://www.glimpsek12.com/ace.
About Glimpse K12
Glimpse K12 is the only education technology company that analyzes school spending in the context of student outcomes. Through its eROI (Education Return on Investment) platform, Glimpse provides school districts with insight into how well they are aligning resources with students’ needs and how investments made in the classroom are yielding actual student results. School districts across the country are working with Glimpse K12 to create optimized, performance-based budgets based on student achievement and maximize the impact of every dollar spent in the classroom. Glimpse K12 is funded by some of the most innovative ed tech investors including Y Combinator. Learn more at www.glimpsek12.com.
Media contact:
Kerry Metzdorf
978-463-2575
kerry@big-swing.com