What Is Educational Allignment?

For roughly the past two decades, education in the United States has been largely outcome based. This approach holds that States, which have primary responsibility for the quality of education provided in their schools, should set the standards students are expected to meet. Those standards are expressed in the form of measurable outcomes and progress is assessed by means of achievement tests. Many school districts have signed up to use the IQity Learning Management Suite because they seek to improve their performance on such tests.

Background of Educational Alignment

The outcome based approach to education was solidified in the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which became law early in 2002. While the federal law does not set educational standards, leaving that decision to the States, it does require States to test students at certain grade levels in order to continue to receive federal education funding.

Though some of its provisions are controversial, NCLB has focused attention as never before on how well schools perform on standardized tests. Parents have more information about school performance. States and individual school districts have adopted strategies to improve student achievement.

At the center of all this measurement is educational alignment. Simply put, the material taught in the classroom must align with the standards set by the State. Since achievement tests are based on state standards, students can only do well on the tests if they've been taught according to state standards.

IQity Provides Standards-Aligned Content

It can be complicated to ascertain whether the material teachers choose to use in their classrooms is in fact in line with state standards. IQity makes that simple with Reactor, a learning object repository that contains only materials aligned with state standards. When a school district chooses to use IQity's Learning Management Suite to administer online education, teachers get access to Reactor, which is set to automatically default to their State's standards.

There are several ways to search Reactor, including by subject, grade level, or state standard. Teachers can also search by format, looking for videos, graphs, assessments, exercises, labs and so on. All material that results from the search has been reviewed by educational experts to assure that it aligns with the standards in that State.

IQity Tools Improve Learning

IQity makes it easy for teachers to customize lessons for students who need extra help and to adapt material for different learning styles. Because Reactor contains all types of materials for all K-12 grade levels and subjects, it's possible to find lessons that supplement and clarify course content. For a student who learns best by experimentation, an exercise might help convey a key concept. For a visual learner, a video or chart might help. With Reactor's convenient "drag and drop" feature, teachers can easily find what they need and quickly move it to the Classroom page. The secure messaging system allows teachers to assign specialized content to one or more students. Individualized assessments are a matter of a few mouse clicks as well.

To see how IQity can help your school improve student performance on standardized tests, ask for an online demonstration provided by an elearning expert.